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Music and browsing mashup Songbird has kicked the remnants of its shell to the curb. With the release of version 1.0.0 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, the program's main emphasis as a music browser couldn't be more clear.

Songbird's familiar layout should make it easy for many to combine their browsing and music playback in one tool.

(Credit: Pioneers of the Inevitable)

If you looked at some of the earlier beta versions, Songbird's interface borrowed heavily from Firefox. More recent versions took their cue from iTunes, with Web browsing occurring in a second tab. Although toggling between your music library and the browser is as easy as switching tabs, since Songbird opens your library by default it's apparent where the publisher thinks users will want to focus.

This is arguably a smart strategy, too, given the attention that the latest round of browser battles has garnered. The music library layout feels intuitive, owing much to iTunes. Album art appears in the lower left corner with a navigation tree above it. A button at the bottom of the sidebar lets you toggle both. The music player controls can be configured to appear at the top or the bottom of the main window via the Views menu. Drag-and-drop would be a nice feature here, although not essential.

The Filter pane defaults to appear, and lives at the top of the interface above the browsing tabs. Again, it can be hidden in the Views menu. The Filter pane is included by default, but if you click on the dual-pane icon next to the Search box and click on Get more media views, you can install extensions that provide you with a Cover Flow facsimile, a tag cloud, and others.

The Library browsing tab is hard-coded to appear and the tab lives permanently above the left sidebar. Overall, though, the interface shouldn't be a drastic change if you're familiar with iTunes, and shares enough options with other media players that you won't feel like you're locked in to what Songbird's designers had in mind.

If you're into skins or Firefox themes, Songbird supports those as Feathers. A quick search through the feathers options on the Songbird Web site indicates that, just as with Firefox, black themes are in. Way in. Switching installed feathers works the same as in Firefox, although in Songbird the reboot happens so fast it appears as if it's doing it on the fly. A right-nav toggle reveals a pane for managing your display pane add-ons.

Songbird's not just about its plumage--it's got some meat on its bird-bones. Besides the rolled-in jukebox, there's the native support for Last.fm, and an included add-on for MashTape. Additional add-ons can provide a lyrics pane, music recommendations, and more. The audio engine is Gstreamer, which is used in all Songbird platforms, and an included plug-in provides device support that's otherwise still in beta. However, when syncing files with an iPod Classic, I ran into zero problems.

Songbird doesn't have all of the features that Firefox 3 does. The address bar lacks its "awesome" upgrade--some users will surely see that as an improvement. It appears that many of the Firefox 3 visual security improvements, such as the favicon color change and the unsafe site warning, haven't made it into Songbird.

There are other major features that are still in development. Album art fetching is not yet natively supported, nor is video playback, watch folders, or feed management. These drawbacks, though, shouldn't keep you from checking out Songbird.

Editors' note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS Interactive.

Dynaudio C-1 speaker with a 6.7-inch woofer and 1.1-inch tweeter

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Listen, if you're buying speakers, the best thing to do is listen to them. If you can't, you'll learn a lot perusing specifications.

Online shoppers need the most info, but even brick-and-mortar buyers can predict quite a lot about a prospective speaker's performance and system compatibility by looking at the numbers. Tech talk gets you woozy? No problem, the main points of interest would be the dimensions of the speaker and how much the thing weighs.

Hint: bigger and heavier speakers almost always sound better than small, lightweight ones.

So far, so good, but woofer size also provides clues about how much bass a speaker will produce. Bigger woofers make more bass than smaller ones, but the cabinet's size is almost as important a factor as woofer size in determining bass quality/quantity. Multiple woofers may look impressive, but they're less reliable predictors of bass oomph; we've tested lots of skinny speakers with two, three, four, or more drivers that didn't make much bass. The cabinets were too damned small, four 3-inch woofers don't make as much bass as one 6-inch woofer in a larger box.

You might hope the frequency response specification, "38 Hertz -- 22,000 Hertz," would predict how much bass the speaker would make. The first part of that spec, "38 Hertz" refers to the bass output--the lower the number--the deeper the bass. Ah, but since there wasn't any reference to the tolerance of the spec, it's just about useless. Some manufacturers include a "+/-" after the frequency response number, something like 38 Hertz - 22,000 Hertz +/- 3 dB, and that helps a bit. Any speaker that reaches 50 Hz or lower can be considered "full range" and doesn't necessarily need to be partnered with a subwoofer--for music. Multichannel (5.1, 6.1, 7.1) home Theater applications almost always require subwoofers.

I have less to say about tweeters, other than to recommend buying speakers with tweeters; a fair number of pricey "sound bar" speakers are tweeterless. That's not to say they will sound bad, just not as detailed and clear as speakers with decent tweeters.

If you're looking for pop-happy, corny Auto-Tuned vocals, then The Revelations featuring Tre Williams is not for you. However, if you're a music lover with an appreciation for deep soul, then look no further. Simply put, this is pure, all-natural soul at its finest.

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Maybe all our refined, enlightened interests are lost in the long tail, because Britney Spears once again was the most popular search subject in 2008 on Yahoo.

For Yahoo, Spears wasn't the only pop-culture icon in Yahoo's top 10 searches. Also on the list were Miley Cyrus at No. 4, Jessica Alba at No. 6, Lindsay Lohan at No. 7, and Angelina Jolie at No. 9.

Apparently a lot of people are curious about World Wrestling Entertainment, because WWE was No. 2. The online game RuneScape was No. 5, anime series Naruto was No. 7, and American Idol finished in 10th place on Yahoo's list.

Yahoo also broke down searches for various other subjects. For economic searches, the top 10 list started with IRS stimulus checks, then followed with oil prices, gold prices, gas prices, Dow Jones, Sallie Mae, stock market, AIG, foreclosures, and debt consolidation. The list reveals that people use general-purpose searches for everything ranging from how-to advice to the latest news.

In the people of politics, President-elect Barack Obama led the list. Next came Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mitt Romney.

AOL also shared its top search terms for 2008, though it didn't break out overall terms.

Ask.com also spotlighted popular 2008 searches, and has a few variations on the standard search categories. Its top questions are as follows:

1. How do I get pregnant?
2. How do I lose weight?
3. How do I write a resume?
4. How much is minimum wage?
5. How much is my car worth?
6. How do I change my name?
7. What is the meaning of life?
8. How do I register to vote?
9. Why is the sky blue?
10. How do I download videos?

And since Ask.com bought Dictionary.com earlier this year, it's releasing top search terms for that site. People's vocabulary expansion efforts concentrated on these terms: maverick, socialism, economy, recession, radical, cyclone, solace, realtor, environment, and potholes.

Apparently Google, which has shared search trends on its annual Zeitgeist list since 2001, didn't get the memo to release its results Monday, but expect it to cough up some new results soon--and, I hope, some of the accompanying graphs.

If there's a lesson to be learned from this week's MP3 Mailbox Monday, it's that flattery will get you everywhere. And that it's hip to be square. Oh, also, there's something about digitizing music and recycling CDs in here, too, though I like to delude myself into thinking you stop by for my self-indulgent-yet-somehow-still-witty intro chatter. What do you mean witty, you say? Ha! Good one. Read on for the skinny.

Q: I just joined CNET--great site, just love it! Here's the thing: I'm old, I'm out of it, and I need help. I only started downloading music a year ago, and now I'm hooked. Love having digital music and want to get rid of my physical CDs. I work non-stop and don't have time to do this myself. I've looked into ripping services and wonder if anyone can recommend one service over another? They all seem pretty much the same as far as cost so I'm looking for actual positive experience with a specific service. I'm in the New York City area but it's fine to ship to a distant location if it's a good service.

Also, what format should I convert to--MP3 or AAC? I have an iPhone, a Mac laptop, and external back up (a time machine). And what do people do with their old CDs? Are there places to donate, recycle, etc.? Thanks a ton!--Clare, via e-mail

One of many services that takes the work out of CD ripping.

A: We haven't done a comparison of CD-ripping services at CNET, but I found one over at Digital Trends that is nicely laid out and includes a wide variety of options. (As usual, I also invite other CNET users to leave feedback below.)

Now, the question of format is a good one, and I'm afraid the answer isn't entirely straightforward. What format to use depends on your purposes. If you're looking for archive-quality audio, lossless is the way to go. The most common lossless format is WAV, but in your case, I'd recommend Apple Lossless, which offers some compression while still preserving the data of the file. (This means the Apple Lossless file will be smaller than the WAV, but will arguably sound just as good.) Apple Lossless is supported by iTunes and most iPods, including the iPhone.

Sometimes, a band will record in a warehouse so they can tell people they recorded in a warehouse. And sometimes, they'll do it to sound like this. No strangers to the post-industrial motif--they're from Jersey--Carlon drop a swoony stunner that makes full use of its cavernous space.

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With his band The Comas on hiatus, Andy Herod's self-produced new project, Electric Owls, embarks on an exploration of musical experimentation while dwelling on the distinctly dark and cryptic with the release of the Magic Show EP.

Aptly titled, the four tracks propagate the mystical spirit of Halloween with many macabre references in songs such as "Cannibal Superstar" and "Darken Me," both lyrically dredging up feelings of death and dethronement put against a backdrop of slightly offbeat--yet melodic--pop hooks and intertwining harmonies. Less heavy songs also appear on the release, such as the unusually jaunty and whimsical title track, evoking surrealistic images and a dreamy musical style equal parts nocturnal and charged--perhaps better identifiable as an electric owl.

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Authentic early '60s soul and beat music is on the decks when ultra-contemporary English R& B singer Hunter is in the house. He's so cool and smooth you might mistake him for the real deal--and he is: 21st century soul-style!

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Till now, the only way to hear former Belle and Sebastian chanteuse Campbell paired with a Waitsian growl was to force-feed whiskey shots to Stuart. Much less messy is Isobel's latest collab with Lanegan, which melds Scottish dream-pop with the deliciously murky waters of gothic folk.

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Just when you think you can't possibly stand to hear another electronic group that dances coyly over the line between indie and club culture, The Whip comes along and slices that notion to bits. Updating electro, pop and disco-house for the not-so-new-anymore millenium, The Whip delve into dark, driving music that's off-handedly sexy.

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