The Domesticated Primate

This looks to be very promising - I soooo want to stop using my creaky and barely-working W2K box that I use to sync my iPod and that's one of the last things keeping me from shutting that box down. I was looking for something that would import playlists as Banshee doesn't seem to do it. For listening to podcasts on a Gen 2 Nano, you just about are FORCED to create a smart playlist, as IMHO, Apple broke the podcast functionality otherwise...Apple gets all these usability brownie points from their fanboys and from themselves in their own commercials, but they can stumble like anyone else, apparently.

But on to Songbird: I've seen Songbird mentioned before, but I'm not sure they had a release at the time.

I downloaded the developer's release, and it seems to work well enough - at least it didn't crash. I haven't yet tried to sync the ipod (it looks like their FAQ needs updating as it says portable devices aren't supported yet, but there seems to be a plugin), but the demo is so cool that it's worth using it for those capabilities alone. I did try out the audioscrobbler stuff and it seems to work - at least if the music you are listening to is local. So far, nothing was scrobbled when it was listened to over the net, which is a bummer.