Most useful Windows programs of 2008

Songbird
Songbird was in beta development for more than a year and finally reached a stable release just before Christmas. Originally designed as a balanced mash-up between Firefox and iTunes, it now uses Mozilla's Gecko engine to drive music content. You can still browse the Web with it, but it's no accident that Songbird opens up to your music library.

Songbird lets users create add-ons with ease. These aren't limited to skins, or 'Feathers' as Songbird calls them. Songbird's add-ons include a Cover Flow-style album art browser, lyric windows, plus Last.fm and mashTape support.

As much as people love their MP3s, it's amazing to us that it's taken this long for a serious and slick cross-platform jukebox competitor to get onstage. And as much as we love MediaMonkey, it's starting to look like there might be a software-based "Battle of the Bands" on the horizon.

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