Having connected my iPod to my stereo as a full-time high-tech audio peripheral, I've been motivated to make more custom playlists. This has been fun. However, two things I wish iTunes had: (1) an easy way to email friends a plain text list of songs and artists in your playlist, and (2) some kind of "mix test" feature allowing you to hear the first ten and last ten seconds of each song automatically, so you can determine how well the mix moves from one track to the next.

Even with those limitations, the latest mix happened to work out quite well. I may still do some tweaking, but here it is for now. It's composed more or less of modern and alternative rock songs from the last year:

1) "Amsterdam" (Guster) (Note: I saw these guys back on March 1, 1997 at the Bayou in Washington D.C. and saw potential. It's great to see them have made it big.)

2) "The Reason" (Hoobastank)

3) "Blurry" (Puddle of Mudd) (A song I never wound have found without the Internet's power of search and sample)

4) "Ocean Avenue" (Yellowcard)

5) "Figured You Out" (Nickelback)

6) "Last Nite" (The Strokes)

7) "So Far Away" (Staind)

8) "Someday" (Nickelback)

9) "Like a Stone" (Audioslave)

10) "Fly From the Inside" (Shinedown)

11) "Talk Shows on Mute" (Incubus)

12) "The Middle" (Jimmy Eat World)

13) "Love Song" (311) (Funny, because the first 311 hits I heard from 1997 were incredibly annoying)

The one missing? "Last Train Home" by Lostprophets. It's not available at the iTunes music store and I'm not set to buy the album. Maybe someday.