iTunes’ Party Shuffle feature is a special type of dynamic playlist. You access it by clicking on the

Party Shuffle listing at the top of the Playlists section of iTunes’ Source list (if you don’t see Party Shuffle, open iTunes’ General preferences and select it). Party Shuffle is iTunes’ equivalent of the iPod’s Shuffle Songs feature, except that you get to see what’s coming next (see “Party Time”). Party Shuffle chooses songs at random from your library, and if you don’t like what it has picked, you can click on the Shuffle button to make iTunes deal you a brand-new hand. If you want to skip a song that’s playing, just click on the Next button; to go back to the previous song, click on the Previous button. If you don’t want to listen to certain songs in the list, simply select and delete them as you would items from any playlist; iTunes will remove them from Party Shuffle, but not from your library, and other songs will pop up at the bottom of the list to replace them. If you want to leave songs in Party Shuffle but skip them, just uncheck the boxes to the left of their names. When you first click on the Party Shuffle icon, you’ll see a list of tracks. Party Shuffle shows the song that will start off your shuffle, as well as a  number of upcoming songs—those it has put in the play queue. By default, it displays the five most recently played Party Shuffle songs. From the Display pop-up menus at the bottom of the screen, you can change the number of upcoming and recently played songs shown, but the latter won’t appear  until you start playing music from Party Shuffle. This list lets you see what’s been playing—in case you  left your Mac for a while— and you can play a song again by dragging it down to the list of upcoming songs. You can also rate songs you’ve heard recently by control- or right-clicking on a song name, selecting My Rating, and choosing a number of stars. By default, Party Shuffle selects its contents from your entire music library. But you can narrow down the field: from the Source pop-up menu, select a playlist, and Party Shuffle changes to show only music from this playlist. (Note that you can’t use a shared library, an iPod, or a CD as a source for Party Shuffle.)

IFILL

Thanks to portable digital music players, many audiophiles carry hundreds of songs in their pockets. Griffin Technology’s iFill (www.griffintechnology.com), however, also lets them record radio to their players. Confused? Here’s how it works: You plug your Apple iPod (or iPod mini, nano, or shuffle) into your PC or Mac and then configure the software to download radio stations (via your Internet  connection). The device can download multiple stations at once; Griffin suggests downloading the streaming radio while you sleep. The software supports Mac OS X 10.3/10.4 and Windows XP SP2. Try the program free or buy it for $19.99.