Friday, AOL launched the latest version of its Winamp Media Player, Winamp 5.56. The new version boasts a bunch of new features, including, most notably, the oddly named Orgler. It's a community-based
feature that allows music enthusiasts to share top songs and top artists from their own media library with the entire Winamp community. Just by signing in, users can share their own libraries through
a feature called "My Charts" that lists which tunes they've heard in the past day, week, or month. "New Charts" is a feature that highlights top artists and songs of the moment. The Charts feature is
the first product powered by the OrglerTM platform. It's available in 16 languages, including Turkish, Romanian, and Portuguese. WinAmp has even tried to turn Orgle into a verb, as in "What are you
Orgling?"
AOl calls WinAmp "the most popular media player in the world," but according to award-winning tech-blog Lifehacker, it ranks at number two, behind media player foobar2000. "It's the
most customizable media player on the block," Lifehacker says. Whatever ranking it has, the OrglerTM just tracks songs from the user's media library, for now. --Amanda Domurad
