Happy 1st Birthday to the iTunes Music Store today! To celebrate, Apple has launched iTunes 4.5, with playlist publishing, radio charts, movie trailers and music videos. There's also "Party Shuffle" mode which is a huge boon for those of us who like to take our whole library and hit shuffle: the new feature lets you designate either a library or specific playlist, make changes to the order on the fly, and even save random plays. Here are features I'm even more excited about, though: iTunes 4.5 automatically converts Microsoft WMA files to AAC, and adds Apple Lossless, with CD quality audio in half the size. This could be iTunes 5, as far as I'm concerned.

In other news, iTunes has sold 70 million songs in its first year, short of Apple's 100 million goal but impressive nonetheless (and some of us still haven't redeemed all our Pepsi caps yet!) So, celebrate the 1 year birthday by downloading a free Foo Fighters tune, courtesy Apple -- the first of a series in which one new free song is released each week.

Ed: Yep, we're a day late with this one. Blame latency. -PK

Have a look at the new Creamware WebSite. SFP4 is downloadable (with lot of bugs fixed) and attractive prices for their latest plug-ins.

Applied Acoustics Systems announces the release of Tassman V4 for Mac OSX (CoreAudio, VST, RTAS, AudioUnits), its synthesis and sound design modular studio based on physical modelling. Besides the compatibility with Panther, Tassman offers a reorganized "performance" mode along with a function allowing to use it in real time and comes with a new sample collection.

Registered users can get an update for 99 euros. This update is free for users of versions bought after January 1, 2004. The full version is available for 399 euros (download) or 499 euros (CD version).

The long-awaited Finale NotePad 2004, the free version of MakeMusic's flagship music notation software Finale, is here. NotePad is the best free tool available for making simple scores, with a number of basic features borrowed from its sibling Finale. It's also critical to compatibility, since users who don't own Finale can open any file made with a Finale-family program in NotePad. Delays to an OS X version had crippled the usefulness of the free version and made it impossible to open Finale files downloaded on the web natively. The new version also boasts enhancements to playback, entry, layers, and lyrics. A must-have download if you need Finale compatibility or want a free, simple tool for printing scores.