Control iTunes with your hands (or feet)

Just when you thought there was no way to possibly advance or create any other add-ons to iTunes, here comes FluidTunes.

FluidTunes is certainly one of the more original efforts however, proposing to allow you to control iTunes with your hands or even your feet – just about anything that you can wave in front of it in fact. It does this by using iSight to detect any movements and as a result, it’s not an exact science and the results can be rather erratic.

On initial setup, it seems pretty impressive. “Wow”, I thought, “I’m actually controlling iTunes with my hands.” You’re asked to do a quick calibration test which means waving your hands like a lunatic until the play button lights up to tell you that calibration is complete. Then you’re up and running but it soon becomes infuriating trying to control the scrolling of albums. FluidTunes seems to have a mind of its own, going in any direction it chooses – left soon turns into right, right into left etc. It also just suddenly starts playing files at random while trying to target the one you want.

It’s a shame because FluidTunes is an original tool which brings Minority Report style technology to the Mac. Unfortunately, it needs a lot more work before it’s the finished product, but it could be worth the wait.