Shaken, not stirred

To some extent yes. You can continue using whatever other program(s) you prefer for listening, syncing, etc. It's just Windows Media Player's database that Shaken, not stirred depends on; if a song or playlist on your computer is not in WMP's database, Shaken, not stirred won't know that you have it. To ensure that Windows Media Player's database is up to date with all your songs, you need to run WMP for a few minutes (without necessarily doing anything with it) after you add songs to your collection, so it has time to scan your music folders for changes. More info on this is in Shaken, not stirred's help.

Not absolutely required, but yes if you want Shaken, not stirred to automatically generate playlists with your favorite songs played more often. If you don't assign ratings to your songs, you can still manually create playlists with multiple repetitions of songs you want played more often (as in version 1), and have Shaken, not stirred shuffle that to distribute the repetitions intelligently.

It works on my phone, but cell phones vary. The bottom line for a phone is the same as any MP3 player: if it can import .m3u playlists, it should work with Shaken, not stirred. Smart phones with the Windows Mobile operating system are almost sure to be ok, since they can be synced with your computer's Windows Media Player, which will load the shuffled playlist.

The utility for copying album art from your PC to your player probably can't work directly with your phone. That utility requires that the MP3 player (phone) be connected to your PC as a drive letter (UMS/MSC mode). I think most phones connect only as a device, not as a drive. However there is a workaround for the many phones (like mine) where the music is stored on its removable memory stick/card. You can eject the micro SD card from the phone and insert it in your computer (e.g. with a USB connected card reader). Windows will treat the SD card as a drive, so Shaken, not stirred can copy the album art to the matching folders directly on the SD.

I don't use an iPod and haven't tested, but can't imagine a reason why an iPod wouldn't work as well as any other player. However most iPod users also use iTunes to manage their music collections; in that case you'd also need to make sure Windows Media Player knows about your music (see the WMP question above). This program generates shuffled playlists in .m3u format, and there have been some complaints of buggy handling of .m3u playlists in older versions of iTunes. You might need to update your iTunes to the latest version, or use an alternative program for exporting the .m3u playlist to your iPod.

The main change is that the program itself now generates playlists with more repetitions of the songs you want to hear more often, instead of the user having to manually create such a playlist to be shuffled by Shaken, not stirred. The shuffling methods for distributing repetitions of the same song are the same as before. The utility for copying album art files to an MP3 player works the same as before.

The only thing you can't do is save the shuffled playlist in .wpl format; you can only save it as a .m3u file (which is properly handled by Windows Media Player and almost every other program that works with playlists). If you want to shuffle a manually created weighted playlist like you do in version 1, you select it for the shuffle and set the repetition frequency to 1 for all songs (i.e. 1 repetition for each time a song occurs in the playlist).

Aside from being in the same program, not at all. They just happened to be the two things for MP3 players that I had to write myself to get it the way I wanted, and I put them together in the same program. In retrospect I should have written them as separate programs, but now disentangling the two would take more time than it's worth to me.

The original purpose of the program was to intelligently shuffle playlists that had repetitions, so the same song wouldn't repeat too close to itself. The phrase "Shaken, not stirred" refers to mixing the playlist the right way, as in James Bond movies where Bond insists on having his vodka martini shaken, not stirred. I'm not a fan of martinis, vodka or otherwise, but know a margarita is mixed much better when shaken rather than stirred.

The program icon is from the same idea, an image of a Boston cocktail shaker.

The author with a margarita prepared as it should be:
shaken, not stirred

* Actually I've never been asked the majority of these questions, so here F.A.Q. can mean Frequently Asked or Anticipated Questions

Shaken, not stirred

F. A. Q. *