Your Winamp player should be personal. It should reflect your whims and tastes. You should own it. And one of the most basic ways to go about putting your own personal stamp on your player is by changing its color. Sure, the default color scheme for the media player is sleek and cool. But doesn't everyone have that? At a certain point, don't you just yearn for something totally and mind alteringly different? Well, changing it is super simple. And we'll show you how.

Step 1:

First, you wanna open your media player. Click on the "Options" tab at the top menu bar, and scroll down to the "Color Themes" selection, towards the bottom of the drop down menu. You'll see that the default one is checked, by "default." But that doesn't mean you can't choose something else.

You don't have to be a squirrel, or an elephant, or even a Charlie Brown fanatic to appreciate the beauty that is the Peanut Winamp skin. You'll be hard pressed to find a sleeker design, or as aesthetically pleasing a color scheme as the Peanut offers. Available in a variety of colors, the Peanut is like one of those exceedingly rare people you meet who's not only stunningly beautiful, but filled with substance too. There's something particularly user-friendly and easygoing about this skin. Maybe it's the way the equalizor casually slides down when you glide your cursor over the, um, peanut. Or the way that you can move the graphic equalizor or the media library around without ever having to deal with one latching on to the other, magnet style. Every movement is just so fluidly seamless, even by free form skin standards. So if you're looking for that extra little something to add a little flare (and substance) to your Winamp player, try the Peanut. (Whether or not it should be named "foot" instead, is another question...)

Download your Peanut Skin here.

Converting your m4a files into gold-encrusted mp3 gems doesn't have to be difficult. Sweat needn't be broken. Tears needn't be shed. Blood needn't be spilled. Take a deep breath, put your head between your knees for a few seconds, and when you're ready, follow these easy steps to mp3-hood.

The first thing you'll need, though, is Winamp Pro, which you can find here. (Winamp Standard supports a lot of files, but for mp3's, you'll need to go Pro...) Got it? Cool. Now, let's talk....

Step 1:

Find the file you want to convert by going to your your Media Library tab, and click on "Audio" from your "Local Media". If you haven't already added audio files to your Winamp Media Player, you can go to File >> Add Media to Library. Alternatively, you could drag and drop the file from your Windows Explorer into the Winamp player.

Facebook is already the most popular online hangout for telling the world everything you're doing, everything you've ever done, and everything you have yet to do. With users constantly updating their status to tell the world of their most enthralling daily activities, it only makes sense that the world would desperately want to know what music you're listening to. And not just that staid, two-dimensional "Favorite Music" section. Oh, no. The world moves much too fast for profile updates. The human populations move in real time, and so should your music updates. Now, thanks to a plug-in called "Facebook Listening to v1.0," the world can finally follow your every browse through your online music library.

Basically, the way it works is you've first gotta add an application called "I am Listening To" to your Facebook page. Once you do that, this long page of instructions and features will pop up, but the most critical thing is the random Facebook User ID and "Secret Key" that they'll give you. You'll need this in order to activate the plug-in, which you can download here. What happens next, dear reader, is nothing short of magic. What the plug-in does, if you want it to, is update your Facebook status as you surf through your library, so all of your friends and family will know what you're listening to at any given moment. You can also choose to load your playlist library directly into your profile, and examine (read: rip apart) your friends'obviously inferior music tastes. Most spellbindingly, both your music status and your embedded playlist will be updated automatically-even if you're not logged in (*gasp!*).

All in all, it's a pretty cool application, for those brave enough to use it. The potential for embarrassment is pretty obvious (do you really want Aunt Rhoda knowing how many times you listen to Enya every day?). But then again, no less embarrassing than most of the stuff that happens in the Wild Wild West of Facebook. At least in this case, the upside of showing off your music taste and your infinite coolness far outweigh any possibly relationship or job-destroying revelations.

Download your Facebook Listening To v1.0 Plug-in here.