With the very latest on Amarok 2 development ( with more screenshots than you can snake a stick at ), past and future events, news on Amarok 2 on Mac and a wall sized Amarok logo, issue 12 of the "Amarok Insider" is a a great read for anyone curious about what cool and unique new features Amarok 2.0 will bring.

"In This Issue

* What's New in Amarok
* Google and Amarok
* Roktober Success
* Interview with a Developer: Bart Cerneels
* Automated Playlist Generator: How to Use it
* Queue Manager in Amarok
* Installing and using a script in Amarok
* Amarok on Windows
* Transcode your media files
* Amarok Live CD"

Welcome to the first issue of AWN hosted on the official Amarok website. This makes it a bit more official, so I had to stop screwing around and at least drop the word "Weekly" from the name. So here it is, the Amarok Weekly Newsletter under its new name: Amarok Insider. Not weekly anymore :).

I was catching up on some feeds yesterday, and this piece of news caught my eye - Amarok 2.1 released. Being a long time Amarok fan ( heck Amarok itself was catalyst to make me use my SUSE 10.0 use full time) - I read the article with great interest.

Amarok Headquarters reports yet again another release of the marvelous Amarok 1.4 'Fast Forward' series. Just like its predecessor, Amarok 1.4.8 fixes a fairly large amount of bugs, and therefore increases stability of Amarok's stable branch of development. Among the major improvements is the resolution of an issue that could, under some circumstances, cause a complete lockup during dynamic playback. Last.fm metadata fetching now also works with xine 1.1.8 and we made sure you can now also use your brand new iPods with your favourite music player. And now the team can get back to work on Amarok 2, getting their hands dirty to bring Amarok 2 to you as soon as humanly possible! :)

The Amarok team is excited to announce the release of Amarok 2.2. In three and a half months, Amarok has made a huge leap forward, gaining many new features and a lot of old features from 1.4 have returned.

As you have probably noticed Amarok is currently in "release mode". We have released two alphas and three beta versions in the past few months, with the last beta released two days ago. Take your time and test it thoroughly so we can fix the remaining bugs for the final version which should be ready soon.

Team Amarok is proud to announce Amarok 2.3.0. It contains many improvements and bugfixes over Amarok 2.2.2 as well as many new features. Areas such as podcast support and saved playlists have seen huge improvements, as has the support for USB mass storage devices (including generic MP3 players).

The Amarok team needs your help. Amarok are looking for a new, shiny and fresh jingle to play at first start of Amarok 2.0 and are holding a contest to find one. Magnatune and ccMixter have generously offered their help to get this going. The Amarok project will award the winner with fame, glory and a load of cool prizes, including $100 US dollars in cash and cool Amarok swag.