One of my favourite lifehacks ever is by Marc and Angel called "Turn Google into Napster 2000". Basically they've used Google's "web command line" to narrow down and search specifically for .mp3 files from a certain artist or by song name. An example they gave was:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Nirvana”

I've liked this method of "finding" the music I'm searching for and it has worked well for me. There was also a time when I pondered creating a script to do this effortlessly, but I never got down to writing one.

Today I stumbled across someone who did. Not so much a script really, but a full fledged Web 2.0 app! Its called SeeqPod and automating the above is what it does best. The forward looking folks at SeeqPod believe that...

one day, everything will be 'playable'. Hence we have embraced the term 'Playable Search'.

The site works quite simply, just search and share. But for a music site, it sure is not as chic as Last.fm, Pandora, or finetune. But being a cool music site is not really its purpose. What I found really fascinating about SeeqPod is not its interface, but its index. Looking at the list of songs flowing into the page from various sources is quite an amazing sight on its own. My gut is telling me that about 90% of these songs are illegal not simply by SeeqPod's download/streaming, but how they got online in the first place.

But legal issues aside, it is lovely to see an old mantra at work in our Web 2.0 age: necessity is the mother of all inventions. Still holds true, and I'm looking forward to more lifehacks turning into web apps that save the day.