Ok, continuing with the human technology series, the next thing application that I want to touch upon is Winamp. I had already mentioned it on the article about MP3. Winamp is the leader in mp3 players. I have been using it since, well since the beginning of the mp3 revolution. At that time it was the most readily available player. It was surprisingly simple to use. I believe that Winamp is one of the few softwares that follows the ‘KISS’ principle. Look at it, it’s UI matches the UI of any traditional music system. The ‘play’, ‘pause’ buttons, the graphical equalizers, the display. I think that’s what made it click. Playing mp3 was no different than playing you normal cd. Also there were added gimmicks like skins, and plugins that made it more personal. I really remember this one plugin that would attach speakers to the player. It was so cool. It also had all those 3D visualizations, which one could just watch while the music played. Winamp also stuck a cord with the internet community. It was easy on the resources. Never crashed. People developed some awesome add-on to it. All-in-all it just clicked like no other player. Every new release was an tracked, and instantly installed. The release of version 2 was a milestone. Today there are zillions of mp3 player. iTunes is probably the most popular. But Winamp still has maintained it’s distinct identity. Over the years it’s kept up with times, but its UI has remained consistent.