While I'm as jazzed over the new iPod Nanos as anyone, I'm more interested in the updated iTunes 8. New iPods have become a yearly "fashion show" that always gets lots of press, but the venerable iTunes often gets overlooked. This time, however, there's more here than meets the eye.

While Steve Jobs was upfront in describing the new iTunes Genius function that creates playlists based on your library data, stripped of identifying information, he failed to mention that the Genius playlist creation that this data drives is an old idea. So is the idea of recommending new music based on stuff you already own.

Specifically, there's been a program around for some time called The Filter, sponsored in part (as I remember) by Peter Gabriel. Before there was MOG or Last.fm, there was The Filter, an app that surveyed your music library so that it could generate new playlists based on a handful of "seeds." Ideally, the folks at The Filter recommended you select at least 3 songs to generate a new playslist.

The original incarnation of The Filter was a stand-alone application, though now it resides in the system tray (Windows) or the menubar (Mac). That first version of The Filter also included the option to get recommendations for new music based on what you already owned. There was even a version of the program that ran on cell phones (I think it was limited to Nokias).

As yet, no word from the folks at The Filter. But if I were you, I'd bet good money that there's another shoe about to hit the floor. Or something ELSE will hit the fan, perhaps...