By Mark O’Neill

I am normally rather wary of anything coming from AOL, but I have to admit that their free little music desktop widget, which runs on Adobe AIR, has impressed the hell out of me. It’s a nice little program to have running while you’re surfing away on the net.

If you download it,  it will also download the latest version of Adobe AIR (if you don’t already have it).   AIR is rapidly becoming THE application to have on your computer right now as more and more apps are being made for it, the best one in my opinion being Google Analytics.

This music widget, upon opening, asks you what music genre you want, and when you’ve chosen your genre, gives you the top 100 music videos on AOL Music. You can then listen to them immediately inside the application.  Some of the videos are apparently not available, which must mean that the player is not updated as fast as the site.

You can keep the app on top of all browser windows, create custom playlists and share videos with other people by emailing them the links.

Along with the fact that AOL has opened up their AIM chat platform to developers this week, I am starting to develop a new respect for AOL in general.   Long may it continue.