jcs.org
a webserver that serves up html to show the currently playing song in itunes. optimized for a tiny 800x480 external display, like a mimo usb monitor, though it could just as easily run in an 800x480 browser window on a large screen.
see http://www.flickr.com/photos/symmetricalism/5095339235/ for a demo.
requires the rb-appscript gem to talk to itunes. it works like this:
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server starts up listening on port 2000.
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browser requests http://127.0.0.1:2000/, receives a single document containing html, javascript, and css. the main polling routine fires.
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an ajax request for http://127.0.0.1:2000/track is sent off.
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the server gets a request for /track and pulls some information from itunes via applescript.
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if the track id is the same as what was passed by the browser, a null response is returned so the browser doesn't have to do anything.
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otherwise, the current track, artist, and album name, with the album art and rating are retrieved. because itunes sends back album art wrapped in a PICT file, the data blob has to be searched through to pull out the JPEG or PNG data that the browser can understand. that blob is base64-encoded and returned to the browser as a data: uri to avoid another round-trip to fetch a separate image.
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the browser evaluates the javascript returned, which either does nothing or displays a new track name, album, artist, album art image, and rating.
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a timer is set for 500 milliseconds to do this loop again forever.
to use on a secondary monitor, i had trouble finding a webkit browser that could run full-screen without any menus or anything and display on a secondary monitor. i eventually went with fluid and configured it to run a browser for http://127.0.0.1:2000/ in full-screen.