The L.A. Times is reporting that iTunes has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number 1 music store. We’ve heard previous announcements from Apple of them passing the #3 and #2 spots for music sales, but this is a major achievement for the online music store.

Despite the success that iTunes has had, other major online music stores have not been as successful. It seems that the strategy of combining the number 1 portable music player with an easy to use media management application and online music store provides the perfect ingredient for success..

The movement to #1 for Apple has definitely helped them financially. The article from the L.A. Times explains that:

Apple doesn’t disclose financial results for iTunes. But in the first fiscal quarter ended Dec. 29 it reported $808 million in revenue for a category that includes iTunes store sales, a 27% jump from the same quarter the previous year.

I know I personally use the iTunes application for both purchasing and managing my music. And even though I don’t feel like I buy music often, over the past 5 years I’ve collected over 300 tracks from iTunes. Grant it a few of those were for full albums, but that still puts my spending costs very close to $300. How much money have you spent on music from iTunes?

You can create a playlist of all the song’s you’ve purchased to help you find out.

While iTunes does a great job of keeping track of all the music that you’ve purchased on both your Mac and your iPod/iPhone with its Purchased Playlists, it doesn’t include any purchased music that you’ve restored from backup CDs or that you may have imported into your music library another way.

I know that I was extremely disappointed the first time I imported in all my music files to iTunes after a fresh install and found NOTHING listed in my Purchased playlist.

Luckily, iTunes lets you create your own Smart playlists so you can filter through your library and find all the music you’ve purchased on the iTunes music store.

Custom Previously Purchased Music Playlist

To rebuild a purchased music playlist you’ll need to:

1. Create a new Smart Playlist.
2. Check Match “ANY” of the following rules:
3. Set the first rule to “Kind” “Contains” and then type in “Protected AAC audio file”
4. Since Apple announced iTunes Plus files you’ll need to also add another rule with “Kind” “Contains” and type in “Purchased AAC audio file”
5. Check the Live updating Box and click OK

Your newly created smart Previously Purchased Music Playlist should now appear under your playlists. Selecting it should display all the music you’ve purchased on iTunes.

Alexa, one of the leading website ranking services, has finally developed a tool to give Mac users a voice.  Thanks to Macenstein.com for their details on the announcement.

Interesting enough, the tool is designed for Firefox users, so if you’re perfer Safari on your Mac (Like I do, and 80% of visitors to Maciverse.com) then you’ll have to be happy with not being counted.

Head over to Macenstein.com for additional details.

The folks over at the Mozilla Project were pleased to announce the release of their latest version of Firefox yesterday.

In fact, they even went for a world record of number of downloads in a day. Firefox has been continually increasing in browser market share over the past few years and is causing Microsoft much more heart burn than say Safari itself. Even causing Microsoft’s IE team to send a cake to the Firefox team congratulating them on the release

Mozilla is confident that their latest version of Firefox will convert even more people to their browser. So, if you’re a Firefox user or just like to try out another browser, head on over to Mozilla and download Firefox 3.0 for your respective Operating System (OS X, Linux, Windows).

If Firefox isn’t for you, be sure to check out 10 ways to enhance your Safari browsing experience.

If you’re a Mac gamer then you’ve probably been following closely EA’s soon to be released game SPORE.  Yes, unlike most games, SPORE will be released for both the Mac and PC simultaneously.

Well, today is a special day for all you interested in getting your hands on anything to do with the SPORE game.   EA has released the SPORE CREATURE CREATOR for both the PC and MAC.  Head over to the spore website to download the creature creator for Mac.

Feel free to create a unique Spore and let us know about your experience in the comments!