How to Get the Most from Your IPod: Tips and Programs for IPod Users

The iPod's the most popular digital music player in the world, and each new generation sees a slew of new features; video, radio, pictures, and in the future, possibly a touch screen and voice activation. However, most iPod owners aren't aware of the additional features every iPod is capable of. Here are some ideas for getting more from your iPod, and a few program suggestions to help you do so.

Getting Music Off of Your iPod
If you've ever had a computer go down, you'll notice right away that the iPod can't be easily used to return your music collection to its former splendor. If you need to get the tunes off of your iPod and back onto your hard drive, try Ephpod or Yamipod, two freeware applications that'll pull the songs off of your iPod's hard drive faster than you can say, "Wow, that freeware application really pulled the songs off of my iPod's hard drive!", or some other sentence of vaguely similar length. Alternately, you can try this; go into your "My Computer" with your iPod hooked up to the computer's USB port (make sure that disk use is enabled in the iTunes settings first). Double click the iPod's drive to open it up, then go to Tools, Folder Options, and click the View tab. Click the button that says "Show hidden file types" and you'll see the iPod's music folder, complete with a bunch of randomly named folders and mp3 files. Copy these to a folder on your drive (this'll take a while), at which point you can add them back into your iTunes library. Now, the file names are messed up, but the ID3 tag that stores the mp3's information should be fine, so iTunes will still show the artist name, album and song title, artwork, and anything else that it did before. Voila! An easy hack that can save you some heartache the next time your computer's hard drive fails.

The iPod's Notes Function
The note function every iPod has is extremely powerful when combined with RSS technology, which auto-updates simple text fetched from websites. Grab a program like iPodAgent, which allows you to put weather, movie times, news, and anything else you want that has an RSS feed. There are other free iPod programs that allow for greater exploration of this feature with text based games, recipes, and even the entire New Testament of the Holy Bible.
You can also add your own notes by opening the notes folder on the iPod and dragging text files into it. Be aware that only TXT files work, and it may take your iPod a bit of time to load the list of text files if you're storing a lot (for example, the Bible I mentioned earlier takes a minut or two to fully load). The notes function is a great way to get news and other info on the go, all courtesy of your iPod-plus, it works with any model.

Organizing Photos on your iPod
If you've got an iPod that supports picture viewing (either the late 4th generation iPod or the new iPod with video) you'll have noticed that iTunes's built in photo organizatin system is pretty weak, as it only allows basic functions such as transferring a particular folder of pictures to your iPod. Therefore, you may want to check out programs such as GpixPod, which lets you organize photos on your iPod in a useful way. Gpixpod is free, and allows the free transfer of photos to and from the iPod-great for using your iPod as a backup device or for putting multiple folders of pictures on your iPod without messing with your computer's directory structure.

Check the links below to get to iPod hacks, a site that can point you in the direction of other cool things you can do with your iPod. You'll be impressing and annoying your friends in no time with a few free programs and a little bit of know-how.