Thursday, February 17, 2005

Attention NYC Muggers Looking to Lift an iPod

Just thought the criminals among you might like to know that someone has made a convenient map for you:


Invasion of the iPod listeners—tuaw: Khoi Winh, a resident of New York City, has noticed the same phenomenon in his fair city and unlike me he did something about it. He printed out a map of his walk from his home to work and marked the map with a red dot each time he saw an iPod listener. A little over 13 blocks later he saw 32 iPods. Not too shabby.

32 opportunities to swipe an iPod conveniently on your way home! And two of the largest clusters are right around Union Square and Madison Square Park, so you can easily get bonus points for rolling one of the rummies passed out on the park benches!

(For some reason, this was the first thing that popped in my head when I read this story. Thought I'd share...)

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

MacDevCenter on iPod Shuffle

Check it out:


iPod shuffle Tips and Tricks by Scott Knaster -- The iPod shuffle is the easiest-to-use iPod to date. But that doesn't mean you can't customize how you listen and upload music. Scott Knaster shows you some very handy tips and tricks for the shuffle and iTunes 4.7.1.

This article is a good introduction to the features of the iPod Shuffle for all you Shuffle n00bs out there...

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Machined Aluminum Hard Case For iPod Shuffle

Check this out: iPodlounge Forums - Machined Aluminum Hard Case For My Shuffle. That's a pretty cool looking case.

Plantronics headset connects iPod and Cell

Coolness:


Playlist: Plantronics headset connects iPod, cell phone—Plantronics on Wednesday announced availability of the MX100-s, a stereo headset that simultaneously connects music players like Apple's iPod and a mobile phone, enabling you to listen to music while answering phone calls.

I've been wanting something like this for a while.

*x-posted on Sample the Web.

iPod shuffle Arrives in Chicago

I received a phone call from the Apple Store on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago yesterday, with the news I was hoping for: they had received a shipment of iPod shuffles (capitalization as per Apple), and one was on hold for me. Everything was hunky-dory as I charged it on my work PC and filled it with my smaller iTunes-at-work collection. At home, though, problems arose. I chose to disassociate the iPod shuffle from my work PC and associate it with my Mac, erasing the work PC tracks, but the song-filling process was agonizingly slow (whether I used my USB 2.0 or 1.1 port) compared to how quickly it had filled at work. Eventually, the filling process hung, and iTunes froze up. Repeated attempts to force quit iTunes eventually worked, but the shuffle was still mounted on the desktop and attempting to drag it to the Trash caused Finder to freeze. Hard re-boot, and the shuffle is fragged: an error message indicated that the shuffle mounted, but its file system was not recognized. Sooooo, downloaded the latest iPod Updater from Apple and restored the shuffle. A frustrating evening gave way to a happy commute this morning.

In answer to C.K.'s question a few posts back: "There is a little plastic slider on the headphones so you can choke the slack up to your chin. Is this a feature of non-iPod Shuffle headphones that I just happen to have missed?" I don't recall about the headphones originally packaged with my old iPod, but the Apple In-Ear Headphones I purchased also have the plastic slider. I'm using it to create a loop in the headphone cord (by placing the slider all the way towards the headphones) and wearing the loop around my neck when not in use--this way, I can keep the shuffle and the headphones hanging in easy reach all day, but out of the way and secure (under my sweater, today). Caution: may require a sufficiently svelte neck.

How to Autofill your iPod Shuffle from your iPod Or iPod Mini

My article, How to Autofill your iPod Shuffle from your iPod Or iPod Mini, is up and ready for reading over at AppleMatters. An excerpt:


In last week's article, I took a look inside the invisible folder on the iPod Shuffle and talked about methods for moving your music off of your iPod / iPod mini / iPod Shuffle and back to your Mac. This week, I'm going to walk you through how to set up iTunes so that you can choose to Autofill your iPod Shuffle directly from your iPod, without having to copy all those files back to your hard drive. This is very useful for someone like myself, who works off of a 12-inch Powerbook with only 2GBs of music on my internal 60GB hard drive, but with nearly 32GB of music on my 4G 40GB iPod. These directions will center on the Mac side of things, but everything I'm doing here should be doable on a Windows XP box, so everyone, please, read along.

For those of you without iPod Shuffles, thinking to yourselves, "Who cares?," think again:

Now—organized nicely in the playlist you created in step 3 and scattered all over your Library—you have aliases (Windoze users know them as shortcuts) to all of the music files on your iPod. Any time your iPod is connected to your computer, they act like any other file in your Music Library: you can play these songs, organize them into playlists, burn them to CD, or right click on a song and choose "Show song file" to open up the window that contains it again for easy drag and drop to another location.

Free your tunes!

*x-posted to Sample the Web.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

iPodFolderOpener

NOTE: There are other products out there for easily copying your songs off of your iPod to your computer. If you're looking for a sophisticated program start looking here. iPodFolderOpener is a dumber version of these programs that I am busy coding for my own use. If you hate it and think it's stupid, don't use it. These scripts should work fine on any OS X computer, but I am not offering support for them. Feel free to hack away at them. This post will serve as the permanent page where I will update information regarding this software.

Click here to download iPodFolderOpener 1.0 (38KB, zipped DMG file).

Donationware: If you like these scripts and use them, visit my site (http://www.sampletheweb.com) and click on the PayPal button (underneath my picture in the sidebar) to make a donation of your choosing.

History:



  • Version 1.0—Initial release: messily opens as Finder windows all the invisible folders inside the Music folder of a user's iPod / iPod mini / iPod Shuffle; February 7th, 2005.





What it is:
iPodFolderOpener is an AppleScript standalone app that can be placed anywhere (I recommend your Applications folder) or script (which should be placed in either /Library/Scripts/ or ~/Library/Scripts/).



What it does:
iPodFolderOpener opens Finder windows of some or all (per your choosing) of the invisible folders containing music on your iPod, iPod mini, or iPod Shuffle. Once they are open, you can easily drag and drop the files to other locations on your computer and / or add them to your iTunes Library.



How to use it:
First, make sure that your iPod is plugged into your Mac and mounted as a hard drive in the Finder. Then, simply click on iPodFolderOpener to launch it (or if you have placed the script in the Scripts folder, simply use your script menu in the menu bar to access iPodFolderOpener). A dialog box will open asking you for the name of the iPod / iPod Shuffle / iPod mini from which you want to remove songs. If your iPod's name contains any special characters, like ' or " you should probably change it first. Spaces are okay, but if your iPod's name is "My iPod" you will need to enter a backslash before the space: "My iPod". After you enter your iPod's name, click "Okay" and another dialog box will open with three buttons: Cancel, ALL, and PICK. If you click ALL then all of the invisible folders inside your Music folder will open. If you have an almost full 40GB iPod, this will be a lot of folders, so considered yourself warned (and remember, you can always go to Finder-->File and hold down the Option key to change the Close Window function to Close All Windows). If you click on PICK another dialog will open where you must enter the name of the folder you want to open. You can do this to browse through your iPod's music a folder at a time. The folders begin with folder F00, then continue on to F01, F02, F03, etc. If you put in a folder name that doesn't exist, the script will end in an error.



Why did you write this script?:
For fame and fortune, of course. ;-) Actually, I wanted an easy way to Autofill my new iPod Shuffle from my 40GB iPod (as I tend to keep my music on my iPod, but not on my laptop's internal harddrive). iPodFolderOpener simply automates some work that you can do via the Terminal, which is the first step in accomplishing this. I am currently working on a variant of the script which will actually automate the entire process.



THE SOURCE CODE:

--iPod Opener
--Open this script in a new Script Editor window.
property your_iPod_name : missing value
property userchoice : "All"

--set the iPod name once:
set your_iPod_name to text returned of (display dialog "Enter your iPod's name:" & return & "(If your iPod's name has any spaces in it, enter a backslash before the space)" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with icon 1)

--open some or all folders inside Music:
set userchoice to button returned of (display dialog "What do you want to do?" buttons {"Cancel", "ALL", "PICK"} default button userchoice with icon 1)
if userchoice = "ALL" then
set theNumber to "F**"
else
set theNumber to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a random folder name:" & return & "(i.e., F00, F01, F02, etc.)" & return & "If nothing happens, then there is no such folder." default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with icon 1)
end if

do shell script "open /Volumes/" & your_iPod_name & "/iPod_Control/Music/" & theNumber & "/"

display dialog "Done!" buttons {"Okay! Thanks!"}

Listed on Versiontracker.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

iPod Shuffle RAID

Check this out:

Wright This Way: iPod Shuffle RAID—So, what do you do when you and some friends are all getting iPod Shuffles? You make a RAID array out of them, of course! Follow along as we explore new depths of geekery...

This reminds me of that floppy RAID that was bouncing around the net last year.

*x-posted on Sample The Web

A Look Inside the iPod Shuffle

This week's AppleMatters article, A Look Inside the iPod Shuffle, is up and ready for reading over at AppleMatters:


I realize that we've already shown a dissection of the iPod Shuffle here at AppleMatters, but what I haven't seen is a look inside the iPod Shuffle's file structure. Let's do it.

At the end of the article, I note:

This is also the same type of procedure you would use for fishing songs off of your regular iPod / iPod mini. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to figure out how to write a script that will use these commands to auto-fill my iPod Shuffle from my regular iPod...

I'm serious about this. My scripting skills are at the level where I know how to run basic copy commands to automate the transfer of songs from my iPod to my iPod Shuffle. What I don't know how to do is to run a random search that also determines how many songs can be taken from point a and shoved into point b. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know. Also, if you are a most industrious coder than me, please feel free to take this idea and make it yourself. Just send me a copy when it is done. Thanks!

*x-posted on Sample the Web.