- Extending Your iPod with iTunes and iPhoto
- Extending Beyond iTunes Synchronization
- Building Solutions
- Tip sheet
- Summary
Extending Beyond iTunes Synchronization
Now you have your music and you have your photos. What if you want more? The iPod can also act as a rudimentary Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). You can view email, check news, read the weather forecast, and review your horoscope. You can do this because the iPod supports calendaring, notes, and contacts.
It's difficult to get this data onto your iPod, however. What you need is one of the many custom tools developed for the iPod that allow you to get data from your Mac to your hand. The best place to look for software for the iPod is this site, which brims with news about the iPod and discusses new hacks, software, and workarounds to get more from your iPod. What I have found is that even if 50 percent of all iPods are for PC owners, almost all of the custom software is for the Mac. Again, you guys are sooo lucky!
A really cool piece of software that now exports to third generation iPods and newer is VooDooPad, which is a notepad editor evolved. With VooDooPad, you can jot down notes really quickly, link the ideas together easily with hypertext links, and retrieve your ideas right from the desktop. This is cool just for running on the Mac. What makes it even cooler is that you can synchronize the software with your iPod. Each note and link in the note is pulled over to your iPod, and it's like taking your scratch pad with you.
The first piece of software that caught my attention is Pod2Go, which is just jam-packed with features. You can synchronize your email, calendar, news (with RSS news feeds), local weather, horoscope, song lyrics (yes, you can find out the real words to Bob Dylan songs), and load in maps. This is really great, but you can do even more: You can set up Pod2Go to back up your local files to your iPod. Not only do you have your photos, music, and PDA with you in your iPod, you also have a backup of your files. Remember, with a 60GB iPod Photo, this means a LOT of data.
Is your iPod stuck or not functioning at full capacity? Maybe your iPod is not well. There is a great piece of software called YamiPod that places a focus on making your sick iPod better. With YamiPod installed, you can fix and repair songs that are incorrectly added to your iPod. Playlists that are not installed correctly or Notes that are over 4K are repaired or split (a Note over 4K will open very slowly on your iPod). Finally, you also can repair the mysterious "OutOfStack" error you sometimes get when adding music.