Category: General iPod

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General iPod Podcast

Podcast Novel Ordering Solution

I’ve been listening to lots of podcasts recently and particularly enjoying the Solar Clipper series. My main problem has been that the iPod Touch defaults to playing the newest podcast first, so that I always have to skip backwards to get to the next episode.  I found a neat little solution for this that I thought I should share.  It only really works for completed podcasts, or podcast novels though.

I downloaded all of the podcasts to iTunes, then selected the podcast and selected “Get Info” from the right-click menu.  I then changed the content type form Podcast to Audiobook.  This moves the completed podcast into the audiobook section and gives you correct ordering – sweet!

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General iPod

iPod Hint: Quick Playback Access With a Double-Click

The DoubleClick Menu
The DoubleClick Menu

Okay, so I’m probably the last person to find this (and it’s probably in the manual which I’ve never bothered to read) but I’ve discovered that a doubleclick on the iPod’s circular button brings up a little control panel for the music settings, allowing you to resume listening, skip forwards and backward and adjust the volume.  I find it particularly useless when battling with apps which won’t let you listen to what you’d like to listen to.

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General iPod

Itunes Hint: locate your Library on an External Drive

itunes-logo

Having finally submitted to the march of the iPod (after loving my iriver and i-audio x5)  I’ve had to come to terms with iTunes.

I’m no iTunes fan – never have been – but it’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be.  It’s picky and clunky in parts (and i won’t get started on my obsession with album art) but I’m learning to live with it, if not love it.

My main problem is that I keep my iTunes library on an external drive, my laptop not having enough space.  This usually works okay but sometimes iTunes forgets where the library is, re-sets the location to my local disk,  and I lose the ability to play all of my tunes.  Every time I try to play something I get the error

I scouted around on the internet for a script or something to re-associate the files until I found a very simple solution – tell iTunes where the library is.  In the settings for Itunes you can specify where the music is located and, once I do that, it finds all of my tracks again.  Some things are so simple I have to be told what to do.

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General iPod

Ipod Update: I Jailbroke my iPod

Freedom (Image by Dazzie D)
Freedom (Image by Dazzie D)

I love my gadgets but I always want that extra bit of freedom with them.  I unlocked my Wii so that I could play games not supplied by Nintendo and I’ve had a hankering to do the same for my iPod touch.  I don’t like having restrictions on what i can install on something which I own so I took the opportunity of my )S3.0 upgrade to execute the Jailbreak.

It was relatively painless.  I used the software supplied by the DEV team and it was straightforward.  The part that took me the longest was finding the downloaded formware which i’d bought from Apple.  Once that was located it was plain sialing, apart from the complicated set of keypresses to reset the iPod (there’s a walkthrough in the software).

So what can i do now that I couldn’t before?  Not a whole lot, as of yet.  I have a new “app store” called Cydia and I have a nice bookshelf background to my home screen.  Few of the applications I’ve found so far are that exciting apart from MxTube, a YouTube video downloader which is coming in handy.

I’ll be investigating the possibilities and will keep you all (I’m talking to you Google-bot, my one and only reader) up to date.

Categories
General iPod

Ipod Update: Upgrade to OS3.0

So I caved in and bought the iPod firmware upgrade to version 3.0. £5.99 is an annoying price but not altogether ridiculous.  I had several motivators:

  1. I tried to download an application this morning and was greeted with this error:

    This application requires theiPhone 3.0 Software Update
    This application requires theiPhone 3.0 Software Update
  2. I read this morning that there is an ultra simple jailbreak using the new firmware (more on this later)
  3. I like the look of several of the new features such as:
  • iPod-wide search
  • multiplayer gaming
  • cut/paste
  • scrubbing for my mp3 audiobook files

I also think that i have at least one extra screen of application space – to be filled up with all sorts of lovely iPod apps.