podUP is a simple application that was built for one purpose and it does it very well — retrieving songs from your iPod.
In the past, I’ve had friends come looking for me asking me for help with their iPods. Their complaint was that there were songs in their iPod which were not showing up in iTunes. They didn’t want to re-sync it again in case they lost it, so they came to me. Luckily, I had this program handy.
Free music is and always has been one of the top internet favorites. (Remember Napster?) While the trend is already shifting from that dark p2p-age to the more civilized crowd, netizens today are still craving for free music and it IS available legally if you know where to look for it.
With millions of song downloads, the term “internet and music” can’t be separated from iTunes and the store. So, it’s natural that many people turn to iTunes to find (free) music.
While we have mentioned SharePod in our free iPod tools round-up before, I wanted to take a closer look at this free iPod manager program that is designed to sync and manage my iPod.
To install SharePod, visit the SharePod download site and download the .zip file. Once you unzip it, you can either drag and drop SharePod onto your iPod or run SharePod directly from your hard drive. Because it does not require any installation to your hard drive or “Programs” folder, you can also install it onto your USB or flash drive. This is great if you use different computers or want to get some music from a friend’s computer without using iTunes.
I’ve had a Twitter account since the early days, but I haven’t really used it all that much. I’ve tweeted occasionally and I’ve even set up several of my feeds to automatically tweet for me, but I never really got twittering. That is, until I got myself an iPod Touch. Now I can’t stop Twittering and I’m seriously considering some type of 12 step program.
With the advent of Apple’s new iPhone and iPod Touch, a whole host of websites have set up mobile version of their regular site. Notable among these various sites is Gmail and all of the related Google web services. (disclaimer: for the rest of this article I will be referring to the iPod touch, but I tested the application to the same extent on the iPhone as well.)
For a while I didn’t have any native mail application on my iPod touch. I bought by iPod in September and didn’t want to pay 20 dollars for the January application upgrade. Being a Gmail user, I was delighted to find that Gmail was such a versatile web app and can be conveniently accessed both from iPhone and iPod Touch.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past years figuring out how to get my DVD collection onto my PC so I can use my Home Theater PC (HTPC) to play my library on my TV. The following is the two step process I’ve come up with to do this; all other programs I’ve used either are not free, install spyware, or desync the audio.
Install and use DVDFab HD Decrypter.
The settings here are pretty straightforward. Select “Full Disk” and where you want to save the file. Click start, and about 40 minutes later you will have your DVD on your hard drive and ready to encode.
I have an old 20GB iPod and even though I have a lot of music on there, I am only taking up half of the space available. So there’s another 10GB kicking around doing nothing and so I decided to start putting some useful iPod tools on there for when I’m on the move. Some of that space was allocated for installing one of my favourite websites - Wikipedia.
Quick look at 3 different applications for accessing your music library directly from mobile phone.
IMPORTANT: All listed services are FREE, however depending on your mobile plan data transfer fees may apply. I recommended that you contact your mobile carrier and find out about your ‘data transfer’ charges before going with any of the below listed music applications.
SimplifyMedia is a one of a kind application (Mac, Win) that lets you easily share your music library with friends and allow them to access and stream your tracks without leaving their iTunes player (screenshot). The best part about it is that it works even if you are NOT in the same network. You can also use it to access your own music library from other computers and most importantly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
I’m a big fan of the iPod but what I don’t like is Apple not being very forthcoming about how to move music from the iPod back to the PC. They’re quick enough to tell you how to move the music from your PC to your iPod but when you want to do the opposite, Apple clams up tight.
Over the last week I came across a couple of handy services that let users sell their old or broken iPods, cell phones and other gadgets. These aren’t a marketplace-style website but services that WILL buy your gadgets at a sound price. Since we haven’t seen anything of this kind before, I decided to run a quick comparison and see how they stand against eBay. Actually both of the services were already covered in MakeUseOf Directory, but in case you missed it, here is a quick overview:
