MousePotatoPower

A few months ago, I was shopping for a new computer monitor.  I was amazed when I saw a computer monitor that had an iPod dock on its base.  My monitors will typically last at least 3 years.  Sticking an iPod dock onto a monitor is a pretty bold statement as to how long iPods will be around and how much they have become a part of our lives.

The monitor was a decent price at the time, but I decided to skip it anyway.  Rather than spend over $400 for a new monitor, I found a couple of ways to make a different iPod accessory.

Lifehacker.com and Instructables.com both have great tutorials for making an iPod earphone cord-wrapper for FREE.

Make a foam cord-caddy at wikihow.com

A cord wrapper in 5 minutes or less at instructables.com

We are going to do a number of things:

• Enable disk use
  • To store files besides music on the iPod, just like a BIG flash drive
• Disable synchronization
  • This allows us to choose what songs to put on the iPod
• Make sure that iTunes imports music as MP3s at an appropriate quality level
  • MP3s are easier to deal with than AAC, or other formats
  • For the average person, encoding quality does not make a very big difference in sound quality

The first and most important thing to do is set Enable Disk Use. This turns your iPod into a HUGE USB drive. Notice that I have over 9GB of non-music files on my iPod.

Next, Manually manage music and videos. I find it much easier to drag and drop the albums and audiobooks that I want onto my iPod, my music collection is too large to fit on my iPod anyway.

Confirm that your Music is NOT sync-ed.

Next: Edit > Preferences

Advanced > Importing

Unless you are an audiophile, stick with

Import Using: MP3 Encoder

Setting: High Quality (160 kbps)

iPod Basics Tutorial

You’ve seen how easy it is to find your music on your iPod, and even without any extra software, you can simply drag and drop it back onto your computer.

The next problem is finding a particular track on your iPod without having to sort through all 50 of your F-directories. And again, it can be done easily, this time with a free program.

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Getting music off of our Ipod is easier than I thought. Getting 1 specific song off of your Ipod is a little harder, but it can still be done for free.

• Plug in your Ipod
• In iTunes, enable disk use. This will turn your iPod into a USB drive
• Open up My Computer
• By default, the music on your iPod is hidden, let’s reveal all of the hidden files.
• Select Tools > Folder Options
• switch to the View tab
• select Show hidden files and folders
• click on the Apply button, then click on OK

• Open your iPod (mine is L:)
• go to the ipod_Control\Music directory
• Here you will find subfolders that contain your music

Although the file names are coded, if you have labeled your music, the ID3 tags will contain all of the necessary information (artist, album, song name, etc).

If you mouse over any of the files, you will see the ID3 tag information

If you want to, you can copy all of the music to your computer.

Of you can grab another piece of software to view all of the track information (tutorial to follow this weekend).

Get Music Off Your Ipod