13 Pimpin' Things I Bet You Never Knew You Could Do With Your iPod / iTunes

This article will tell you 12 pimpin' things I bet you...hang on just read the title, its self explanatory

13) Repair & Mod your iPod!
So you live for personalization and customization. You've downloaded different software to run your iPod on, unlocked the volume limit, bought seriously funky headphones (and bought one of our ipod skins of course!)...what now? Well, you could paint the headphone casing so it glows in the dark...err put some diffeent pictures on it...or you could to to www.rapidrepair.com, a company which can change the colour of your iPod's backlight, give it a clear casing, extend the battery life and even increase its hard drive capacity!
In addition, they can also repair 85% of broken iPods for very reasonable prices.

The prospect of sending your iPod off to be meddled with can seem a little daunting, but we have sent a broken iPod off to be "modded" ourselves, and it was returned to us within the week in one piece, good as new!
www.rapidrepair.com

12) Augment iTunes with CopyTrans
iTunes is good for putting music, videos and photos from your computer to your iPod, but what about when you want to transfer files from your iPod to your computer? This is where CopyTrans comes in. Priced at just under $20, is a bargain – giving you the ability to copy songs, playlists, ratings, artwork and photos to your computer, *and* it includes software to let you manage multiple iTunes libraries and users!
www.copytrans.net create a whole range of similar products for maintaining your iPod – we were very impressed when we tested the software at how robust and “professional” it felt. *****

11) Convert videos from Youtube to an iPod compatible format

Having problems getting your favourite vids on your iPod? Not anymore - http://www.dotalex.com/?p=8 lets you convert them to a proper format for use on iPods!

10) Control the iTunes Visualiser
Some of you probably know that iTunes comes with its own Visualiser (View -> Show Visualiser), but you can also control the effects on it like in Windows Media Player. The controls are as follows:

C	Show current effect combinations
Q & W	Cycle through foreground patterns
A & S	Cycle through background patterns
Z & X	Cycle through colors
Shift + 0-9	Save current effect combination (foreground, background & colour)
R	Random effect
M	User config slideshow mode - Cycle through saved effect combinations Freeze current config - Keep showing the current effect Random Slideshow - Go back to random visualizations

It takes some getting used to but you can get some pretty cool effects after a few minutes!

9) Stick an iTunes Controller on your Vista Sidebar

Alt-Tabbing to iTunes to change a song can be a pain - wouldn't it be handy to have a small control on your screen which was always visible and allowed you to switch tracks...

If you have Vista, this is exactly the kind of thing the Sidebar was developed for - the one I use is simply called "iTunes Gadget"- you can download it from here. See it in action below:

8) Edit Advanced Track Information

You most likely know how to edit a title etc - but if you right click over a track and click "Get Info" then a pop up window will appear. Through the "info" tab you can edit basic info such as composer, add comments, change the genre etc, but then through the "options" tab you can set a custom volume limit, the equalizer and the start / stop times. Why? If you fine tune them it can get rid of the "pause" between tracks to allow seamless play. However, if you check "part of a seamless album" iTunes can configure this for you, but it will only work for songs of the same album.

The Lyrics tab is self explanatory, the purpose is just for displaying when the visualiser is on.

7) Create an iMix

Got the perfect workout / in the bath / waking up playlist? Why not share it with the world! Create an iMix (File -> Create iMix) and you can publish your playlist on the iTunes store so people can buy those songs. Note only songs available on the iTunes store will be available!

6) Use Smart Playlists

Playlists are good, but Smart Playlists are better! Smart Playlists could be seen as 'dynamic playlists' - instead of dragging and dropping some of your favourite songs in, you create a rule of which songs to include...i.e.:

All 5-Star Songs
All songs of Genre 'Rock'

The best examples are those that come with iTunes by default - Top Played, Recently Added etc, however there are many more possibilities. Go to File -> New Smart Playlist and a window like the one below will pop up. It can seem a little overwhelming but once you've created a few simple ones it gets a lot less daunting.

"Live Updating" means that the playlist will be changed over time - i.e. if you have "Top 50 most played", and one song overtakes another, with live updating the playlist will be changed to reflect this, other wise it will be 'frozen' with its original songs.

5) Use Internet Radio!

A radio dosent have to be a fuzzy, '60s-style thing which clutters your desk - in iTunes go to "Radio" (left hand tab) and choose a station! This is not perfect yet...when I try it a fair few stations aren't working but when you find a good one its a great way to find new tracks.

4) iPod: Use On-The-Go Playlists!

When you're walking around or in a party with your iPod sat cosily in some surround sound speakers, you don't wna to be going to it every 3 minutes to change the track. Similarly, people may want to choose thier own songs and then you have a jukebox situation where nobody gets more than 10 seconds into a song before someone switches it.

On-The-Go playlists are perfect for this - if you hold the centre button down instead of simply pressing it when selecting a song, it will be added to an "on the go" playlist. Think of this as a "queue" for songs - you build the playlist as you go, and it will run through the songs you add in order. After you add the first song, be sure to go to Playlists -> On The Go -> [song title] so that your iPod is playing songs from that playlist, this will make sure it runs through it properly.

3)Get Album Artwork

The iTunes "Get Album Artwork" feature is nice, however its search terms seem to be pretty narrow - it only works for songs in the iTunes Store and if you have bought them from Napster or other places, their names probably have differnt layouts. In this case, I reccomend you use http://art4itunes.com/getart/uploadtracks.php - a free, web-based program which is a little more sophisticated than the iTunes one.

2) Put Music Videos / TV Shows 'Always On Top'

Music dosent disappear when you put another program on top of iTunes, so why should your videos? Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Playback and there is an option to keep the window iTunes plays videos in "always on top" of other windows.

1) Stick a skin on it!

Okay no prizes for guessing the bias here, but our iPod skins are a great way to personalise and protect your iPod. They are made from a high quality vinyl and are scratch / water resistant. They will keep it looking nice and new underneath, and with a range of over 40 designs there's something to suit everyone.

If you may be interested please click here to learn more.