My iPod Touch
19 February 2008
I discovered some useful features in iTunes today… how to generate database info for your movie files and how to add cover art to your audio and video files. I also discovered that you can convert older QuickTime movie files to make them compatible with the new iTouch and iPhone within iTunes 7. Great stuff. I still haven’t quite figured out how to make an album compilation where the tracks sit in the right order but I did manage to make a workaround through naming conventions… I know it’s not right but it works, for now, at least.
2 February 2008
Discovered a useful add-in for iGoogle today that provides an RSS feed of free iTunes downloads - TV, video, music, audiobook, and games for your iPod. Yay!
1 February 2008
Today, I stumbled across the iPod in Education pages and learned about iLife, a suite of applications to facilitate content authoring for the iPod, etc.
31 January 2008
Well, I finally got round to using the calendar function on my Touch. Quite useful. I got the idea from a friend who was talking about iCal yesterday and also because the Google calendar was driving me crazy. Now, I guess, I just need to learn how to sync my iPod so that I can share the calendar online with my colleagues.
25 January 2008
I see Apple are now offering an upgrade for the iPod Touch, so that you can have the same features (or at least some of them) as are available on the iPhone: mail, maps, weather, notes and stocks - but you need to pay an additional $19.99 or £12.99 for them. I dunno. I kind of find this quite objectionable practice - if these things are free with the iPhone, why not with the Touch?
On a more positive note, however, I do kind of like the idea of renting movies to watch on the iPod and I think it’s great that Apple have managed to team up with some film companies, so that if you actually buy a special DVD, you can get a free iPod size version of the movie for your Touch. That’s pretty neat. First one available is, apparently “Family Guy” (I already have that DVD anyway - it’s funny, but not to buy twice…). I suspect I’m only a week or two away from renting movies online… I have so many DVDs and they’re beginning to take up more room than I want them too and, besides, I rarely watch them more than once anyway. Now, what might be a good marketing ploy for Apple would be to say that you pay one price for your first viewing of a video and a half-price rate for repeat viewings, say if you wanted to watch it again at some point.
What I would really like to see online, actually, is availability of back catalogue materials - DVDs that are no longer available for purchase, things like “Not Quite Jerusalem” and “Pirates of Silicon Valley”, etc. And as for TV series… I’d subscribe to Cagney and Lacey back episodes, no problem.
Whilst browsing and learning about the new DVD downloadables, I noticed a reference to Apple TV - wonder what that is? Oh, fun, it’s a digibox - 40GB to 160GB. Pretty cool! I do like the database management system. I still think, though, it’s a shame you only get 24 hours to watch whatever you rent and that’s it. I like to keep my movies… so, as well as my idea up top for cheaper repeat viewings, there should also be a point where you can ‘own’ the digitial copy (say, if you’ve watched it for 5 or 6 times, i.e. when you reach the equivalent purchase cost of a DVD). If there’s a worry about redistribution, it could always be tagged to work only on your machine. Other than that limitation, I do think the diversity of watching spaces featured by Apple is great… widescreen TV, iPod, iPhone, etc.
19 January 2008
Well, I haven’t been here for a while. I am still using my Touch and enjoying it, if not being quite as explorative at present.
Today I downloaded some videos and an audio book… An hour long video from Google about Ward Cunningham and wikis, a 25 minute debate between David Weinberger - “Everything is Miscellaneous” -and Andrew Keen - “Cult of the Amateur”, and the audio version of Larry Lessig’s “Free Culture”. I also tried to download an hour-long discussion from YouTube between Judi Dench and the producer of the film “Mrs Henderson” using TubeSock but despite several attempts, it just struggled to convert the hour-long video - perhaps its memory capacity for conversion just isn’t high enough. Hmm. Shame, if so.
28 December 2007
So, I’ve been using my iPod a great deal this last week or so and am beginning to feel familiar with all its bits and bobs, although I’m still a bit scared to use the Installer… I must say, though, having the video iPod is making me enjoy the benefits of YouTube so much more. I love being able to find old classic video clips of bands I used to like when I was younger, like the Beatles, the Kings, the Police, Queen, etc. I especially like that there is so much video footage of the Beatles that I’ve never seen before - that makes my searching much more interesting.
I decided to register the TubeSock software as, out of those I tried (see earlier post below), it seemed to be the best and easiest to use and at around £8, it wasn’t exactly expensive.
I used the Touch on my long journey back from Scotland and enjoyed playing with it. I mostly listened to some audiobooks and podcasts, with the odd piece of music thrown in. I’m not entirely sure that I like the iPod earphones - they hurt your ears if you wear them too long and they keep falling out. I guess you get used to it after a while, but I’m not sure, yet, what to make of them. I suspect I might be using a different headset before too long.
Today, I’ve been downloading a video library from YouTube using the TubeSock software - ready for my next trip. It seems to be doing the trick okay. It converts the video quickly and easily to iPod format and stores the video in iTunes, carrying over the data (name, title, etc.) at the same time. I like it. Nice.
22 December 2007
Well, this is interesting. I wanted to see if I could edit my blog direct from my iPod and -what do you know, I sure can. Excellent! It’s a little clunky getting the HTML tags in, but other than that, not too bad at all.
Another first today - was able to email the notes I wrote last night using the iPod to my mail account. It did make me smile to see that the tagline read: Sent to you by iPhone.
21 December 2007
Bought a silicon cover for my Touch today. Thought to myself as I looked at the range of accessories - what’s in a name? (As in brandname)… Answer: about 50% above cost price. *chuckle*
What to choose? A ‘luxurious’ leather cover at £19.99 or an even more luxurious one for £24.99? Or what about a plastic sheet to protect the screen, a snip at £4.99 or £9.99 if you want a choice between shiny and anti-glare. Fascinating! I eventually settled for a silicon cover at £14.99 with screen protector. I got mine in HMV but you can get them online at Exspect too. I got a black one - that was all they had available in HMV - I didn’t realise there was a silver one - I might have liked that better. Still, no matter.
Why didn’t I get a leather case? Well, it rather defeated the advantage of having a slim iPod Touch, it seemed to me. That said, I may yet purchase one if the silicon case proves insufficiently protective. *smile*
So, I had an interesting time tonight. I was playing with the YouTube widget on the Touch. I began by being slightly irritated by the poor search facillity - which isn’t really a search at all, but rather a browser (by list) that lets you see some 25 clips at a time. Still, in the end, I figured it wasn’t so bad and better than nothing. An interesting thing transpired as I ’searched’ however in that I quickly realised I was able to target my searches once I found something I was interested in using the ‘Related Videos’ option, so that was okay. Once I had figured that out, I was able to bookmark quite a few favourite music clips, including many Beatles clips (how cool is that - to have all those old videos to hand at the click of a button - I immediately visualised myself showing them to my friends in Scotland when I go there next week, knowing they’ll find that as cool as me. Then I had a second thought - that they’re not terribly technology savvy and last time I saw them they were struggling to understand what a dialup connection was, do they may well not yet have made it to broadband… so I won’t be able to connect). That made me think of the good and bad points of wifi bookmarking - great if you can get a connection, not so good if you can’t, which in turn, made me revert to wanting to save video clips direct to my Touch so that I can watch them whenever I want to.
The limitations of the widget search facility were also interesting, however, as this enabled me to come across things I might not have thought of looking for - some animation and an interesting theme - speed-painting - very cool.
Other than that, I enveloped my Touch in the silicon case and it has a nice feel to it and is much less slippy than the metal backing. I decided initially not to put the plastic protection on the screen as it had a sticky back and I wasn’t too keen on putting a sticky surface on the glass. So, I used the glass unprotected. It got smudgy but cleaned off well enough with the duster I got with the Touch. I thought, then, that I might (after all) put the sticky protector on but, then, when I started to peel off the backing, I inadvertently touched the sticky side and got fingerprints all over it which would then have been sandwiched forever between the glass and the protector so I gave up on that idea as that would have annoyed me permanently. *chuckle* So, I guess I’ll be sticking with bare glass for now.
17 December 2007
I’m getting really excited about the potential of the iPod. Inevitably, being interested in education, learning and user generated content/contexts, I very rapidly found myself thinking about ways of linking these things to the iPod. I did chuckle when, doing some research online, I stumbled across many, many sites where others are already well ahead of me in the game.
Mlearning has a great two-part vidcast on the use of iPods in education, available via YouTube.
I experimented with some video conversion tools to convert videos to iPod format: Zamzar, TubeSock and Videora. Zamzar was okay but I didn’t like the idea of having to use my email to secure a video. Tubesock was good – and I may yet purchase a copy – don’t like having to use PayPal US though. Videora did the job quickly but the quality of the video wasn’t great, I felt.
Later, visited the learninginhand website (found via the mlearning vidcasts) and had a great time exploring the iPods section there – lots of great ideas for making my iPod useful for learning and some great software and widgets that students can use to generate content. Excellent. Migrated from there to Mogopop… and very much liked what I saw there too. Downloaded the mogopop manager to access content and then download the task set at ITSC 07 on how to make a video in situ, so to speak. Wasn’t quite sure how to get started but had to sync my iPod to make sure disk mode was enabled (whatever that means – use as a flash storage, I guess). Ooohh – that’s SO annoying – the iPod Touch doesn’t allow you to enable disk space!
Hmm, as ever, there is a workaround to this – don’t know if it will help me with mogopop, however. *sigh* http://www.tuaw.com/2007/09/21/use-your-ipod-touch-as-second-rate-400-usb-stick/ and a video tutorial from YouTube. Now I know why folk would want to HACK!!!!
Gooteks has a whole load of YouTube videos about iPod hacks – fun!
Installed the Sketches widget on my iPod - it’s a bit like Etch-a-Sketch – fun!
Oh well, on the other hand, you can still buy iQuiz from iTunes for 79p and make quizzes – that could be fun… well, actually, you need iQuizMaker to make quizzes – but good stuff. I can see I might be making some purchases later tonight.
I think I’m going to need to buy that MacBook after all… since some of this content creation software is only available for the Mac platform. Go figure. *grin* Actually, I don’t mind. I’m having a lot of fun with this stuff already… feeling creative and excited about the learning potential of the iPod now. Makes my initial forays into the genre feel kind of tame, but actually, it was very useful as even though some of that stuff was relatively simple and straightforward, thinking about that has made my grasp of this extended stuff feel relatively easy to grasp. Yay!
Hmm, have been thinking about the mogopop thing and if they would just allow you to download the file instead of having to use their file management tool, then you could save the file to iTunes directly and sync it (I think). Alternatively, they could upgrade their manager to sync directly with iTunes (but maybe that would be too complicated).
I liked this idea too… iPod Notes Packer is a free web service that can turn any web page into an eBook for iPods. After giving iPod Notes Packer a web address, it will generate a file for you to download and install into iPod’s Notes folder. Notes can include hyperlinks to other notes, audio files, and videos. It’s quite complicated, but here’s a 54 page guide from Apple. Then there was the iWriter - a tool which allows you to create studynotes. Well, as with Mogopop, I suspect I’ll have to engage in a bit of jiggery-pokery before I can get any of this stuff to work with the Touch.
16 December 2007
Okay, so I’ve mastered the on/off switch. It’s not as straightforward as you might think. I was puzzled, having charged the iPod, to find that next time I ’switched on’ I’d already somehow used 10% of the battery life. Turns out that the on/off button at the top doesn’t actually switch the machine off, just puts it in standby mode. To turn it off, you have to hold and pause for a bit, then a red slide to ‘lock off’ appears and this is what switched the iPod off. Given the beauty of the rest of the design, this is clunky and not what I’d expect from the highly vaunted user-friendly Apple products. What else did I learn? It takes about 4 hours to charge the iPod from zero to full strength. Another element I didn’t really like - the shortcomings of the Safari browser - it doesn’t have the most up-to-date flash settings, so won’t play flash video (including those on YouTube when accessed directly from the site). Also, as far as I can tell, the YouTube player provided, although it has a ’search’ facility, isn’t great as you can’t really search the site for videos using it, you can only search the list provided by Apple for the iPod (not my idea of fun and I couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch using their options. Hopefully this is something that will be fixed in a future upgrade. Played with some of the games on the webapps page at Apple - a Tetris clone called… Jirboblocks. I’m a great Tetris fan… alas, Jirbo on the iPod - not a patch on the original Tetris game - slow and clunky. Hmm. Well, maybe it’s just me and I’ll get faster as I get used to the controls.
On a more positive note. I still love the easy switch between portrait/landscape and have been playing around with the database features… Had fun with the coverflow on album art and love the ease and speed with which I can switch between songs and stories, etc. Very intuitive and easy to use navigation on these things. Tried out my iPod headphones for the first time. I liked the solid feel of the headphone jack and the sound was great, really nice stereo sound on James Blunt. I love the audiobook facility too and had a fun encounter with Stephen Fry for a while - I don’t know why but somehow the cover art and flickable navigation adds to the experience for me. Perhaps there’s a need for that physicality in starting something off. I know it wasn’t this much fun on my other player (but perhaps that’s just because I’m highly motivated by visuals). Interestingly, though (and this did surprise me) - I started to think that I would be happy to buy music/books, etc. from the iTunes store (something I haven’t done before now - usually I just buy the physical product and convert it to an mp3). Somehow, without the physicality, however, there’s this immediate response that I need to backup ‘virtual’ purchases on a hard drive (off the iPod) because I wouldn’t like to lose things if the iPod was broken/lost. So, that makes the external hard drive my new ‘bookshelf’ if you like. Funnily, it also began to change my thinking about movies. I regularly buy DVDs and have always liked seeing them on my shelves - but, of late, they have been taking over the house… *grin* Suddenly, virtual copies seem a little more desirable. Interesting. Seeing some new options on the iTunes software also made me think differently about TV shows… and the ability to subscribe to certain shows. There probably aren’t all that many current shows I’d want to subscribe to, but I would subscribe (for a reasonable cost) to old series like Cagney and Lacey which I always liked. So, in a way, it’s kind of interesting to see how just having the iPod (or in more generic terms, a media player that mostly does what I want it to do) is changing the way I see not only digital media but also its physical counterpart.
What else did I play with today? Well, I figured out how to use my college email (found the backslash), managed to reconfigure my home broadband (I put the wrong password in yesterday), worked out how to organise my bookmarks and clear the history of web pages visited, etc. Experimented a bit more with zoom on websites and started to get to grips with that. Saw that the Safari browser doesn’t work well with pbwiki sites, including our learnergeneratedcontexts one. Overall, though, I’m enjoying the iPod, and looking forward to adding some video files… just need to figure out the formats first. I suspect that I would rather have a video library at this point than use the YouTube widget (because of the shortcomings outlined above). Interestingly, my VodPod block on my blog page did show videos via the iPod - it would be interesting, I think, to be able to combine my VodPod with my iPod as a video library, must say. Hmmm.
15 December 2007
So, weekend is here - thought I would spend some time playing with my new Touch. Turned it on and it was ‘dead’. *grin* I suspect I must have left it ‘turned on’ in the box - not quite sure how I did that. In fact, I find I’m still not quite sure how to turn the darned thing on/off. No worries, it’s charging nicely now via my laptop as I type this entry.
Tried to connect to my home wifi connection but it doesn’t seem to like it. It says its connected but everytime I try to connect to the web it says the server is not available - and it’s not just one website, so something to look into there.
Found some interesting websites today (a blog, a forum and a related wiki):
iPod Touch Hacks - http://www.hacktheipodtouch.com/
iPod Touch Fans Forum - http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/
iPod Touch Fans Wiki - http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
I really like the wiki - it’s a nice example of a useful community wiki. I especially like the link-through between the forum and the wiki - that’s a nice touch.
Thinking on that, I have a multiplicity of sticky notes in my bag that R. had taken to sticking around my desk at school… *chuckle* Let’s see:
Apple Webapps: http://www.apple.com/webapps/
UK TV Guide: http://uktv.touchapp.net
Games: http://www.playtouchgames.com/apps.html
14 December 2007
I’ve been thinking about my podcast/vodcast collection today and find myself wondering whether it’s possible to add cover art for things I download from the web that are not logged on iTunes. *chuckle* I like things to look ‘pretty’ and so don’t like the black ‘?’ cover art that the Touch generates within the coverflow mode for unknown items.
13 December 2007
R. kindly took charge of my Touch today and promptly modded it back to a previous version of the op. system, so as to enable the installer option. Now I can add extra gadgets/widgets such as games, maps, etc. I think these things are already available for the iPhone but not yet for the iPod Touch. R. says they probably will come with the next upgrade around March next year.
So, yesterday I had fun with the web - today, I had fun adding content… as I began to add my favourite albums and books, etc. for the first time I really began to appreciate the design of the iPod and the neatness of its integration with iTunes. I love the coverflow feature… it’s just nice to see album art in that mode - it makes your iPod feel like a virtual bookshelf in a way… I say, ‘book’ but mean movies/music, etc. also, of course. I like the idea. I literally visualised my physical collections at home as I saw my emerging collection appear on my iPod Touch. Funny old world. Changing world. Around about now, I’m beginning to feel quite excited about the potential of the device - it beats all my previous media players hands down (not surprising really - given the disparity in costs - as my sister consistently tells me, you get what you pay for - and quality costs).
First installed content:
Music:
The Beatles - White Album
The Beatles - Love
The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Blondie - Parallel Lines
Crowded House - Woodface
Emilie Autumn - Your Sugar Sits Untouched
Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams
James Blunt - Back to Bedlam
K T Tunstall - Eye to the Telegraph
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Nizlopi - JCB Song
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Sting - Brand New Day
Audiobooks:
Clive Barker: Abarat
David Piric: The Patient’s Eyes
Douglas Adams: Lance Chance to See
Douglas Adams: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
David Allen: Getting Things Done
Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde: Lost in a Good Book
Jasper Fforde: Something Rotten
Jasper Fforde: The Well of Lost Plots
Heather Nova: The SorrowJoy
Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere
Neil Gaiman: Stardust
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: Good Omens
Neal Stephenson: Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash
H. G. Wells: The Time Machine
H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
P. G. Wodehouse: Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen
P. G. Wodehouse: The Code of the Woosters
P. G. Wodehouse: The Inimitable Jeeves
P. G. Wodehouse: Jeeves in the Offing
P. G. Wodehouse: Thank You Jeeves
P. G. Wodehouse: Very Good, Jeeves
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
Stephen Fry: The Hippopotamus
Stephen Fry: The Ode Less Travelled
Stephen Fry: Rescuing the Spectacled Bear
Tim Berners-Lee: Weaving the web
William Gibson: Pattern Recognition
William Gibson: Spook Country
William Gibson: Virtual Light
William Gibson: Neuromancer
12 December 2007
Took my iPod to school today - to show it off. Heh Heh. Tried again to make sense of instructions, before classes started. Glanced through English language books. Didn’t find them terribly helpful and put the iPod back in its box, little the wiser. R. popped in - yay - iPod Touch owner/expert. He switches it on, flicks his fingers round the screen - voila - wifi enabled. *chuckle* Easy when you know how! The bell goes for first lesson and I (reluctantly) lay my new toy down.
[Lunch] - I have my first play with the iPod Touch. Look at some websites, play with the portrait/landscape tilt facility, check my email accounts - can access most but not uni account - can’t find the backslash yet. Try YouTube widget but can’t access anything as apparently I have to sync to iTunes first.
I like the interface and am impressed by the ‘touchy’ feel of the iPod - it feels strangely physical and I find the keyboard very easy to use which surprises me given the small area it takes up. The zoom facility is nice, easy to use and has an intuitive feel to it. It’s kind of fun, too. I like the look, feel and design of the Touch, it’s nice. It has a nice ‘heft’ to it also - neither too light, not too heavy. I like the slimness of it too. The initial blurriness of the webpage as it loads (pre-focus) is a bit disconcerting but I quickly got used to it. R. showed me some features and explained how to modify (aka ‘hack’) the system so as to include an installer for online widgest built by the open source community. At this point, the idea scares me and his advice goes rapidly in one ear and out the other. *laughing* Seeing my face, he offers to do it for me if I bring the iPod in tomorrow. Yay, go R.!
11 December 2007
My iPod Touch arrived today. Yay! That said, it’s surprising it surived the trip. I arrived home to find a delivery card through my letterbox… “Parcel under mat on front doorstep” it read! Oops - was that the mat I stepped on to get into the house by any chance? *grin* No worries, thankfully the box was safely padded! I opened the package… “Oooh nice - John Lennon on the box - did they know I’m a big Beatles fan, then?”. I slid the lid off… Hmm. Okay - one plastic-wrapped iPod - nice. How do you turn it on? Can’t find any switch. Hmm. Instructions in several languages… hmm. A white bag that looks like a choc-ice. I open it. Hmm. Classic white headphone. A little plastic tray and a clear plastic block. Wonder what they are… *chuckle* I glance through the booklets… already feeling technologically challenged. Tired after PhD upgrade, I put everything back in the box.
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