Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (Fifth Edition) [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Beyond Addresses

Sure, Apple made its intentions pretty clear when it added the Contacts heading to the iPod's main screen, but there's no reason on earth why you have to use the Contacts area as a location for storing names and addresses. Think outside the stainless-steel-and-Lucite box, and you can come up with countless ways to move the information you need to your iPod.

For instance? Well, how about:

Notes for your important business meeting

Your grocery list

Favorite recipes

Your master birding list

Your to-do list for that day

Car-rental and hotel-reservation confirmation numbers

For your next overseas vacation, translations of the phrases "Where can I exchange money?", "Where is the bathroom, please?", and "No, honestly, I'm Canadian; please stop sneering at me."

In short, any information that you keep on a small piece of paper and jam into your pocket or purse, you can easily store on your iPod.

Placing the information on your iPod is a simple matter. You can do so by editing an existing .vcf file or by using a contact manager or Address Book program. The following section shows you how to use both methods to create a file that contains the Spanish translation of the phrase "Meatballs, didn't I tell you?"

Hacking a .vcf File

To edit an existing .vcf file, follow these steps:

1. With your iPod mounted, make a copy of a .vcf file, and open that file in a text editor such as Mac OS X's TextEdit, Mac OS 9's SimpleText, or Windows' Notepad.

You'll see something like this:

BEGIN:vCard
VERSION:2.1
FN:Elvis Costello
N:Costello;Elvis
EMAIL;INTERNET:thebestelvis@mcmanus.com
END:vCard

2. Delete EMAIL;INTERNET:thebestelvis@mcmanus.com.

3. Remove the words following FN: and N:, and enter the word Meatballs.

Make sure that you don't allow any spaces between the colon and the first word.

4. In the line after N:Meatballs, enter NOTE:.

5. Following NOTE:, enter Albóndigas, no te dije?.

6. Save the file, and copy it to your iPod's Contact folder.

7. Unmount your iPod.

8. When the iPod reboots, choose Contacts from the main menu; scroll down to the Meatballs entry; and burst into happy tears, knowing that you'll never be at a loss for words when you spy meatballs in a Spanish-speaking country.

To add a carriage return so that a space appears between lines, enter \n at the end of the line. For your text to appear in this form:

Hola Isabel,
Cómo estás?
Albóndigas, no te dije?
Cristóbal

You'd type this:

Hola Isabel,\nCómo estás?\nAlbóndigas, no te dije? \nCristóbal

Entering Data Via an Email Client or Contact Manager

If the manual method is more than you can bear, do the job with a program such as Palm Desktop, Microsoft Entourage or Outlook, or Mac OS X or Windows' own Address Book. Follow these steps:

1. With your iPod mounted, launch one of the applications listed in the preceding section.

2. Create a new contact.

3. In the First Name field, enter Meatballs.

4. In the Title field, enter Albóndigas, no te dije?.

5. Close and, if necessary, save the contact (Figure 7.21).

6. Drag the Meatballs contact from the application to the Mac's Desktop or the PC's desktop (Figure 7.22).

7. Drag the resulting Meatballs.vcf file into your iPod's Contacts folder.

8. Unmount your iPod.

9. When the iPod reboots, choose Contacts from the Extras menu; scroll down to the Meatballs entry; and do a little dance, knowing that this helpful phrase is just a couple of clicks away.

Why use the Title field rather than the Notes field? Your email client or contact manager may not offer a field for notes. Truth be told, it doesn't really matter what kind of field you use, because the vCard standard allows you to enter text in any supported field. The Title field, however, has several advantages: All email clients and contact managers use it, the applications rarely use it, and the iPod supports it.

Additional Utilities of Interest

After Apple opened the door to accessing information on the iPod, it didn't take developers and hobbyists long to find ways to exploit that capability. Up to this point, most efforts had been directed toward moving the information intended for the iPodnames, addresses, and phone numbersto the device. But some intrepid individuals strayed from this obvious goal and devised some unexpected uses for the iPod's contact capabilities.

iPod It (Mac OS X only)

[www.zapptek.com/ipod-it]

Michael Zapp's $15 iPod It can move a wealth of information to the Contacts and Calendars portion of your iPodincluding your Microsoft Entourage mail, calendars, notes, and to-do tasks; Apple's iCal calendars, Address Book contacts, Mail message, and Stickies notes; as well as driving directions and weather forecasts (Figure 7.23). iPod It is comprised of an application and AppleScript. You can also delete groups of itemsweather forecasts, events, and mail, for examplefrom within the program. iPod It supercedes Zapp's previous iPod applications EntourageEvents, EntourageMail, and EntourageNotes.

The latest version of iPod It (version 2.4) allows you to move data into the Notes area of third- and fourth-generation iPods, the iPod Photo, and iPod minis.

iSpeak It (Mac OS X only)

[www.zapptek.com/ispeak-it]

Mr. Zapp has more iPod tricks up his sleeve than iPod It. His $13 iSpeak It will take any text, RTF, Word, AppleWorks, o82 text copied into one of its documents; convert that text to spoken-word files (using the Mac's built-in speech capabilities and robotic voices); turn those spoken-word files into an AIFF file; and convert that AIFF file to the Import format you've selected in iTunes (Figure 7.24). When you next sync your iPod, the spoken-word files are added to your iPod.

Pod2Go (Mac OS X only)

[www.kainjow.com/pod2go]

Kevin Wojniak's $12 Pod2Go downloads headlines, weather, stock quotes, movie listings, driving directions, and text files to your iPod (Figure 7.25). Pod2Go includes several syncing options, including the option to auto-sync when you plug in your iPod. On first- and second-generation iPods, Pod2Go stores its data in the Contacts area. You'll find this data in the Notes section on third- and fourth-generation iPods, iPod Photo, and the iPod mini.

PodWriter (Mac OS X only)

[http://steigerworld.com/doug/podwriter.php]

The name pretty well describes the function. PodWriter is Doug Steigerwald's free Cocoa application for creating notes that you then copy to your iPod (Figure 7.26). Just enter a title, description, and text; save the note; and drop it into your iPod's Contacts folder. The note takes up residence on the iPod. You can also import text into PodWriter. The latest version allows you to spell-check your notes with Mac OS X's built-in spelling checker. Recent versions of the program allow you to view a list of the music files on your iPod and copy them to a destination of your choosing.