While built-into the company’s own Windows Phone operating system, iOS is the next smartphone operating system to get this great piece of software and for a limited time it’s completely free.

The app isn’t just about storing notes on your mobile, just as with OneNote on Windows Phone it will upload your notes to Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive (you’ll need a Windows Live ID) so that you can share your notes with your PC and open notes created on the desktop when on the move.  Microsoft say of the new product.  OneNote users will also be able to view and edit their notes in the OneNote cloud app, that can be accessed through Microsoft’s Office Live service, or SkyDrive.

Microsoft OneNote Mobile is an easy-to-use note-taking application for capturing all of your ideas and to-dos on the go, brought to you by Microsoft Office.  With OneNote Mobile, create searchable notes with text, pictures, bullets, and checkboxes. Then keep your notes in sync using free Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage to access, edit and manage them from virtually anywhere, from your PC or almost any web browser.

OneNote was first introduced in Office 2003 but wasn’t really popularly used until touch screen computers became commonplace.  Now with Office 2010 running on many tablet PCs, it’s considered a stable of the Office system.  The extension of the software into the iPhone will only help professionals who need access to notes, and the ability to create notes on the move that they can then use and work with on their PC.

What is curious about this however is the release of OneNote for the iPhone at a time when the program itself still isn’t part of the Office 2011 suite for the Mac.  Microsoft have not commented on this but it would most likely be down to the current lack of touchscreen support in Mac OS.  Now that Apple are addressing this we can expect to see the next generation iMacs and MacBooks coming with touch screens.  Thus the next version of Office Mac, due sometime around 2013, should include OneNote.

With this omission it remains to be seen how useful people will consider OneNote on the iPhone.  Many iPhone users, probably most in fact, still use a PC and this will help uptake.  The lack of OneNote support on the Mac could damage the apps chances of picking up serious traction on Apple’s smartphone platform though.

There is also no word currently on a version of OneNote for the iPad or for Google’s Android operating system.  We can be reasonably certain that the former is already in development.  The future of OneNote, and indeed other Microsoft Office services, on Android is less certain however.  Microsoft haven’t made any announcement as regards this and could decide to avoid Android development altogether.

On the flipside, Microsoft have a long history of developing Office products for the Mac, and so this was only to be expected.  Microsoft have also announced that they will be bringing their new Lync communications platform to the iPhone later this year.

The app needs iOS 4.2 or higher to run and can be downloaded from the iTunes store.  There is no word yet on how long Microsoft will be making OneNote for the iPhone free to download, though it will probably be for 30 days or less.  If you are interested in trying OneNote on your iPhone or iPod Touch I wouldn’t leave it too long before you add it to your download basket.

GizmoRip is a program specifically designed for Apple devices such as iPods, iPads or iPhones, offering options to transfer music and video back to iTunes or another location on the hard drive. The freeware will identify connected all supported Apple devices automatically, and display their contents in the program interface. It generates a general file listing of all multimedia contents and displays playlists stored on the device as well.

The software will recognize multiple devices, offering to switch between them easily from a pulldown menu in the main interface. It will also display the type of Apple device, and the free and used space on it. A click on the Recover Music button, or a selection of the same option under the File menu initiates the transfer of the playlists and multimedia files selected back to iTunes. This works on any computer system running iTunes, even if iTunes was just installed on it.

It is possible to restore just one playlist for instance, or everything that is on the iPod or iPhone. GizmoRip ignores existing files automatically, with an option to change that behavior in the program settings.

Here it is also possible to disable the import of the music and video contents to iTunes, and to specify an alternative export directory, in case iTunes is not installed on the target computer system.

GizmoRip is a nice to have software program for Windows. It can be useful in multiple ways, including restoring music after a hard drive crash, but also transferring music and videos to a computer that does not have iTunes installed. The program is compatible with all versions of the Windows operating system from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

Those that use a different software to manage their music are left with the option to add the music to iTunes as well to synchronize it with the iPod or to use a third party syncing software like Froddle Pod or Yamipod.

A major problem for iPod owners who use a different software program to manage their music and iTunes to sync it to the iPod is that they have to add the music to two programs instead of just one.

They naturally add the music to their primary music management software but also to iTunes since they need to use it to sync the music to the device.

sync itunes

The portable software SynciTunes has been developed for this exact situation. It allows the iPod owner to select a music folder for synchronization with iTunes.

Options like including subfolders or preventing volume changes in iTunes are selectable in the program interface to customize the synchronization.

SynciTunes will automatically remove songs from the iTunes library that do not exist anymore. It will also update iTunes tags automatically if songs have been updated outside of iTunes.

Do you own an iPod? What’s your preferred way of adding songs to the device?

So…with that said, in this article I am going to introduce you to the Ubuntu One Music Store and how it works. It’s time for the real fun to begin.

Traditionally when I want to download music, I would hop on to Amazon and enjoy their MP3 download tool. I gave up on iTunes a long time ago (due to DMA and then the difficult to migrate the music to other devices.) Now, I have a new source – one that is well integrated with my operating system – to rely on for music purchases.

Ubuntu One

In order to enjoy the Ubuntu One Music Store you will first have to have a Ubuntu One account. You will, of course, also need Ubuntu One installed on your system. If you are using 10.4 just make sure you’ve updated recently. Once you have Ubuntu One installed and an account, you are ready to go.

Rhythmbox

Figure 1

Fire up the Rhythmbox music player and you will notice the Ubuntu One link in the left navigation. Click on that link to open up the store (see Figure 1).  As you can see, the store is laid out very easily. Either search for the song, album, or artist you are looking for or click on the genre you want to peruse.

Figure 1

When you have found something you want to purchase, you will see Download links associated with either individual songs or entire albums (see Figure 2).  Of course you can also preview each song. And what I like about the Ubuntu One Music Store preview is that it’s quite longer than the snippet you get on iTunes.

When you click on a Download button you will then have the choice to Add More, Enter Voucher (not yet implemented), or Checkout. At the checkout portion you can use either Credit Card or Paypal to purchase your downloads. Thanks to the newly integrated browser in Rhythmbox everything will occur inside of thythmbox during your transaction (even Paypal purchases).

What is really great about this system is that the downloaded files go directly to your Ubuntu One account. So any of your systems that have Ubuntu One installed (and are logged into your account) can sync that music you just purchased. That means you can purchase once and sync to many. That feature alone is worth it’s weight in learning Linux! And, with Ubuntu 10.4, Rhythbox will work with iPhones out of the box. Now more having to work over night to get that Apple product syncing.

Final thoughts

It’s about time a Linux distribution released a product like this. The Ubuntu One Music Store should certainly change the way many people think about Linux. And hopefully, this tool with have more people migrating from those “other” operating systems.

In this tutorial I will be using Sound Juicer for ripping and Gtkpod for syncing.  I will assuming you have followed the original tutorial and are able to now sync your iPhone. There are, of course, a few tools to install – which I will cover now.

MP3 Support

Because Linux will default to Ogg Vorbis format, you need to add MP3 support for Sound Juicer. You will also, most likely, need to install Sound Juicer itself. For the longest time I used Grip for all of my ripping needs, but that tool has fallen behind and Sound Juicer is much better integrated with GNOME. So let’s install.

I will illustrate the installation using Synaptic. You can do this via command line if you want. If you do this via Synaptic you will not have to monkey with manually adding any repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Fire up Synaptic and install the following:

• Sound Juicer
• lame
• ubuntu-restricted-extras
• gstreamer0.10-lame

You will have to search and select each of those one at a time. And you might find that adding ubuntu-restricted-extras will include the gstreamer application for you. Regardless, select the above and then click Apply to install them.

Once these are all installed you are ready to rock.

Sound Juicer

Figure 1

Now that you are ready, put in an audio CD into your CD device. When you do this a window will open asking you what application you would like to launch. From the drop down select “Open Audio CD Extractor” (see Figure 1). This is Sound Juicer.

You can configure this to be the default action if you like. This will, of course, depend upon what you typically want to happen when you insert an audio CD.

Figure 2

When Sound Juicer open (see Figure 2) you will first want to take care of one option – the output format. Because iPhones (and Apple in general) do not support the Ogg Vorbis format, you have to change the default output format for Sound Juicer. This is why you had to install gstreamer and lame.

Click on the Edit menu and select the Preferences entry. From the Preferences window change the Output Format to “CD Quality, MP3 (.mp3 type)” and then click Close.

You are now back to the main Sound Juicer window. Select the tracks you want to extract and then click the Extract button.  Of course, depending upon the CD, you might have to enter the CD information by hand.

Depending upon the speed of your machine, the speed of your CD drive, and the size of the data on the CD, this could take some time. To extract Rush Signals took 6 minutes 27 seconds. Once completed these files will be found in the ~/Music folder in a sub folder named by the extraction process (in the case of my example, ~/Music/Rush.

When that is finished you can close Sound Juicer, connect the iPhone, and sync with the help of Gtkpod.

Gtkpod

Figure 3

Once you have connected your device, and you see the phone icon on your desktop (see Figure 3), it is time to open up Gtkpod. I am going to assume you have already set up your iPhone repository in Gtkpod as outlined in the original article.

When Gtkpod is opened (and connected to your iPhone) you only have to click the Add Folder button fromt he main window, navigate to where the new directory holding your just-ripped music is located, select the folder containing your music (in this case /home/jlwallen/Music/Rush), and click Add. Depending upon the size of the directory, this can take some time.

Figure 4

When the files/folders are added you will see them listed in the main window (See Figure 4) and all you have to do is click the Save Changes button.

After the changes have completed (You will see the familiar Sync window on your iPhone), you can then exit out of Gtkpod, right click your iPhone desktop icon, and select Unmount from the menu. NOTE: You might also have to unmount the Camera portion of the iPhone before you remove your device.

Final thoughts

Is it as easy as iTunes? No. But it’s not iTunes and, in my opinion, that’s enough reason to be satisfied with the tools. And what is better – with this method you can sync as many iPhones as you like on this one computer. No more Apple 1:1 lock in. You want to put all of the songs on one iPhone onto other’s – go right ahead.

Hopefully soon this process will add to it syncing of the rest of the data to and from the iPhone.

The process is a bit involved, but not too difficult. I will walk you through the steps, some of which are command based, and some are not. And without further adieu, let’s get to the installation and configuration. NOTE: As with anything, use caution and ALWAYS back up your data. It is never guaranteed that you won’t lose data. You’ve been warned. ;-)

The installation

There are numerous tools to install. I will be doing this on a Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop box, so you will have to adjust your steps according to your distribution.

The first thing to do is add a repository to your apt sources. Do this with the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa

Now you need to update with the command:

sudo apt-get update

Once apt has completed the update issue the following to install the bulk of what is needed:

sudo apt-get install gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-bin gvfs-fuse libgvfscommon0 ifuse libgpod-dev libgpod-common libiphone-utils libiphone0 python-iphone libplist++1 libplist-utils python-plist libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev libusbmuxd1 usbmuxd

Quite a bit to install eh? And it’s all necessary. Let that process complete.

Edit fuse.conf

The next step is to edit the /etc/fuse.conf file so that your user will have access to the gvfs file system. Do this by opening the /etc/fuse.conf file in your favorite editor and changing this line:

#user_allow_other

to:

user_allow_other

Save that file and you are ready to move on.

Fuse group

Now you have to add your user to the fuse group. To do this go the User and Group entry in the Administration sub-menu of the System menu. When this tool opens click on the Key button to unlock the tool for administrative purposes. Now click the Manage Groups button and then scroll down until you find the fuse group. Double click the fuse group and then click the check box next to the user you want to have access to the fuse group. Click OK and then close out all of the User and Group windows.

Log out

The next step requires that you log out of your desktop and then log back in. This will ensure that all changes have taken place. Once this happens plug in your iPhone (or iTouch) and see if it automounts to your desktop. There will be two devices mount. The first device will show up as a camera, the second as a phone. Once you see both of these, you know you are nearly done.

Gtkpod

Unfortunately there are some bugs in Rhythmbox that prevent the user from writing to the iPhone/iTouch. That’s fine because there is always Gtkpod. You will need to install this with the command:

sudo apt-get install gtkpod

Once this is installed you will find the entry for it in the Sound &  Video sub-menu of the Applications menu. Fire that tool up and you are nearly complete.

Figure 1

The last thing you need to do is to configure Gtkpod to mount your device. In the Edit menu you will notice a Repository/iPod Options entry. You have to configure your device as a repository for Gtkpod.

As you can see (in Figure 1) you have to configure where the device will be mounted. This is where it might seem a bit more complicated than need be.

Because of having to use gvfs, the mount point will be in ~/.gvfs/ and will be listed as the name of your device. You will have to open up a terminal and change into that directory to find out what it is called. In my case it was ~/.gvfs/Jack Wallen. So I would enter that in iPod Mountpoint configuration section.

The next option to configure is the Model. Make sure you select the correct model. Do so by clicking the drop down and choosing your model from the list. Once you have done this, click the Add button to add your new device repository. You can then OK the Options window and you are ready to load your iPhone.

Back in the main Gtkpod window click the Load iPod(s) button and eventually your device will show up. You can now add music to your device! Make sure, when you are done adding music, to click the Save Changes button.

Final thoughts

It’s taken long enough, but the ability to add music to an iPhone has finally arrived. The next step, hopefully, will be the syncing of apps and contact/calendar data. I have a feeling that’s going to be another long wait.

First iPhone Worm Rickrolls Jailbroken iPhones

This has been the main worry about everything Mac, They do not have viruses now, true but as they start to get more popular they will attract the attention of malware creators. So in that vein of paranoia, we have news of the first ever worm for the iPhone.

You can cut out the screaming and the deep breathing exercises because it is a) completely harmless and b) only effective on jailbroken iPhones. It does things like change the wallpaper and rickrolling users, so it is not exactly destroying your iPhone yet. A worm on a jailbroken phone is a worm on a device that has already been tampered with. So you can wait for the first ever worm on legit iPhones before you hit the panic button. [read]

Complete Car Control Via iPhone

Okay, this is certifiably crazy. In fact, we should probably start a ‘gHacks Certifiably Nuts’ award just for these fellas. But I must admit that what they are is doing is pretty cool. We know that the iPhone can already be used to start your car remotely but fully driving with the iPhone kinda takes the cake.

So what you do is you take some electronic control circuits, hook them up to control your steering, acceleration and brakes and then control them wirelessly. If you want a less vague and more accurate description, check out the videos. It is quite nicely done and I especially love the fact that they are using the accelerometer to control the steering.

The result is pretty 007-ish — that you can drive your car through your iPhone. Look M(a), no hands! [read]

HD Radio Comes To The iPhone Via Gigaware

Now that the Zune HD is out, your least favorite co-worker who loves to make fun of your liking for Apple has probably been going on and on about how his Zune HD does HD radio and your iPod Touch does not. Setting aside the all important the question of how many good HD radio stations are there near you, you can now get back at him saying “there’s an app for that!”

But that would be kinda half true because even though iBiquity has made an app that plays HD radio on your iPhone, you still have to get an additional hardware for accomplishing the feat. The device is called Gigaware Navigation Controller and is essentially an HD tuner with iPhone integration. It allows you to seek and auto tune as well. Plus there is Facebook tagging and iTunes tagging.

Works with the latest iPhone and the iPod Touch. Available on RadioShack. [read]

Sparkz Projector For Your iPhone

Do you want to spend a lot of money on a pico projector that will work with your iPhone/ iPod Touch/iPod Video? If you do, you can now have the Sparkz dock that lets you connect any of those devices and more to it so that you can project your favorites onto a nearby screen. It will support a/v and VGA inputs too.

Other than this extended support for inputs, it has a resolution of 640×480, stereo speakers and a 60-inch viewing area. It charges your docked device while it is projecting and it comes with its own tripod. The price so much goodness? A mere $495. Hey, I did say a lot of money. [read]

At least two of the processes seem to be connected to mobile devices like Apple’s iPod or iPhone which seems like a waste of system resources if none of these devices are owned by the computer user. To say it more clearly: Why would someone need to run these processes if they do not need them? The following paragraphs will show how to disable the three processes AppleMobileDeviceService.Exe, iTunesHelper.exe and iPodService.exe effectively.

Disable AppleMobileDeviceService.Exe

AppleMobileDeviceService.Exe is a Windows Service that “provides the interface to Apple mobile devices”. It does not therefor make sense to run this service if no Apple mobile devices are owned by the user. The easiest way to disable the service is to press [Windows R], type in the run box [services.msc] and press the [enter] key on the computer keyboard.

This opens the Services window which displays all Windows Services. Locate the service Apple Mobile Device, right-click it and select Properties from the menu. Click on the Stop button first to stop the AppleMobileDeviceService.Exe service from running in this session.

Now click on the Startup type menu and change the type from Automatic to Disabled. A click on the Apply button will complete the process of disabling AppleMobileDeviceService.Exe.

Disable iTunesHelper.exe

The ituneshelper.exe process is also running in the background all the time. This process is however started from one of the autorun locations. Getting rid of it is quite easy. Press [Windows R], type in [msconfig.exe] and hit the [enter] key on the computer keyboard.

Switch to the Startup tab on top of the window and locate the iTunesHelper entry there. Uncheck that entry to disable the autostart of it when Windows starts. A click on Apply will complete the process. You do not need to restart Windows at this time.

Disable iPodService.exe

This one is tricky. IpodService.exe is a Windows Service. The problem is that it will be launched by iTunes even if the service is set to be disabled. Closing iTunes on the other hand will not close the iPodService.exe from running in the background. Here is what needs to be done to get rid of this process as well.

Open Windows Services again by pressing [Windows R], typing in [services.msc] and hitting the [enter] key. Locate the service iPodService. It is described as “iPod hardware management service”. Right-click the service, click on the Stop button if it is running and set it to disabled in the startup type menu.

The second step is needed as iPodservice.exe will be launched by iTunes even if it has been disabled. Locate the file iPod iPodservice.exe on the computer hard drive. It is by default installed into Program Files\iPod\bin.

Delete iPodservice.exe from the /bin/ directory and create a new text document. Give the text document the same name (iPodservice.exe). You should now have a 0 Kilobyte iPodservice.exe file in the /bin/ folder. To test if the procedure worked start iTunes. If everything worked out fine iPodservice.exe should not have been started and should not show up as a process in the Windows Task Manager.

Verdict: Windows users who want to use iTunes but do not own an iPod or other Apple device can now disable unneeded processes from their computer system. It does not make sense having them run in the background all the time.

The software will run on any PC with Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista installed. The only other requirement is an installation of Apple’s iTunes software. Pod To PC can copy music, videos and playlists from a supported device to the computer. Music and videos can be previewed and filtered on the iPod or iPhone prior to transferring them.

One interesting option is to automatically transfer all music and video files to the computer that are not already available in the local installation of iTunes. This makes it ideal to sync music and video collections. Could also be handy if you had to reinstall the operating system or iTunes on a computer after a crash to transfer all the music and videos back to the computer from the iPod or iPhone.

Duplicate tracks will not be copied. It is furthermore possible to copy full or partial playlists. All the related meta information such as ratings will also be transferred and preserved.

Pod To PC is an interesting software program for Windows users looking for a software to transfer data from an iPod or iPhone to the PC.

First things first, you’ll need to download the Linux binary of Floola from the Floola download page. Once you have the tar file downloaded unpack it with the command tar xvzf Floola-linux.tar.gz which will create a new directory called Floola-linux. Move into that new directory and, as the root user, issue the command cp Floola /usr/bin/. Copying the Floola binary into /usr/bin will allow Floola to be run globally.

Now you will need to mount your iPod. You can refer to my article Connect your iPod to gtkpod for instructions on the mounting procedure.

Once your iPod is mounted you can start up Floola. You will first have to configure the make of iPod you have connected. After you have the iPod type configured Floola will see the iPod and list all of data. Now on to the video download. Well, almost. Before you can actually get the video to your iPod you will need fmpeg installed in order to handle the conversion. Fmpeg can be installed by either doing a search for fmpeg in your Add/Remove Software utility or you can issue a command similar to urpmi fmpeg (for Mandriva) or apt-get install fmpeg (for Ubuntu.)

With fmpeg installed NOW it’s time for the video madness to start. With Floola open go to the Item menu and select Add From Web. A new window will open with a button for Add URL. Click that and a smaller window will open to copy and paste the Youtube video url and click OK.

Floola Add Video

When you see your Video listed in the Add From Web window select the video and click OK. This will start the process. Now it’s time to sit back and watch as the video downloads and then is converted. Depending upon the speed of your machine, this could take quite a while.

Once the video is converted a new window will open where you will need to click the Add button so the video is actually added to the iPod.

Adding File

Once you click the Add button your video will be transferred. But you’re not done yet. In order for your iPod to be in sync you will first close Floola and then unmount your iPod. With your iPod unmounted you are ready to enjoy your new video! You will be amazed at the quality of video transferred, it’s quite good.

And that’s it! Now you can have plenty of video goodness on your iPod with next to no effort.

Oh, and since Floola is freeware, you might consider donating to the author. If you do you will get rid of a 4-second nag screen upon closing.

The first thing you must do is make sure you have the applications installed on your machine. One reader pointed out that gtkpod had trouble with XMMS (which, I admit, is an old-school application). With modern distributions XMMS is not typically installed, yet gtkpod still defaults to XMMS being the default player on some distributions (Ubuntu and Mandriva for example). We’ll fix that.

Let’s first show how to get gtkpod running with a command line player. We’ll use mpg123 because it’s one of the more universal players. You can install mpg123 either from command line or from the Add/Remove Software utility. From the command line the installation would be something like:

apt-get install mpg123

or

yum install mpg123

One mpg123 is installed you can then fire up gtkpod for configuration.

From the Edit menu select Preferences to open up the configuration window.

Gtkpod Preferences Window

There are two lines to configure:

Command for ‘Play now’

Command for ‘Enqueue’

Both of these can be configured with the command. As you can see, in the figure above, my Fedora 10 default installation of gtkpod defaults to using XDG. This is an outstanding GUI application for use with gtkpod. But let’s make a simple change. Edit that line to read:

mpg123 %s

and click OK. Now go back to gtkpod, right click on a song and select “Play Now”. The selected song should start playing. Now here’s one issue with using a command line tool for playback: In order to stop playback you have to open a terminal window and issue the killall command. In our example you would issue the command killall -9 mpg123. Or you could wait for the song to complete. If you queue a number of songs for playback then you will definitetly have to issue the killall command to stop playback.

The same configuration holds true for an external GUI application. The good news about using a GUI application is that you can control the playback of the file much better.

Should you want to use XMMS for the playback of files you will most likely either have to delete the current XMMS (if you do not have mp3 support rolled into your current XMMS installation.) Say you are using Fedora. To change XMMS for mp3 support issue the following commands (as root):

rpm -e xmms (Only if XMMS is already installed)

yum install xmms-mp3

Now if you use XMMS as your playback application you would have xmms %s for your playback configuration.

Final Thoughts

Yes it’s true, it would be nice if gtkpod had a built in player. However, having a reliable application for syncing an overly-flaky, yet overwhelmingly popular music device far outweighs having to configure the application to use a working playback system.

Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas’ Giveaway provides one free download every day between 26 Dec and 6 Jan. Yesterday, Apple were offering a music video of ‘That’s Not My Name’ by ‘The Tings Tings’ (number 1 back in May) and today, a free episode of ‘Derren Brown’s Mind Control’.

iTunes users in the UK need only click this link to access the giveaway!

Rumours exist that Apple are planning this giveaway in France, but I am unable to confirm whether it is there. Unfortunately for Americans, Apple has confirmed it won’t be happening outside of Europe!

Another unfortunate thing about this giveaway is that iTunes is needed to download them; making it impossible for Linux users to access.

The giveaway is worth checking out as you may find a TV show, movie or song you like for free!

First Steps

The first thing you need to do is to plug in your iPod and mount the device. Before you actually plug in the device there are a few tasks to take care of. The first of these tasks is to create a directory where the iPod will be mounted. As the root user issue the command mkdir /media/mp3. You can name this directory whatever you want. Once you have the directory created you can plug in your iPod. Now issue the command dmesg so we can find out where your iPod was detected. When dmesg has completed you will see output like:

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 58605120 512-byte hardware sectors (30006 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 58605120 512-byte hardware sectors (30006 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 68 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1 sdb2

As you can see my iPod was listed at /dev/sdb. So now we know what entry to add to /etc/fstab. As the root user again open up /etc/fstab and append the following line:

/dev/sdb2 /media/mp3 auto ro,noauto,user 0 0

NOTE: The above line will vary depending upon where your iPod was detected and what directory you created for mounting purposes.

With your fstab entry in place exit out of the root user and issue the command mount /media/mp3 (Where mp3 is the directory you created for mounting purposes).

If you issue the command ls /media/mp3 you should now see the contents of your iPod. And with the iPod mounted gtkpod should automatically detecte the iPod.

Fire it up!

Now it’s time to open up gtkpod. This will most likely be in your Audio/Video or Multimedia menu subdirectory of the Main Menu. If you do not find it you will have to install it. Most distributions do not include gtkpod by default. If yo open up the Add/Remove Applications utility you can find it doing a search for “gtkpod”.

Once gtkpod is open, so long as your iPod is mounted, it should detect the device and load it.

gtkpod main window

As you can see gtkpod is pretty much a no-frills means to sync your iPod in Linux. Using gtkpod is pretty straightforward: Click to add files or directories, click Save Changes (sync), click to Load your iPod. There is only one issue that you must know about. When you are done with your iPod you need to close gtkpod and then UNMOUNT your iPod! To unmount your iPod go back to the command line and issue the command umount /media/mp3 Where mp3 is the actual directory where you have mounted your device. If you do not unmount your device you risk losing your data.

Final Thoughts

Gtkpod is one of the most reliable iPod managing tools in Linux. Sure there are far better multi-media players (such as Banshee or Amarok), but their iPod support can be flakey at best. Give gtkpod a try. If you’re looking for a reliable way to sync your iPod in Linux, this might be it.

Recently though, I’ve decided to invest in an mp3 player. I knew about the standard players available but after doing some more research, I’m more confused than ever. So I decided to ask the tech-savvy readers at Ghacks to help me make my decision.

Now I’m looking at hard-drive based players with a minimum capacity of 60 GB. Here are some of my thoughts on the different players so far:

Apple iPod Classic: Good battery life (30 hours for audio) and file storage capacity (120 GB). I’m not too keen on it though because it’s very restrictive as far as supported file formats are concerned. I don’t want to spend hours just converting my videos. Also, I’ve read that new versions of iTunes place a lot of restrictions on the machine.

Zune 80/120: This one is last on my list. Battery life is decent but that’s about it. Video format support is really poor.

Archos: Not bad but not great either. Battery life and file format support is just about okay. Storage capacity is good. The player itself is a little on the bulky side as well.

Creative Zen Vision W: The sort-of runner up. Creative had decent battery life (13.5 for audio and 5 for video) and supports a good-sized number of file formats. However, the player doesn’t seem to support videos encoded with the H.264 codec or those in the Mpeg-4 format. Also, at 60 GB, it’s the lowest in terms of storage capacity.

Cowon A3: If I had to choose a player based on features alone, this one would be it. The A3 has 80 GB of storage and plays virtually every audio and video file format you throw at it. In fact, the only format that it doesn’t play is AAC file with DRM and Quicktime movies, both of which I don’t use anyway. Besides this Cowon’s A3 can be connected directly to both standard and hi-definition TVs and can even record from the TV. It’s perfect. The only drawback is the battery life. The official site says that the A3 can play 7 hours of video and 10 hours of audio. In practice, I have no idea how long it lasts.

So now I’m stuck between the Creative Zen Vision W and the Cowon A3. They cost almost the same. Should I be concerned about the lesser battery life on the Cowan? I assume I can also hook it up to an adaptor and play it when I’m at home. If I do take my player out, it’s probably not going to be used for more than 5-6 hours.

Please help me out with this. What portable media player do you use? Are you happy with the storage capacity, file formats supported, and battery life/ Any advice for me? Let me know in the comments.

All I can say is it was completely worth it.

The bad thing for Microsoft is it’s taken 3 years to get the Zune to meet it’s initial expectations, the good thing is that I really don’t care because it’s a fantastic product. I have to admit I have never wanted an iPod primarily for the reason that I don’t want what everyone else has, and also because I don’t like iTunes.

The Zune software is perhaps Microsoft’s most under-appreciated work. I’ve been using it for a few months now, ever since the 2.5 release, and like it a lot, but it wasn’t till I actually had a Zune myself that the whole experience opened up and I realised how great the software is. What I love most about it is that Microsoft has not taken the approach of meeting the iTunes head-on, feature for feature. Instead they’ve worked on creating a great experience, so that even if the Zune lacks something Apple provides, users are willing to make the compromise.

I had to find and download a hack from somewhere to get access to all the Zune features and online services, but everything is working perfectly now.

The Zune itself looks great, feels great and has a awesome navigation pad which I prefer to the ‘Click Wheel’. It’s not quite as good for scrolling long song lists, but much better for skipping up or down by a couple songs at a time, something I find the Click Wheel not so good at. The screen however is horrible for attracting smudges and finger prints. Also the provided headphones are pretty crap, I replaced them immediately.

Anyway, up to this point I would be hard pressed to name another product which really wasbetter than the iPod, although a few did come close (Creative Vision:M and Gigabeat S series). The Zune 3.0 however I can honestly say provides a better experience and product than Apple and the iPod (classic).

Also Microsoft’s strategy of providing updates and new features to all Zune owners, no matter how old the product is really fantastic.

Froddle Pod is such an iTunes alternative. It certainly is not as feature rich as iTunes but it provides access to the main features that iPod owners need: It can copy music and videos from and to an iPod which is definitely the main feature that any iTunes alternative should support.

The software can also backup and restore all data that is stored on an iPod. Another feature is music normalization for all or selected music on the iPod. It is currently unclear if it supports album art.

Supported are the following iPod models currently: iPod Nano (all), iPod Mini (all), iPod Classic (3rd to 6th generation). No support for the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch yet.

The software did check for and download the Microsoft Visual J# Distributable which takes up 80 Megabytes of space on the hard drive.

Like iTunes the Winamp iPod plugin can sync songs, ratings and other information between a connected iPod and the Winamp Media Library. The default process makes only sense if the Media Library on the PC would fit on the iPod, if that is not the case the user needs to pick songs that get synced so that their total size is below the capacity of the iPod.

Songs, Videos and Photos can be copied to the iPod using the plugin. There are also some features to manipulate songs before they are moved to the iPod including replay gain, gapless playback, lyrics and album art.

It’s definitely a great software for those users who do not want to download and install the Apple iTunes software which is without doubt resource hungry.

Disk Aid can transfer files between a computer running Windows or Mac OSX and an iPhone or iPod Touch. My older iPod Nano was not recognized by the software which means that it is most likely only working with the two devices mentioned above. A supported device is recognized automatically by the application. It reminds the user to install iTunes if that software is not installed on the local computer.

The application supported the usual file operations like copying files from and to the iPhone or iPod Touch, creating folders, deleting files, renaming and even copying folders with their contents.

No jailbreak is needed to use Disk Aid and the supported firmwares are 1.1.1 to 1.1.4. Great software if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch.

With all these restrictions, it’s no wonder that most people who own an iPhone are frustrated and are always on the lookout for ways to run applications on their devices. After all, you would not want to pay so much money for something that has hardly any functions. However, it’s understandable to also be reluctant. These devices are expensive and if something goes wrong, it’s a lot of money down the drain.

Adam from Lifehacker has found a solution to your problems. He uses a software called ZiPhone. ZiPhone is free, open source application that works on both Windows and the Mac. This software basically hacks or jailbreaks the firmware code on your device so that all the restrictions are removed and you can use your device to its full potential. What ZiPhone does is put your phone into recovery mode while it hacks the firmware. The entire process is accomplished in under one minute.

All you have to do is download and run the application. Select the device (iPhone or iPod Touch), choose the jailbreak option and you are good to go. I haven’t tried this out for myself because I do not own either device but a fair number of people have used ZiPhone with excellent results. The only precaution is that if you applied a jailbreak to your iPhone previously, make sure to restore it to the latest firmware (1.1.4) before you use ZiPhone.

All in all, I’m curious. How many of you have hacked your devices previously because you were unhappy with the restrictions. Do you know of any other ways to jailbreak your iPhone?

Via (Lifehacker)

Mojo lets you share songs easily with friends in iTunes across a network and the Internet. Users in the same network are automatically added to your friends list while Internet users have to be added manually. Users need to create an account when they first run Mojo which functions as a identifier both in the network and on the Internet.

Users are added by typing in their username that they have chosen during registration. Added users have to confirm the new connection and once they do you get notified if they are online just like you would when using Instant Messengers for instance.

You can easily browse the music collection of users that are online in a window that pretty much looks like an iTunes window. Songs that are already in your own collection are greyed out while protected songs are red. Both cannot be transfered. Every song can be listened to and downloaded with just a click of the mouse button.

Using Mojo would in my opinion make much sense in large networks, Universities and Schools for instance with hundreds of users. It’s definitely a nice idea.

A client is available for Mac and Windows. Via Lifehacker and Make Use Of.