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.

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.

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.

Encyclopodia, which I discovered at the Make Use Of website, is a easy to use Windows installer that adds Wikipedia to your iPod if your iPod has enough space free. You should also note that the Wikipedia file that is being used is approximately updated every six months which means that you will not have the latest information available but it should be sufficient for most research terms.

Just plugin your iPod into your computer and start the installation of Encyclopedia which will install a multi-boot configuration of Encyclopodia and the original Apple firmware. You will be asked if you want to start Encyclopodia by default, I suggest to say no to this.

The installation will only take a few moments because the 1.7 Gigabyte file will not be downloaded this way. After the installation has been finished plug off your iPod from the computer. You need to reboot your iPod by pressing the menu and play buttons together for ten seconds (on newer iPods, it’s the menu and action buttons).

The Apple logo should appear. Press Down and Rewind for 10 seconds which should load the Wikipedia application on your iPod.

When you see the Apple logo, press down the re-wind button for 5 seconds and this kicks in the new Wikipedia section of your iPod. This is the process that you have to do whenever you want to load Wikipedia.

Now download the 1.7 Gigabyte Wikipedia file and place it in data\encyclopodia\library\ on your iPod.

You need to reboot the iPod once again if you want to access your music instead of Wikipedia. I wish there would be a solution to access both at the same time.

The tool can be configured to copy only mp3 files, retain the mp3 folder structure of the iPod and to overwrite existing files. The size of the music collection on your Apple iPod is shown as soon as you select the correct drive letter of the iPod. The space on the hard drive is however not listed in the application which makes it a bit of a guessing game if the music will fit on the hard drive.

The biggest advantage of iPod Folder is in my opinion that is it a portable application. This means that you could copy the software to your iPod and use it on another computer without having to download it before you can start copying the music from the iPod.

A software with the name iTunes folder watch comes to the rescue. Folders that contain music can be added to iTunes folder watch. Those folders are then scanned automatically – or if preferred manually – and music that has not been added to iTunes yet is listed under the New Tracks tab.

Those tracks can be imported to iTunes again with the choice to sync the music automatically or manually. It is possible to explicitly exclude folders from being scanned. This might be useful if you don’t want to add the music of a subfolder to iTunes.

The program can run as a background process as well which is something that I would not advise to do. This would be in my opinion only useful if you move new music into those folders regularly throughout the day.

I think it should be enough for most users to start the application manually. The decision to automatically scan the folders and sync new songs with iTunes can still be made in the options of iTunes folder watch.

It is however possible to convert your mp3 audiobooks into the m4b format to enable those two features. Another advantage is that audiobooks are normally available as many small mp3 files which will be merged into one big m4b file in the process. You can use the Open Source program MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter to make as many conversions as you like.

Once installed you simply add all parts of the same audiobook to the list of mp3′s that will be converted. Make sure they are in the correct order, it would not be that nice if the playback would jump around in the chapters because of this. It took about eight minutes to convert the mp3 files of one audiobook CD into one m4b format.

The output size was a little bit astonishing. The original mp3 files had a size of nearly 100 megabytes while the new m4b file had a third of that file size. 34 Megabytes instead of 100 Megabytes was an incredible reduction without noticeable loss of quality.

iPod Video Converter

Videora iPod Converter begins to re-encode AVI and MPEG files into high-resolution formats that can be played on your iPod. The program searches for the video files that you specify in the search queries. You can convert existing videos from your PC and convert DVDs as well as YouTube videos downloaded by Videora. It is slightly confusing to use at first, but becomes more familiar the more you use it. Videora iPod Converter demonstrates its true abilities best with downloads from specific search queries and seems to have complications with existing PC video files.

Once the download is finished, the program will launch and the very first screen you will see displays all of the iPod models so that you can select the model you will be using for the conversion transfer. Through all of the steps, there are instructions loaded with advertisements, which is admittedly annoying and not helpful at all. Despite this, you can progress to easier conversion eventually.

After selecting the device, the main interface will open. Click on the video tab.

In the upper pane, you will see a description of two modes to use for conversion.

Normal Mode – This mode is supposed to instruct you through the video conversion process “step by step”. In reality, it may not do that at all. You will be able to select the video file to convert, but once you click “Convert file”, nothing happens. Perhaps other users have a different experience.

Power Mode – This mode is intended for more experienced users who are familiar with the different file types and are able to specify output file locations and proper formats for the output files. Using this mode directs you to a panel in which you select the file to be converted and choose the output directory, the device, and the profile. However, it works instead of freezing. There is a Troubleshoot option if you click the Back button so that you can figure this out if you have any difficulties.

Videora does have some nice features. It can be programmed to automatically convert new file downloads to an iPod compatible format. This means that you don’t have to go through each step once this is set up; Videora will do it for you. TV shows, sports, news and movies are sent straight to your iPod. All you have to do is connect your device to your PC during a time when it is not being used. This is quite a cozy feature for a free iPod video converter. It is also capable of converting every type of video file: avi, divx, xvid, flv, x264, vob, mpeg, DVDs, YouTube, and anything else you could think of. All of these are converted to MPEG-4 and H.264 formats which are iPod formats.

For DVD conversion, you will need another program in addition to Videora. A DVD ripper is required for decryption of any DVD format so that it can be converted to a larger format for the video converter to translate it to iPod compatibility. Overall, this program is tricky to start with, but becomes a “set it and forget it” service once all of your personal settings are in place.