More iPod Loading Without iTunes…

I realize that last night TQT was missing but it will be back next week as my Tuesday night schedule should be easing up a bit.

A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted how to load up an iPod Shuffle without using iTunes because of some major issues I’ve had with iTunes in the past (read here and also here). This post will fill in the blanks for those of you using iPod versions other than the Shuffle. Unfortunately, this method does NOT work with iPhones and also requires you to sync your iPod with iTunes and load at least one song on there. I, personally, would recommend you do this on your friend’s computer rather than loading that piece of garbage on your computer. Now, off to the races.

The program we are going to be using is called Floola. Floola is a free side project by a helpful chap, so I would highly recommend donating if you like the product.

Start by downloading Floola here and be sure to extract the zip file to your iPod’s base directory. If you go to My Computer, you should see the C: drive and a couple other drives. On of them (E: on my computer) is the iPod. Double click it and you will see a couple of folders named Contacts, Calendars, Notes, and an see-through folder called iPod_Control. This is where you want to unzip your Floola folder to. Head over to the folder you extracted the files to and double click on Floola.exe.

The first task you need to do is choose which model of iPod you have. If you aren’t sure, you can visit Apple’s model identification guide. Floola will also give you some suggestions. It suggested that my iPod Nano 2G was either a 1G or a 2G (where G stands for generation). It also gives you some warnings and instructions, so be sure to read them through.

Once you hit save, you are pretty much home-free. At this point you can add tracks, delete tracks, manage photos stored on the device, and do pretty much everything else iTunes did.

A huge added bonus is that Floola is now saved on and runs from your iPod itself. That means if you visit anyone’s computer, regardless of whether they have iTunes or not, you will be able to update your music, photos, and podcasts using only the information on your iPod.

Have you tried any other alternatives to iTunes that worked for you? Found any hidden gems on Floola that cemented the deal for you? Share in the comments!

Load an iPod Shuffle Without iTunes…

Before we get started, note that this tutorial is for the iPod Shuffle only. We’ll get to other iPods later, don’t worry.

It is fairly well documented around these parts that I’m not a huge fan of iTunes (read here and also here). It is easy to find a new music player and manager (I mostly use foobar2000), but it much more difficult if you own and iPod.

Apple loves making beautiful, functional products, but then they manage to lock you into everything Apple. In order to use your Apple iPod, you have to use Apple iTunes. Want to use the gorgeous and simple OSX? You can only use it on a Mac (well, almost ‘only’).

I bought a iPod Shuffle because I loved that it was super compact, had good battery life, had a durable aluminum shell, and was nice and inexpensive. When I first got it, I used a program on Linux called gtkpod since iTunes isn’t made for Linux. I no longer have my Linux PC around so I was searching for a way to load music on my iPod Shuffle without iTunes and I found an amazingly simple way: iShuffle.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure you’ve either uninstalled iTunes from your computer or be sure to uncheck the box that automatically launches iTunes when you plug in an iPod.
2. Go to the iShuffle site and download the ‘iShuffle-without-iTunes.zip’ file. Open it and move to Step 3. We’ll use this zip file for Step 4.
3. Plug in your iPod Shuffle. Now click on “My Computer” or “Computer” and you should see your iPod showing up. Go ahead and double click on the iPod to view it’s contents.
4. Go back to the zip file from Step 2 and open it. Extract the file labeled ‘iShuffle.exe’ on to your iPod Shuffle. It should go on the iPod directly (in the root), not in a folder. In the above example, it should go in E:\.
5. You will need to create folder named Music to put in that same location. After you create the folder, its location should be E:\Music in the example above.
6. You can now load any music you want in the Music folder. After loading the music, double click the iShuffle.exe file to build the playlist and finish up the process!

Note that if you make any changes to the music located in the Music folder, you have to re-run the iShuffle.exe file to re-build the playlist.

If you are lacking some decent music to listen to on your iTunes-free iPod Shuffle, be sure to head to Amazonmp3.com to download some new tunes.

We’ll discuss Floola soon for managing iPods other than the Shuffle soon, but do you have any other media managers that you use in place of iTunes? I’m looking for some new running music, so be sure to let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions!

Recuva…

Ladies and gentlemen: A quick reminder to fill out the survey if you haven’t already. If you leave your email address, you will be in the running for one of three $10 Amazon giftcards. And I’ve decided to up the ante: if 50 separate people (no cheating by filling it out multiple times) fill out the survey by 11:59 pm on Friday, I’ll toss in a 4th card valued at $25. Be sure to get your friends to fill out the survey. To share the survey, just pass along this link: http://thedig.in/survey

Occasionally there are things in this world that do something amazing but you have to ask yourself, “Where the heck did they come up with that name?” For me, that one was Recuva. I couldn’t stop pronouncing it re-curve-ah. I didn’t know what it stood for, but then it dawned on me: Recover. Recova’. Recuva. Ahh, I get it now.

But really, that’s neither here nor there. What IS here and there is the fact that Recuva will find and recover files that you have deleted. Let’s talk about how it works first.

Delete? Not quite.

In real life, if you wanted to get rid of information, you can toss it in your trashcan and take it back out if you find that you shouldn’t have thrown it away. On you computer you can do the same thing by throwing files in the recycle bin on your PC. At any time, you can restore things in the recycle bin to the original location.

In real life, if you empty your trashcan into the dumpster out back, you could still get your information back, but it might be incomplete and you would most likely need some special equipment to get it back (rubber gloves, a gas mask, some boots). On your PC, you would need to get Recuva. Although you can’t see any records of your file being there any longer, it is actually still there and will be until that area of your hard disk drive gets over-written.

Recovering? Maybe.

As I said, the information, although not showing up, is still there, but you need a little luck and a little skill to be able to recover it. Some things that will help you be lucky are:

• A large hard drive – having lots of space to write new information means the location of the deleted file is less likely to be over-written.
• Infrequent programs – if you information is in an area used by a program that doesn’t write many files, you will be better off.

If you can manage to have these two things in your favor, Recuva may be able to help you out.

Simple to attempt? Definitely.

Head over to the site and download Recuva. Once again, it is free, but if you use it and recover some files. Please show your gratitude by donating to those who put the time and effort into making such a great program. If you aren’t a fan of the Yahoo! toolbar, be sure to uncheck that box during install.

For most uses, Recuva includes an easy to use wizard that should recover most of the boneheaded deletions that most of us make on a day-to-day basis (mp3s, pictures) as well as the gut-wrenching accidental loss of documents after a crash of Microsoft Office or the formatting of a camera memory card.

The types of files are very well explained in the wizard:

In the next step, you are asked for a location. The main thing this will do is speed up the search and exclude files from areas of your computer that you know you don’t want to look.

The last thing you need to do is determine if you want to do a deep scan or not. It will take longer, but it will also piece together information that may otherwise go unnoticed if you do a regular scan. I would recommend a simple scan followed by the deep scan if you don’t first run through.

Now all that’s left is to see if your files are found.

The scan I ran took less than a minute, but I would imagine deep scan could take many hours. It may also depend on the size of your hard drive and the type of file you are searching for (numerous small files will take longer to scan than few large files).

The standard information given is a preview of the file plus the file name. You may notice the ‘Switch to advanced mode’ button near the top right corner.

When you click it, you are presented with a list view as well as green, yellow, and red circles. These circles are an indicator of recoverability. You can find more information on the to the right side of the window.

From this screen, you can also permanently and securely delete any files which you don’t ever want anyone to be able to recover in the future by right clicking on them. This would be very helpful if you are getting rid of your computer and you have tax documents or other personal data that you would prefer didn’t get passed around.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever accidentally deleted? Ever felt sick to your stomach when all your vacation photos vanished into thin air? Let me know in the comments.

Friday Night Links (2/12/2010)…

Just a reminder, if you want to be in the running for one of three $10 Amazon giftcards, fill out my quick little reader survey.

A secondary announcement, if your computer has Windows XP and is having a blue screen pop-up and other problems since installing the most recent updates, Please fill out the form at the bottom of this post to contact me and set up an appointment to fix your computer. This is a known issue and there is a fix.

But for now, let’s get to the links!

• Perfect Grilled Cheese (http://thedig.in/b6) – Do you realize how hard it is to spread butter on a sandwich as it sits on a hot skillet? Bread burnt before the cheese melts? All you need is melted butter and a skillet with lid to fix the two biggest complaints about grilled cheese (or my personal favorite – grilled peanut butter and jelly). Toss in some tomato soup and you may have the perfect meal.
• Amazing Bug and Water Photos (http://thedig.in/b5) – The link shows how to make a laser triggered camera for taking macro stills of bugs and water, however, the real amazement starts when you look at the galleries in the links. The bug ones are cool, but the water ones are downright unbelievable.
• Chat Roulette (http://thedig.in/b3) – The little blurb on this site is pretty funny. Essentially, the author went to a chatroom where you are randomly thrown in a chat with an unknown person. He says the first 18 people who he connected with disconnected immediately. Weird.
• “Music” Video (http://thedig.in/b4) – Warning: the title of the linked blog’s feature is “Stuff we’re diggin'” except worded slightly more crass. However, the video is completely safe for work. It a sound composite that makes up a song. If you don’t know what that means, watch the video and you’ll understand. You can also see the video below:

  http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/57UvVYW4rFY&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

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Friday Night Links (2/5/2010)…

Do you like music? Of course you do! Then why aren’t you listening to Evan Roberts? A buddy of mine plays guitar on Evan’s albums and another acquaintance of mine is the producer. You can check out the HD version of the video as well or you can click on the above link to find out if Evan is playing near you. By the way, he does a nice blend of R&B and rock. Pretty cool stuff. (http://thedig.in/aq)

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8809417&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Evan Roberts – “Golden” (Official HD Video) from Anotha One Records on Vimeo.

Do you like videos on your computer? Of course you do! Then why aren’t you saving them from the web? Got that favorite video from YouTube? Take it with you! You can even toss it on your phone. (http://thedig.in/ar)

Do you like Comcast? Of course you don’t! Then why don’t you go ahead and avoid Xfinity? (http://thedig.in/as)

Do you like Canadians? Of course you do! Then why don’t you watch this one talk about pizza pies? (http://thedig.in/at)

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/ZlhU8-nAw2k&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

CBC Archives: New 50’s Food – Pizza Pie

Do you like being in debt? Of course you don’t! But don’t get delusional that all your troubles go away when you get out of debt. So don’t just sock away your pennies and pay off your credit cards; you also need to work on your relationships, your decision making process, and your priorities. (http://thedig.in/au)

Gifts for Your Techie: $100-399…

Yesterday, I tossed out some gift ideas under $100 for the gadget lover in your life. Tonight we are going to cover the $100-399 range. If you have a spouse, significant other, parent or child, this is probably the sweet spot for how much you are going to spend.

Personally, this is probably the range I am most excited to cover because you can get some really amazing things and yet still get a bargain. Without delay, let’s get to the gifts:

• Aliph Jawbone PRIME – If your little techie is a jabberjaw, this is the perfect gift. No more giant bluetooth headsets with bright blue flashing lights. This svelte little headset is a work of art and technology, and includes a metal case and military-grade noise reduction. This is especially useful if your state requires hands-free devices when driving and talking on the phone.

  

• 32gb Apple iPod Touch – The hottest phone over the last three years has been the iPhone. Unfortunately, getting an iPhone will run you nearly $100 a month and you have to deal with AT&T’s possibly shaky service. A better way to get your fix of apps, music, and internet is to get an iPod Touch. Once hooked up to WiFi, you can download games, grab music for your collection, and browse the internet. Plus, there is no monthly service fee and you get a ton of storage space.

  

• PlayStation 3 – After a recent price drop from $399 to $299, the PS3 is an amazing piece of machine for the money. It has a Bluray Disc high definition player, streams Netflix, and plays the latest video games. There continues to be rumors that it may add digital video recording (DVR) capabilities and even 3-D movies in the distant future.

  

• Asus Eee PC Netbook – Netbooks are great little computers for people on the go or those just lounging around the house. My friend, Mr. Noobie, covered the pros and cons of netbooks extensively, so be sure to check out that article. For my money though, nothing beats the Asus 10″ Eee PC. The 1005HA-PU1X has a great keyboard, a multi-touch trackpad, and up to a max of 10.5 hours of battery life.

  

For tomorrow, don’t forget to make a withdrawal from the bank because we are going to be hitting the $400-1,000 gifts that will have your geek, all worked up in a lather.

If you have great gadget gift ideas at any pricepoint, let me know in the comments.

Gifts for Your Techie: Under $100…

Welcome to Cyber Monday! We’ll at this point, Cyber Monday (a made-up holiday, by the way) is almost over. However, with the level of consumer confidence and the state of the economy right now, you can expect the deals to keep getting sweeter as Christmas day approaches.

If you have to buy a gift for the techie or geek in your life, it can seem a pretty daunting task. Fortunately, you have The Digitante to help guide your purchase process.

This is going to be a four day series covering a variety of price ranges: Under $100, $100-399, $400-1,000, and sky’s-the-limit.

Let’s get started on the Under $100 list. Please note the pictures are from the respective websites.

• AmazonMP3 Giftcard – Don’t worry, this is going to be the only giftcard on the list. If you have a music lover to buy for, this is the way to go. You even have some choices of how to purchase it: buy a card at Safeway, 7-11, or Rite-Aid, email a giftcard to the recipient, or print out a giftcard on your printer. They come in denominations from $5 to 5,000, so there is something for anyone.

  

• Skullcandy Earbuds – While your at it, you might as well hook your audiophile up with a pair of earbuds. Skullcandy makes some extremely stylish earbuds that come in a ton of colors. Not to mention they don’t sound half bad. If earbuds are your style, they also have over ear, on ear, and even wireless headphones, so feel free to browse.

  

• Joby Gorillapod – I’ve got shaky hands, so when I’m taking pictures, quite a few end up in my computer’s recycle bin because their blurry. Other times, I’m not in the picture because I’m stuck holding the camera. The Gorillapod is not your typical camera tripod. Gone are the days of extended metal legs and three legs firmly on the ground. Gorillapod has bendable, octopus-looking legs that wrap around and mold to most surfaces including trees, railings, and rocks. Now your pictures won’t be blurry AND you’ll actually be in them.

  

• Computer Accessories – A couple of recommendations on things that most techies can use for their computer: a Samsung Story 1Tb hard disk drive and a Logitech Performance MX Mouse. The hard disk drive is great for backing up your data as it includes back up software. I’ve personally owned an MX mouse for over two years now and I can’t say enough good things about it. It has a wonderfully ergonomic fit to your hand (righty only, sorry lefties), a bunch of buttons to do everything from searching to window switching to forward and back in your browser. UPDATE: The hard disk drive’s price has been fluctuating above and below $100, but its close, so cut me some slack!

  

So that about covers it. If you have other ideas of things the geek in your life, be sure to let The Digitante know in the comment section!

Friday Night Links (11/27/2009)…

The Digitante family is going to the lighting of the Christmas Tree in Downtown Indianapolis tonight, so I’ll get to the links quick.

• Sweetie Bean Recipes (http://thedig.in/6h) – This first link is going to be slightly self-promoting. Mrs. Digitante and a couple of others had me set up a website for posting recipes. Since I have to eat this food on a daily basis, I can’t recommend this site enough. Hopefully everyone will get to experience the culinary delights I get to partake in everyday. Watch for the Cranberry Orange Scones recipe. That’s a personal favorite of mine. Note: It is currently very plain looking and has a limited number of recipes, however, we are going to be setting up a nice colorful template in the next couple of days. More recipes will be added on a regular basis.
• Diverging Diamond Interchange (http://thedig.in/6i) – At first, this interchange design for interstate off-ramps hurt my brain, but if you watch the video, you will quickly realize this would cut down on tons of stoplights on off-ramps. I’ve seen similar designs with criss-crosses at the tops of ramps, but those still require quite a few directions to stop and require left turns, the big benefit of the diverging diamond design.
• $3 of Music For Free (http://thedig.in/6j) – ‘Tis the season and Amazon is offering $3 worth of music for free. Hurry up though because the offer ends on November 30th.
• Rent The Runway (http://thedig.in/6k) – For all you girls (and weird dudes), Rent The Runway allows you to browse their selection of top-end fashion dresses, get one delivered to you in the mail (ala Netflix), and when you are finished, you return it in the provided envelope. Best part: they take care of the dry cleaning. Not to mention, you don’t end up spending a fortune on a designer dress.

iTunes Alternative #1: DoubleTwist…

A little over a month ago, I went on a bit of a rant about iTunes and the fact that they were pushing some shady updates that #1 weren’t necessary since I don’t have a  corporate iPhone and #2 were billed as an update even though I don’t have the program installed in the first place. Add in the fact that iTunes is hugely bloated and I was wanting to find a nice, svelte replacement for iTunes.

I’ve found two replacements: DoubleTwist and Songbird. Tonight I am going to cover DoubleTwist.

Getting started

This is easy to get going. Download the program from the site and after it installs, simply open it. You will have to sign up for a user ID. Once signed in, you should hopefully see all your music and pictures from your computer.

If your music didn’t show up, you can specify which folder or folders you want to add.

One note: I had to completely quit out of DoubleTwist after installing before I could get it to recognize my music. I don’t know whether this was a fluke, a bug, or some other reason, but it was no big deal.

When you play music, it opens the player in a separate window. I’m not sure how I feel about this and it doesn’t look like you can change this behavior. You can drag additional songs from the media manager to the player window which is nice.

The big win

The biggest thing DoubleTwist has going for it is the fact that it is compatible with almost any media toting device: iPods, cell phones, even PlayStation Portable. From the DoubleTwist website:

Our vision is simple: to create a unifying media platform that connects consumers with all their media and all their devices, regardless of whether they are online or offline.

We feel that just like you don’t use a different browser for every web site you visit (Firefox to read the NY Times, IE to stream Hulu, Chrome to browse YouTube, etc) you shouldn’t have to use iTunes for Apple products, Nokia software for Nokia phones, Sony software for Sony products, etc. The typical household today has many such devices and there is a need for a simple and powerful software that connects them.

iTunes on the other hand only syncs with Apple products like the iPhone and iPod. Being a BlackBerry user, this has always been an issue so between mobile Dropbox and DoubleTwist, I should have all the music I need all the time.

Huge upcoming feature

The big feature that DoubleTwist has coming up that should be the stake in the heart of iTunes is Amazon MP3 store integration. You will soon be able to choose from almost 10 million high quality songs via the integrated Amazon MP3 store. Songs range from $.69-1.29 and you can find almost everything there. I’ve been using Amazon MP3 for a couple of years now and I love it.

What’s missing?

I was using DoubleTwist about 2-3 years ago and it had an amazing feature that allowed you to “liberate” your iTunes songs that were locked to your iPod with digital rights management (DRM). It looks like this feature is missing from the current generation of product, most likely because of legal issues with removing DRM. If you want to hear me rant a little about DRM, feel free to read this.

All in all, DoubleTwist seems ok and the main draw is the fact that you can sync your music to almost an device. If the liberate option were still there, this would be my go-to media player. Instead, I’ll have to do some more testing with Songbird.

If you have questions about this, leave a comment below or use the contact information found on any page to get in touch with The Digitante.

A Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch…

For the last four or five years, Mrs. Digitante and I have used iTunes to manage our music. We prefer to download the music at Amazon MP3, but after the download completes, it loads into iTunes. I am now thinking that my use of iTunes needs to change because Apple’s behavior over the past couple of years has irked me to the point that I’m ready to move on.

What happened?

For a long time, Apple had its own browser for Macs called Safari. They then decided to introduce a Windows version. Unfortunately, they were very underhanded about how they introduced it. They put it in the top section of the Apple Software Updater so it looked like they were upgrading a current program (“then” section), not installing a new program as it should have been (“now” section).

Basically, Apple was using their updater tool to fake people into downloading their browser. Although it is a good browser now, it was riddled with issues when it first came out. After a large outcry, they moved it to its current location as seen in the screenshot above.

All this over only one incident?

That was the first time I saw this but there is much more recent incident that occurred this week. On Monday evening, Apple provided an update to a program called iPhone Configurator Utility. Aside from the fact that configurator isn’t a word, this program was not actually an update, but a completely separate program that would be installed for the first time under guise of an update.

I don’t own an iPhone so I’m no sure why I was even a candidate to receive this program. As it turns out even most people who own an iPhone don’t need this utility since it more of a corporate tool to apply security policies to iPhones that belong to employees. That’s right, not only do you have to own an iPhone, but you also have to have received it from your employer.

Additionally there were some concerns about the fact that the program contained a web server which is a prime location for hackers to gain access to private information on your computer.

As you’ll notice from the screenshot above, Apple pulled the configurator software after a bunch of complaints. I’m really not sure how you don’t learn your lesson after the first time you try this stunt.

Seems a little sketchy

For a company that claims to cares about the user experience above all else, they certainly were taking advantage of their users in a pretty skeevy way.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to work on finding a new, better music player. I’ll be sure to let you know what I find. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment with your favorite music application and I’ll be sure to check it out.