My Precious...My Precious: Five Third-Party Add-ons and Downloads for iPod Obsessives

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It occurred to me the other day as I was fiddling around with iTunes that somehow or another it has transpired that I am the owner of two iPods, which strikes me as fairly ridiculous, like owning two microwaves, or a band having two drummers (or three guitarists). I have a battered old¹ 40GB model that is completely full of music and has a battery that can barely hold two hours' charge at this point. I also have one of those shiny new 80GB video iPods. How did this happen? When I bought my first iPod, I figured it would be the only one I'd ever need. Wrong. About five months ago I realized I needed a new iPod. Why? First, there's that unfortunate battery-life problem I previously mentioned, plus iPod No. 1 constantly freezes up like a first-year med student in biochem. Second, those iPod commercials are some strong medicine, and the new iPods seemed by fortunate coincidence to appear in stores right around the time that the problems with my old iPod reached critical mass.² Third, the process of acquiring, downloading, and rearranging one's music collection is addictive, which explains how I somehow managed to fill up a 40GB iPod. Statistics show that a small but not insignificant number of you folks reading this know exactly what I'm talking about.³ So now I have two iPods, with a combined memory capacity of 120GB's more memory and computing power than existed in the entire world in 1958.⁴

Like most iPod owners (iPoders? iPodists?), I use mine every day, and although I wouldn't (despite the title of this piece) quite consider myself obsessive when it comes to the little gadgets,⁵ I am interested in all the add-ons and third-party software and applications that can help you get the most out of your favorite MP3 player. Which brings us to the point of this little exercise. Although each new version of iTunes adds additional tools and features that enable users to organize and/or fiddle with their music and video files in new and exciting ways, there are still a few things it doesn't do very well (or at all, in some cases). Hence the need for some of these gadgets and downloads.

What the Hell Is 14_oldie_brz~1029BDM.mp3? Why Did I Download That?

Not that we condone the practice or anything,⁶ but when you download music online from what we'll euphemistically refer to as "non-retail outlets," you can never be too sure what you're going to get. Let's say you're downloading a James Taylor song;⁷ the file that ends up on your hard drive may not be labeled in any useable way, and when you import it into iTunes, you may find that the song name, artist, and other categories are either blank or contain incorrect information. That information -- known as "MP3 tags" (actually, they're properly called "ID3 tags") -- should be stored in each MP3 file; tags list the song name, artist, album name, genre of music, year of release, track number, and other descriptive data.

You can correct erroneously tagged files one at a time by entering the data yourself, but this is labor-intensive and requires that you actually know things like when The Monkees' Headquarters was first released.⁸ Fortunately, there are several MP3 tag editor programs available that will do all of this for you. One of the best is FixTunes, which will automatically edit the song title, artist name, album name, track number, release year, genre, and other info for every MP3 file you have. I'll say that again: it does this A-U-T-O-M-A-T-I-C-A-L-L-Y. It'll also download cover art, remove duplicate music files (if you want it to), rename and reorganize your music library into a standard format (again, if you want it to), and more. The program accomplishes this using data from "a database of over 56,000 artists, over 188,000 albums, and over 3 million tracks." And yes, it's iTunes compatible. The full program costs $24.95 to download, but you can also try it out for free to see if you like it (the free trial allows you to look up and identify up to 50 songs with FixTunes).

Other fine tag editing programs include PistonSoft MP3 Tags Editor and Tagrunner.

An iPod Is Basically Just a Fancy Hard Drive, You Know

This means that, Apple's wishes to the contrary, you should be able to transfer songs from your iPod to a PC or Mac. There are many programs available that will allow you to do just that, including: iGadget, TuneJack, CopyPod, iPodRip, YamiPod, Should your hard drive ever crash, or if your iTunes ever gets wiped out, one of these recovery programs will enable you to restore your music collection to your computer from your iPod,⁹ saving you hours (possibly weeks, as one of our editors experienced) of work spent re-ripping your CD collection to your hard drive.

Multitaskers Unite!

The Altec Lansing iM402 Wireless Headset is a cool gadget indeed. It lets you “listen to your iPod, hear a phone call come in through the headset, take the call with the touch of a button, then go back to the iPod the same way." It uses Bluetooth technology to--keep you in touch with both your phone and your iPod--even if they're up to 30 feet away." According to the manufacturer, “until somebody figures out how to wire your cell phone and iPod directly to your brain, there's simply nothing better.

How Cool Is This?

Sort of like MapQuest for subway and rail systems, this totally boss application lets you download to your iPod a complete subway and rail transit map for two dozen cities, including Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Overseas destinations are also covered, including Berlin, London, Paris, and Tokyo.

It Plays Games, Too?

You bet your sweet bippie it does. And not just the anemic little games that come pre-loaded on the iPod. You can play Sudoku, Texas Hold ‘Em, and even Mahjong.

REFERENCES

1. By "old" I mean I purchased it in the summer of 2004. Which is ancient, as far as these things go.

2. See here for more details.

3. Quick test: how does this image make you feel?

4. This may not actually be true.

5. I say this with some confidence, as I have yet, as of the time of this writing, to post a single comment on an iPod message board and include in my digital signature a laundry list of the iPod(s) and various accessories I own, ala "iPod video 60GB Black (platinum casing with LoJack and GPS unit) -- iPod Mini 6GB Metallic Pink (fire-retardant foam-dispensing cradle) -- iPod 30GB (4th gen) White (antique Navaho embossed snakeskin cozy)-VibraSounsz X50 Laser Headphones-blah blah blah."

6. See here for more on this. And you might also want to give this a look-see.

7. A practice we most definitely do not condone.

8. May 22, 1967. Duh!

9. Purely for your own data backup and recovery purposes only. Far be it from us to suggest that such a tool might be used to port songs from one person's iPod to another person's computer. That would be wrong.