Fun iPod Tricks
by Wei-Meng Lee
11/09/2004
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/11/09/ipod_tricks.html


Editor's Note -- At the recent BloggerCon and Mac OS X conferences,
podcasting was a hot topic. Podcasting is included in this nifty
collection of cool iPod tips.

An iPod is more than just a music player; it's an Information device.
Not only can you use your iPod to play music from your favorite singer
or band, you can use it to listen to radio recordings, listen to "audio
weblogs" (known as podcasts), and more. In this article I'll show you
some tips for getting the most out of your iPod. I'll also explain how
to manipulate the files stored on your iPod.


Tip #1 -- Recording Internet Radio

You have seen many FM radio transmitters designed for the iPod, but you
haven't seen (but perhaps have heard of) radio receivers for the iPod.
For whatever reasons, you are unlikely to see FM radio receivers for
your iPod anytime soon. So what do you do if you want to listen to
radio broadcast using your iPod?

Fortunately, internet radio broadcasting is making radio broadcast
easily accessible, especially if you want to tune in to overseas radio
broadcasts. To listen to radio on your iPod, you need to save the radio
broadcast into your Mac and then copy it onto your iPod.

My favorite is the Oleg Kibirev's RadioRecorder, a free application
under the General Public License version 2.

Using the RadioRecorder is straightforward -- simply type the URL of
the broadcasting station and you are ready to record. The radio program
is recorded as MP3 files and thus you need to ensure you have
sufficient disk space on your Mac before you do the actual recording
(since MP3 files are relatively huge). From my experience, one minute
of recording takes up approximately 1MB of disk space, so budget for
it.

The RadioRecorder also allows you to program it to record at a specific
time (see Figure 1). It can also split the songs broadcasted into
different files (if the radio stations send titles of the songs they
play).

Best of all, the RadioRecorder automatically links with iTunes so that
the radio recordings can be copied to your iPod the next time you
connect your iPod to your Mac (see Figure 2).


Tip #2 -- Podcasting

Podcasting is a new term associated with weblogs. Increasingly, media
files are found in weblogs, besides the usual text and graphics. RSS
2.0 supports a new feature known as enclosure, and it contains a URL
pointing to media files in an RSS feed.

Podcasting is the aggregation of discrete, downloadable media files.
While the term "podcasting" suggests an association with Apple's iPod,
it is important to point out that podcasting is not limited to using
Apple's iPod (for example, you can use Windows Media to listen to a
podcast).

iPodder is a small application that runs on your Mac. It downloads
audio files periodically from the Internet and copies them to iTunes so
that they can be copied to your iPod.