Macworld Guides vol3 ipod

BONUS COLLECTION acworld The Mac Product Experts www.macworld.com playlistmag.com Digital Music for PC and Mac Power Guide: IPod and iTunes deta The Journey i rays Palockavit 337 059 COPYRIGHT © 2005, MAC PUBLISHING LLC. REPRINTED FROM MACWORLD MAGAZINE. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION IN ANY FORM IS PROHIBITED. SECRETS BY JIM HEID DIGITAL HUB digitalhub@macworld.com iTunes Encoding Strategies Building a digital music library used to be a simple matter of insert- ing a CD into your Mac and encoding the songs as MP3 files. Today the process is a little more complicated. iTunes 4.5 not only supports the popular MP3 format but also gives you the option of encoding files in the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format or in a new format called Apple Lossless. So which one should you use? Each format offers a different compromise between file size, sound quality, and compatibility. The key to picking the right format for your digital music library is to find the compromise that best suits the way you listen to music. Here’s a look at the current encoding options built into ’Tunes 4.5 and the situations that call for each one. I’ll also examine options for converting songs from one format to another. If Size Matters As your music library grows, the amount of disk space it requires may become an issue. When you want to use disk space effi- ciently and fit as much as possible on your iPod, your best bet is to use one of the two /ossy audio formats: MP3 and AAC. An MP3 or an AAC file isn’t a bit-for-bit duplicate of a digital recording; instead, it’s a very accurate approximation. When you rip a CD into one of these formats, ‘Tunes analyzes the recording and discards portions of it that most of us can’t hear anyway. This deliberate lessening of quality makes MP3 and AAC files roughly one-tenth the size of the original tracks ona CD (see “iTunes 4.5 Encoding Options”). Of the two formats, AAC is more efficient—it allows you to encode at a lower bit rate and still get excellent sound. For example, an AAC file encoded at 128 Kbps generally sounds as good as an MP3 file iTUNES 4.5 ENCODING OPTIONS FILE SIZE FOR A ENCODER 5-MINUTE SONG* PROS CONS ‘AAC (128 Kbps) 4.8MB Best balance between, Not compatible with third-party sound quality and filesize. music players. Apple Lossless 34MB No loss in audio quality, Not compatible with older iPods or third-party players. ‘MP3 (160 Kbps) 6MB Broadly compatible with Sound quality s not as good as nnonApple portable players with AAC. ‘and computer systems. WAV and AIFF 52MB Creates uncompressed files Creates very large files. with no data loss ‘File sizes may vary from song to song, encoded at 160 Kbps, but the AAC file uses less disk space (AAC and MP3 use different criteria when deciding what information to discard). By default, iTunes encodes AAC files at 128 Kbps and MP3s at 160 Kbps. However, you can specify a different bit rate by opening iTunes’ Importing pref- erence pane and selecting Custom from the Setting menu. For example, some users prefer the sound of AAC files encoded at 160 or 192 Kbps. If Sound Matters To my ears, MP3 and AAC files sound great. But golden-eared audiophiles cringe at the notion of compromised sound quality. For these users, Apple created the new Apple Lossless encoder. ‘True to its name, Apple Lossless doesn’t discard any audio information when encoding. As a result, Apple Lossless files sound truer to the originals, but they don’t use disk space as efficiently as MP3 or AAC files. Apple Lossless files are roughly half the size of the originals— several times larger than their MP3 or AAC equivalents. This may be a problem if you're trying to shoehorn a large music library into an iPod mini. In fact, even if you have only a small music library, Apple Lossless files may not be a good option for lis- tening to music on your iPod. ‘The large files cause the iPod’s hard drive to spin up more often, requiring more-frequent battery charges. With drawbacks like these, why use Apple Loss- less? One reason is sound quality: if you have good hearing and good audio equipment, you will be able to tell the difference. High frequencies have more sparkle while bass lines sound less muddy. Another reason to use Apple Lossless is to hedge against format obsolescence. If you ripped hundreds of CDs into MP3 files a few years ago, you're stuck with relatively low-quality files unless you rerip the CDs (see “Rebuild Your Library”). By using Apple Lossless, you can build a digital music library that won’t make you cringe as your listening skills and equipment improve. Indeed, this is the reason some serious audio buffs use the AIFF or WAV format to encode their CDs—these uncompressed formats don’t affect sound quality. Unfortunately, they also gobble up about 10MB of disk space for every minute of music—not exactly ideal for storing thousands of songs. If Compatibility Matters Having great sound is important, but it won’t do you much good if you can't play your music. Newer encoding schemes such as AAC and Apple Lossless don’t have the wide support that the MP3 format has. So they may limit you in terms of what you can do with your music outside of {Tunes and the iPod. Every iPod can play MP3 and AAC files (older iPods need a software update for AAC; see www.apple.com/ ipod/download). But Apple Lossless works only on iPods with a dock connector. If you use a non-Apple MP3 player (see Reviews, June 2004), you're even more limited: they don’t support AAC or Apple Lossl Likewise, many newer car and home stereo systems can play CDs containing MP3 files, making this a great way to store long music mixes for a road trip or a party. But if you burn a playlist as an MP3 CD, iTunes skips over AAC and Apple Lossless tracks. Conversion Strategies You can detour around some of these compatibility barriers by taking advantage of iTunes’ ability to con- vert between audio formats. Unprotected AAC to MP3 ‘To make a copy of an AAC file that you can play on a third-party MP3 player, open iTunes’ Importing preference pane, and select MP3 Encoder from the Import Using drop-down menu. Because you're converting from one lossy for mat to another, use the Higher Quality option to min- imize further loss in quality. Next, select the tracks you want to convert and, from iTunes’ Advanced menu, choose Convert Selec- tion To MP3. iTunes creates MP3 versions of the tracks and adds them to your music library. This process leaves your original AAC. files unchanged, so you'll have two versions of each song you convert. To deal with the duplicates, corral them into a smart playlist with the criterion Kind Is MPEG Audio File (see “Find Those Files”). Protected AAC to MP3 ating MP3s from music you’ve purchased at the iTunes Music Store is trick. ier. {Tunes won't convert a purchased song—doing so would strip the song of its copy protection. To work around this limitation, burn the protected songs to an audio CD, and then rip the CD into MP3. Conversions to Avoid Incidentally, there’s no point in converting an MP3 or an AAC file into Apple Loss- less format. You can’t create a lossless audio file from a lossy version any more than you can re-create a com- plete novel from a Reader's Digest condensed book. Sim- ilarly, there’s no reason to convert an MP3 into AAC format. MP3 has the compatibility edge, and the sonic damage that a conversion would impose wouldn’t be worth the slightly better storage efficiency. Rebuild Your Library Ever wish you could just start over with your iTunes library and encode everything in a new format or at a higher bit rate? iTunes has some automation features that make the process of reripping your CDs a bit less tedious. Open your iTunes Importing preference pane and select the new encoding settings; then insert the first CD you want to rerip. When you click on Import, iTunes asks whether you want to replace your old versions. Choose Replace Existing to prevent iTunes from creating two copies of each song. If you replace the existing song, you won't have to rebuild any playlists or assign new ratings or equalizer presets. iTunes grabs this informa- tion from the original version of the song and applies it to the replacement. Note that this tip won't work if you've edited a song's album, artist, or name infor- mation. So if you've done so, you should either restore the song's original information or manually delete the old MP3s before you rerip the song. Build a Master Library If disk space isn’t a major concern for you, and if you have enough patience, you can use iTunes’ conver- sion tools to get the best of both worlds: maintaining a master music library in Apple Lossless format, and then creating lossy versions of tracks for your iPod. Start by ripping your CDs into Apple Lossless for- mat. When you want to move some selected tunes to your iPod or other MP3 player, set your Importing preferences to the correct format and choose Convert Selection from the Advanced menu. Put your iPod in manual-update mode to avoid also transferring the ‘Smart Playlist match (all Rij of the following conditions: a Date Added i) is PS) sriajos oO® ne ——ae an 66 Oumitte 25 songs [PY selected by (random m ey =D 2 Apple Lossless versions. Then drag the newly con- verted files onto the iPod icon. You can delete the converted files after transferring them, or, if you want to keep them for future use, cre- ate a smart playlist to help keep track of them. To Each Its Own Although I’ve focused on the encoding options built into iTunes 4.5, there are plenty of other encoders on the market, such as FLAC and Ogg-Vorbis, and they have their own loyal followings (see “Digital Music Superguide,” June 2004). In fact, the encoder showdown feels almost like a replay of the Betamax- versus-VHS wars of the 1980s. Thankfully, there’s almost always a way to convert music from one digi- tal format to another. Contributing Editor JIM HEID is the author of The Macintosh iLife ‘04 (Peachpit Press/Avondale Media, 2004). He publishes iLife tips at www.macilife.com. Find Those Files To quickly locate just- converted MP3 or AAC files, create a smart playlist with the two criteria seen here (substitute the current date for the one shown). SECRETS BY JONATHAN SEFF playlist@macworld.com PLAYLIST Play Anything Your favorite band releases a live recording on its Web site, but iTunes can't play it. Your friend sends you a link to an irreverent political spoof, but QuickTime Player can’t open it. With so many Windows-centric files floating around the Internet, it’s easy for Mac users to feel left out. But with the right software—most of which is just a free download away— you can play almost any file your Windows-using friends throw at you. Audio Conundrums iTunes 4.7 supports MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV files. To play other file formats, you'll need to either convert the files into something {Tunes recognizes or find an alternative player. Here’s what to do with some of the troublemakers you're most likely to encounter. Windows Media Audio Microsoft is the king of proprietary formats, and Windows Media Audio (WMA) is one of the company’s most popular. You can play almost all WMA files with the help of Microsoft’s free Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X (www.macbu.com). ‘The player won't be able to help you with DRM- protected files, such as those purchased from Win- dows-oriented online music stores—a problem if you're moving to the Mac from a Windows machine. In this case, your best bet is to burn your purchased songs onto a CD from your Windows machine and then rerip them on the Mac. Windows Media Player also can’t play WMA 10 files, which are less common and require the newer, Windows- only version of the player. Although Windows Media Player will let you lis- ten to compatible WMA files, it won’t let you export the files to an iTunes-friendly format. If you want to add the songs to your iTunes library, you'll need to try Patrice Bensoussan’s free Easy WMA (www -carrafix.com/EasyWMA). Its simple drag-and-drop interface lets you quickly convert many WMA files to MP3 or WAV files. For the files EasyWMA can’t handle, there is a more circuitous route. Programs such as Rogue Amoeba’s $16 Audio Hijack (www.rogueamoeba.com) and Ambrosia Software’s $19 WireTap Pro (www .ambrosiasw.com) can record any sound played on your Mac—including songs played by Windows Media Player. Simply save the recording as an AIFF, MP3, or AAC file, and then import it into (Tunes. (For more on using streaming-audio recorders, see find.macworld.com/0300.) RealAudio Another audio format you're likely to come across on the Web is RealAudio. Like WMA files, RealAudio files require a special player—in this case, the free RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X (www real.com). But like Windows Media Player, RealPlayer can’t convert RealAudio files into other formats. You'll need to use one of the audio recorders mentioned in the previous section to import the songs into iTunes. Lossless Audio With iTunes 4.5, Apple added Apple Lossless, an audio codec that compresses audio without throwing away any data. But there are plenty of other lossless formats that iTunes doesn’t sup- port—most notably, SHN (Shorten) and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). You'll likely run into these incompatible formats if you download live perfor- mances from places such as the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) and etree.org’s Community Bittor- rent Tracker (http://bt.etree.org). ‘To have iTunes recognize and play these lossless files, you'll first need to convert them to AIFF or WAV files using Scott Brown's free xACT (http://etree.org).. Since the AIFF and WAV formats don’t compress audio, you won't lose any sound quality in the conver- sion process. You can then burn the converted files to a CD, or import them into iTunes and convert them to iPod-friendly MP3, AAC, or Apple Lossless files. Tf all you want to do is /isten to these unsupported audio files, check out Subband Software’s free Want more tips on digital music? Check out www playlistmag.com to uncover the secrets of your iPod. We've got expert advice, breaking news, and reviews ofall the latest gadgets. Become a Convert if you want to turn WMA files into some- thing iTunes or the iPod can play, EasyWMA is continues the app for you. "A @ EasyWMA eo Clearl Show Abori @ Ying Yang Twins ~ What's Happening.wna @ Astley Simpson- LaLa.wma @ KoRn_Word_Up.wMa ——— 35% PLAYLIST MacAmp Lite X (find.macworld.com/0004). MacAmp Lite X can decode and play SHN and FLAC files, as well as numerous others, including Monkey's Audio (also known as APE) and OGG. (For more on alter- native music formats, see “Digital Music Super- guide” at find.macworld.com/0290.) Ogg Vorbis If you just need to play Ogg Vorbis files—a lossy format that some find superior to MP3 and AAC—check out the free Ogg Vorbis Quick- Time Component (find.macworld.com/0292). This little application adds support for OGG files to any QuickTime-compatible program—including iTunes. Video Foibles If you try to open a movie in QuickTime only to be told that “the required compressor could not be found,” don’t give up. You may just need to download the missing codec. And if the needed codec doesn’t exist for QuickTime Player, you can almost always find third-party software that will play the movie. AVI One of the most common sources of video frustration on the Mac involves trying to watch movies with .avi file extensions. Part of the problem is that there’s no one right solution for all AVI files. The .avi extension is actually just a wrapper for several dif- ferent video compressors—including DivX, XviD, 3ivx, and Indeo. ‘To find out which video format a particular movie uses, open it in QuickTime (you can do this even if QuickTime can’t actually display the video) and press 1-L In the Movie Info window, note what is listed by the Format heading. This information will help you determine the type of codec you'll need. ‘The vast majority of AVI movies use DivX, a com- pressor that offers high video quality and small file sizes—two reasons it’s so popular. To play these AVI files in QuickTime, download and install the free DivX codec from DivXNetworks (www.divx.com). If it’s not a DivX file—and if you’re adventurous enough to step outside the comfy confines of Quick- Time—I recommend trying either MPlayer OS X (http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net) or VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org). These excellent and free multimedia players can tackle many of the video formats unknown to QuickTime. My favorite is MPlayer OS X. ’'ve thrown nearly every type of AVI file I could find at it, with great results. It also lets you use the arrow keys to skip backward or forward during playback—a feature QuickTime doesn’t offer. MPEG-2 Although OS X’s DVD Player can play DVDs without trouble, it can’t play the MPEG-2 files that go into making those DVDs. This is a problem, for example, if | you use Apple’s Com- pressor software to turn your video into MPEG-2 files for burning to DVD. and then need to preview those files. ‘To view MPEG-2 files via QuickTime, purchase the $20 QuickTime 6 MPEG-2 Playback Component, from Apple (find -macworld.com/0293). If you don’t want to spend the extra money, you can also play back most MPEG-2 files with MPlayer OS X or VLC Media Player. Windows Media Video and RealVideo Microsoft and Real Networks also have their own video for- mats. To play Windows Media Video or RealVideo, use Windows Media Player or RealPlayer, respec- tively. MPlayer OS X and VLC Media Player can also play some of these files, but their playback is sometimes limited to the audio track. If you need to convert these videos to something you can edit or play in QuickTime, check out Ambrosia Software’s $69 SnapzPro X 2 (#4666; find aan Mowe info Dwx AW Southpark (DivX).avi » More info, Southpark OwaXavi Movie FPS 29.85 Data Size 30.4 WE ‘Data Rate: 23.7 * bytes/sec Current Tirme: 00.14 44.15 Duration: 0021.54.29 Normal Size 352 » 240 pixets Source: G5 Homer Users ret! Desktop Sit Torrents Format: Dive $.11, 552 x 240, Millions: MPEG Layer-3 Audio, Stereo, 22050 Hz Playing FPS: (Available whes plying) Current Size 552 x 260 pixels (Normal -macworld.com/0295), which can capture movies and still images. Simply open the movie in any application that will play it, and then launch SnapzPro. Click on the Movie button, choose your desired settings, and then draw a box around the movie you want to record. Know Your Options ‘These days, there are very few file formats your Mac isn’t able to play. And thanks to the hard work of dedicated software developers, that list is getting shorter all the time. ‘Senior News Editor JONATHAN SEFF has never met an audio or video file he hasn't tried to play. QuickTime Magic With the free Divx codec, you can play many AVI files from within QuickTime, such as this DivX file (the Movie Info window contains information about the file). SECRETS BY KIRK McELHEARN PLAYLIST playlist@me Want more tips on digital music? For iPod- and iTunes-related expert advice and breaking news, as well as reviews of all the latest gadgets, check out playlistmag.com. Corral Your Classical Music If you’re a fan of classical music, then you’ve probably, at some point, become frustrated with iTunes and the iPod. Track information from the Web is inconsistent, pieces are difficult to tag and categorize, and imported songs don’t flow seamlessly into one another. But you can have your Mozart and enjoy it, too, with these simple tips. Eliminating Gaps Most audio players—the iPod included—can’t play music without gaps between the tracks. For many types of music, this isn’t a major problem. But fi ical music (especially opera), it can be a deal breaker. Even a short blip between a recitative and an aria is enough to ruin the effect of G. F. Handel's greatest works for the stage. For listening in iTunes, you can turn on Crossfade Playback (in iTunes’ Audio prefer- ences) and set it to 0 seconds—that does a pretty good job of keeping the flow. But a bet- ter workaround for ‘Tunes and iPod play- back is to combine multiple tracks into one. When you're importing a CD, select a group of tracks and choose Join CD Tracks from the Advanced menu—this will cause iTunes to join those tracks into one long music file upon import. iTunes displays the tracks with a vertical bracket indi- cating that they’re to be joined (see “Join In”). teat NER Mle veresente. yl Radiant NER Sirtererr serie. Rye Raretomt NES Lrtanaorenscte, hyn Raetceh en NOR Hetorveresaatc, an Netter Sekete WI Warver Srtoryy te Nahi etind Matter Sched We Marwdicat Join In The Join CD Tracks command helps you combine several tracks into one, so iTunes won't create those distracting small gaps between songs or play pieces out of order. You can combine an entire CD or just parts of it. Say you want to import a symphony as one track, but the CD contains two symphonies. Select the tracks of the first and join them, and then do the same for the second—when you import the CD, each sym- phony will be a single, free-flowing track. The downside is that you lose the ability to listen to individual movements or arias without scrubbing through a file. If you've purchased music from the iTunes Music Store, or if you've already ripped your CDs as indi- vidual tracks and don’t want to rip them again, then you have a few options, Jack Gill’s Track Splicer AppleScript (macworld.com/0470) lets you join unprotected tracks in iTunes (as long as they have the same format and bit rate). Alternatively, you can burn an audio CD from protected files and then reimport the tracks, joining the ones you want to. ‘The second method may mean you lose some qual- ity, but if you reimport tracks at the same bit rate, the loss should be negligible. Tagging Classical Music Having correct tags for your music is essential. As long as you have Connect To Internet When Needed selected in iTunes’ General preferences, iTunes searches the online Gracenote CD Database for artist, album, and track information when you insert a CD. The prob- lem is that when you're dealing with classical music, this information is often wrong or incomplete, or the tags show up in the wrong fields. ‘To best manage your music, you'll need to do some tweaking. Many classical CDs show up as compila- tions. While many classical albums may actually be compilations, where the artists listed change from one piece to another, it isn’t always useful to classify them that way. So start by nuking the compilation tag. Select all the tracks on an album (either before or after importing), and then select File: Get Info. In the Multiple Song Information window, set the pop-up menu below Part Of A Compilation to No, and then click on OK. Changing Track Names Since the database often returns incorrect track names for c! ical CDs, you need to change these manually. In some cases they're blank, and in others they’re totally useless: for instance, you may find Symphony No. 5 listed for all the tracks of that symphony. You may even find that the track names appear in the artist tags or in other odd places. Click on a track to select it and then press enter; or select a track and use File: Get Info to access the Info tab and alter the information. Choosing the Correct Artist One of the best ways to search for music is by artist, but the artist tag doesn’t have to be the actual performer. Since iTunes lets you browse only by genre, artist, and album, it can be use- ful to change the artist tag to the composer’s name; this way you can browse, say, all of your Schubert music by looking for his name in the Artist column. On the iPod, you can browse by composer, but if you continues PLAYLIST eat, i aim, cabrel Fou > Seno 1 Berratee : Coorg Bonen * Sym ho 1 ~ imbal \d Coorg Prrige Teanann Syrt No 1 ~ Kanerashin ers Coclante nts} Sameer a Guce. Chriniash weabets D sire 2- nerratere ‘Custy Matter Sym No 2 - Inbal Hoendel. Gorge Frideric Syn No 2 ~ Wonk Haper 2 SvN NO 3 ~ Berrater 2 Heinen Senos ¥ Sy No } - Bader , The Name Game By streamlining and stan- dardizing album names, you'll have a better musical experi- ence with iTunes and the iPod. want to organize your library in iTunes before sync- ing to the iPod, it helps to have the option to list music by composer. You may want to leave the artist’s name as is: this lets you see, for example, all your recordings of Yo-Yo Ma at a glance. However, this can get a bit confusing when the name of a symphony orchestra and conductor shows up in several different ways: the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, could appear as Leonard Bernstein and New York Philharmonic; New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein; Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic [and other performers]; or NY Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein. All these tags mean the same thing (except in the case of discs containing additional performers). ‘Take the time to standardize them: choose the one you prefer (or create your own, such as NYP/Bernstein), and set this tag for all your recordings featuring this orchestra and conductor. Select multiple tracks, press 1-I, and change the artist tag accordingly. Whichever solution you choose—actual perform- ers’ names or composers—pay close attention to the spelling and ordering of these names: as far as iTunes Get Small Many audiophiles turn up their noses at the idea of lis- tening to compressed music. But at 10MB per minute, uncompressed audio isn’t typically a viable option. Even the Apple Lossless Encoder, which can reduce files to between 40 and 60 percent of their original size, still produces large files (lossless compression creates smaller files, but doesn't compromise sound quality to do so). Unless you have a very small library of music and a very large iPod, you're going to have to accept AAC or MP3 as your musical file format. There are things you can do to make the music sound better. iTunes’ default AAC bit rate is 128 Kbps. While this is appropriate for some music, it’s not ideal for classical. Importing files as 160- Kbps AAC files will make a noticeable difference—these files sound very good even on high-quality stereo equipment. If you prefer MP3 (and you also have a non-iPod music player or use a music-streaming server in your house), then you should go to at least 192 Kbps—AAC files generally sound better than MP3 files at the same bit rate, so it’s worth the slightly larger file size. If your ears are truly golden, you can go with the maximum bit rate for AAC or MP3 files. | defy anyone to tell the difference between files compressed at 320 Kbps and original CDs. And at 2.3MB per minute, you can still fit more than 3.5 hours of music on the smaller iPod shuffle, and nearly 450 hours of music on a 60GB iPod photo. and the iPod are concerned, Johann Sebastian Bach is not the same as J. S. Bach; or Bach, Johann S.; or Bach, J. S. Tagging Works Another way to tag your music is to change the album name to reflect the title of an indi- vidual work. Let's say you have a CD of Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata, but it also contains a handful of other songs. Select the four tracks of the sonata and then set their album name to Concord Sonata (even adding the performer's name after that, if you want). ‘Tag the remaining songs with something different so a search turns up only the tracks you're looking for. Longer names of works can be problematic. For example, you could name a favorite recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony something like Symphony No. 3 - Bernstein to separate it from other versions you may have. But the iPod display doesn’t show enough text when you browse—you'll see Symphony No. 3, but not the conductor’s name. If you have a lot of symphonies, and especially if you have multiple versions of some works, you'll want to shorten their names: Sym No 3 - Bernstein, for example, is more iPod-friendly (see “The Name Game”). Getting the Genre Right All classical music is in the Classical genre, right? Well, not really. If you're a fan, you know it has plenty of subgenres that can make it easier to organize your music. For example, should you classify a piece as Symphonic, Chamber Music, Piano, Lieder, or Opera? Would you like to be able to browse your library by Recitals, Baroque Music, or Organ Music? It’s a piece of cake. Just select a group of tracks, press 1-I, and type your own genre name in the Genre field. You can now browse your music more effectively both in iTunes and on the iPod. Adding Comments ‘The Comments field is a catchall area for any tagging information that doesn’t fit else- where—a place to note the soloists for an opera or the recording date of a performance (rather than the CD's release date). You can also add keywords useful for cre- ating smart playlists. Say you have a lot of string quar- tets; add the words string quartet to the Comments field, and you can create a smart playlist that looks for tracks whose comments contain those words. Do the same for organ, viola da gamba, and other instruments. Curtain Call With a helping hand, the iPod and iTunes can be a great medium for organizing classical music. Once you realize how to overcome their constraints and discover the best ways to import and organize your music, you'll never look back. You may use your CDs only one more time—to import them into /Tunes— and then in the future turn to your iPod for all your classical music listening. KIRK McELHEARN is the author of several books, including iPod & iTunes Garage (Prentice Hall, 2004). He also reviews early and baroque music for MusicWeb (www.musicweb-international.com). Want more tips on digital music? For iPod- and iTunes-related expert advice and breaking news, as well as reviews of all the latest gadgets, check out playlistmag.com. Explore Your Library Probe the depths of your iTunes library by access- ing tracks you've never listened to. playlist@m Brilliant Playlists As our iTunes libraries swell to gargantuan proportions, it can become difficult to manage the music we listen to (or would like to listen to if we could only find it). Thankfully, iTunes offers a leg up with the Smart Playlists feature, which lets you create dynamic playlists containing exactly the kind of music you want in iTunes and on your iPod. But to do their job well, smart playlists need your help. New Music All the Time iTunes’ Play Count feature keeps track of how many times you listen to individual tracks. If you're sick of hearing the same old stuff and want to start exploring the deeper recesses of your music library, start by cre- ating a smart playlist that reads Play Count Is 0 (see “Explore Your Library”). Then you can limit the num- ber of songs in the playlist or the playlist’s length (in either hours and minutes or by the amount of space the playlist consumes). In the Selected By pop-up menu, you can further narrow your choices by telling the playlist to pick songs by Album, Artist, Genre, Song Name, Highest or Lowest Rating, Most or Least Often Played, or Most or Least Recently Played (although the universe may implode if you choose Play Count Is 0 and then select Most Often Played). Be sure to enable the Live Updating option, so iTunes will check to see what you've played (in {Tunes or on the iPod) when you next sync your iPod. It’ll then replace any listened-to songs in the playlist with tunes you’ve never played. Be Exclusive In iTunes 4.5, Apple enhanced the Smart Playlist fea- ture in an important way. Previously, there was no easy way to keep sections of your library from appear- ing in a smart playlist. For example, let’s say you've digitized all your old records for the sake of posterity but you don’t want any of the songs on them to ever appear in a smart playlist. Sure, you could add a “vinyl” comment to each archived song and tell the smart playlist not to include any song with that com- Smart Paylat ] @ March the folowing condition. Ray Coue OB) is ino a le Oumar te 25 — TF setocted by | random | Match only checked songs uve updating ment, but wouldn't it be easier if you could simply tell the smart playlist to exclude all songs within certain playlists? Well, with iTunes 4.5 and later, you can. In this example, just place all the songs you've ripped from vinyl into a playlist called From Vinyl. Then con- figure a smart playlist so that it reads Playlist Is Not From Vinyl. From there, you can further narrow down your choices by including or excluding other playlists. Shuffle Along The Autofill feature Apple created for the iPod shuffle works more intelligently than a “how about I fill up your iPod with whatever I like” solution—but it could be smarter. For example, I like Brian Wilson’s “Barn- yard” as much as the next guy, but I prefer that my iPod be filled with songs that are more than seconds- long musical appetizers. Likewise, I don’t want to pack my shuffle with songs contained in large WAV files (the one uncompressed format it supports), with holi- day music during the summer, or with comedy rou- tines when I’m heading to the gym. So I built a smart playlist made up of tracks that were longer than two minutes (and shorter than eight minutes), that were not WAV files, and that were not tagged as Holiday or Spoken Word (see “Keep It Small”). By limiting the playlist to 490MB, I was able to see exactly what was going to go on the shuffle (if you leave the Limit To option disabled, Autofill will choose a subset of tracks from a potentially much larger playlist of songs). As with my other smart playlists, I left the Live Updating option enabled. Once you've created a smart playlist you like, select the iPod shuffle in iTunes’ source list and choose the new playlist from the Autofill From pop-up menu. To refresh the contents of the smart playlist, just select everything in it and press the delete key. Because Live Updating is switched on, the smart playlist will auto- matically repopulate with music. View Your Purchased Music Although the Purchased Music playlist that iTunes creates the first time you buy something from the continues PLAYLIST iPod shuffle’s Autofill can do better with a “, CHECK IT OUT iPod Protection Having recently lost my 60GB iPod photo, | looked into a few things | should have done. So do as | say—and not as | did—by following these iPod-protection tips: Mark It Apple offers free engraving on new iPod and iPod photo models—take advantage of it. It's tough to pretend that an iPod reading “| Belong to Bubba. Hands Off!" is the property of anyone but Bubba. If you already have an iPod, a local jeweler will be happy to scrawl some identifying sentiment on the back. Track It Inspice’s SmartProtec (www.inspice.com) can assist in the recovery of stolen personal electronic devices. You protect your items by registering your gears serial numbers with the service (at no cost). Anyone—the police or a potential buyer, for example—can check with the service to see whether you've reported it stolen. Cloak It When | travel for business, | often place data files on my iPod as a backup. To protect those files, Micromat (www.micromat.com) offers the $40 PodLock—a utility that creates an invisible password-protected partition where you can store your data. The program won't secure your music and photo libraries, and there's nothing in it that will stop someone from reformatting the iPod, but it can help prevent thieves from accessing your private documents. ‘Music Store should contain all your purchased songs, it doesn’t always. Reinstalling iTunes or reconfigur- ing your music library can confuse the playlist and make it forget that you bought those songs. However, you can create a smart playlist that never forgets. Configure the top row of pop-up menus in a new smart playlist lik Kind Contains Protected AAC. Give it a name such as Backup Library, and click on OK. All the purchased music files in your library are now in one playlist. The iPod Mini Playlist Many people—especially those who own iPod minis— wish that the iPod shuffle’s Autofill feature worked with other iPod models. If your iPod is set to update automatically, and if your {Tunes library contains more music than your iPod can hold, iTunes will create a playlist of music to fit—but iTunes isn’t discerning about what it puts in that playlist. It’s just as happy to copy huge AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, and audiobook Keep It Small The feature is nice, but you smart playlist. files to your iPod as it is to grab the tiniest MP3 and Sinai Playin SF vwich | at ‘of the following conditions: Wied TE aerenat contain By Tone TAs grasertiae 1G) 200 Tune TED (bees than sa Ceare TRY [Sees rat contain) Holaay Coat TB) (sees nat contain ‘Senter word TC) SC) oo oo oo Bumtw eo [ve DB) satected by | random 3 3 Match only checked songs uve updating AAC files. If you want to pack as much music as pos- sible onto your mini, you need something smarter. With that in mind, create a series of Kind Does Not Contain conditions for AIFF, WAY, Apple Loss- less, and QuickTime files—which take up a lot of storage space. Then, to avoid packing the mini with songs encoded at high bit rates (the higher the bit rate, the larger the file), limit your playlist to songs that weigh in at less than 192 Kbps. You'll certainly want to exclude the Audiobooks genre as well. Finally, be sure that the top of the playlist reads Match All Of The Following Conditions. If you rate your music, consider adding a rating condition that reads My Rating Is Greater Than number of stars. Be sure to limit the size of this playlist with the Limit To option at the bottom of the Smart Playlist window. For a 4GB iPod mini, this option should read Limit To 3500 MB (you must use megabytes rather than gigabytes because the GB field won't accept decimals, as in 3.5GB). Once you've created this playlist, select your mini in the Source menu and click on the iPod Preferences button. Now enable the Automatically Update Selected Playlists Only option, select the smart playlist you created for your mini, and click on OK. Now the mini will update with your playlist. In the Mood Unless you're the kind of person for whom the party never ends, you're going to want to listen to a far dif- ferent kind of music on Sunday morning than on Sat- urday night. A great way to do so is to use iTunes’ Comments field to create smart playlists. ‘As you traipse through your music collection, find songs for particular situations—mellow sounds for hungover Sunday mornings, or energetic tunes that will get your heart pumping while you exercise. Select multiple songs and choose Get Info from iTunes’ File menu. In the resulting window, click on the Info tab and enter an appropriate word in the Comments field (Sercise, for example). When you're ready to compile your playlist, con- figure the top row of pop-up menus to read Com- ment Contains whatever, where whatever is the mood or situation you'd like a playlist for—Comment Contains Exercise, for instance. Because of its lim- ited storage space, mood playlists are great for the iPod shuffle. The Audiobooks Playlist The fourth-generation iPods, iPod minis, and iPod photos place audiobooks in their own special playlist. If you have an earlier iPod, you can fake an audio- books playlist. Just configure the top row of buttons to read Genre Contains Audiobook. Contributing Editor CHRISTOPHER BREEN is the author of Secrets of the iPod and iTunes, fifth edition (Peachpit Press, 2005). ICON BY PAUL HOWALT SECRETS BY CYRUS FARIVAR CRE, T E create@macworld.com Start Your Own Podcast Imagine running your own radio station—but without the hassle of transmitters, expensive hardware, or training. With Podcasting, it’s that easy. Podcasting is amateur radio at its best: people from all around the world are recording their own broadcasts on topics rang- ing from technology to religion. Listeners subscribe to the broadcasts, which are downloaded to iTunes or to an iPod for listening on-the-go. Podcasts let you interact with audiences in a way that blogs can’t. Last December I started my own Podcast, Ti Place your mike at a 45 to 90 degree angle rel- ‘The Wanderlust Geek (www.wanderlustgeek.com), to p ative to your mouth. This will reduce the plo- share my travel stories from around the world. Writ- sive sound that words beginning with the letter p can cause. ing down the same stories would have taken a lot longer. And sharing my tales verbally added a level of _ mance, Griffin recommends plugging the iMic into a intimacy that written words couldn't have achieved. _self-powered USB hub instead of directly into a Mac. Ie’ surprisingly easy to join the ranks of Podcast- ‘If you have an iPod, you can use Griffin’s $40 iTalk ers. In fact, you probably already have most of what _ voice recorder to record Podcasts while you're out you need. Once you've recorded your broadcast, you and about. The {Talk plugs into the top of your iPod simply put it online and distribute it to others and records audio as a WAV file, which you can later through an online syndication technolo; alled download to iTunes or import into editing software. RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Think of RSS asa You can even go hands-free with the help of a clip-on beacon that announces when new online content is _ mike such as Griffin’s $15 Lapel Mic. available. Listeners use an RSS reader, suchas Thun- Headphones You'll also want to plug a pair of derstone Media’s iPodderX ($20; www.ipodderx headphones into your Mac so you can monitor your com), to find available podcasts and download them voice as you record. This allows you to hear your to iTunes (for more on how to find and listen to Pod- _ voice as others will hear it, and to detect background casts, see “Are You Listening?”). noise your ears might not otherwise pick up. — Software If you're recording directly to your What You Need Mac, you'll need special software to capture the ‘To record a Podeast, you need a audio as you speak. There’s a wide range of options few basic pieces of equipment: _to choose from. If you have the iLife ’05 suite, for Microphone Most iMacs, lap- example, you can use GarageBand 2 for these tasks. tops, and eMacs have internal However, I’ve found that the simplest—and least microphones. But I've found — expensive—option is HairerSoft’s Amadeus II ($30; these mikes a bit lacking in both www.hairersoft.com) for recording and the free range and sound quality. Irecom- Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) for editing. mend going with an external computer mike instead. You can Recording Your Podcast pick up a simple one from Radio ‘To begin recording in Amadeus II, go to Sound: Char- Shack for around $30. It’s defi- acteristics and set Number Of Channels to Mono, | nitely worth the investment. Sampling Rate to 44100Hz, and Sampling Size to 16 The latest PowerBooks and Bit. Under the Sound menu, select Record. A new desktop Macs (excluding the Mac _ window containing a volume meter will appear (see ) mini and the eMac) offer audio-in “Hitting the Mark”). Practice reading your text at the jacks, so you plug the mike right volume you'd be using if you were recording. If you into the computer. If your Mac _ have a naturally quiet voice, you can boost the levels lacks this port, you'll need to plug by moving the gain sliders, which are located under- the mike into a USB audio inter- neath the volume meter. For a clear, full sound, the face such as Griffin Technology’s _ volume levels should occasionally peak into the red iMic ($40; www.griffintechnology but usually remain in the green and yellow areas. — .com). To get the best perfor- continues CREATE Are You Listening? If you're not quite ready to start your own Podcast, you can still get in on the craze by subscribing to other people's Podcasts. The first thing you'll need is a Podcasting client, such as iPodderX, which regularly checks various preset sites to find new content for download. Once you've launched your client, you can use its built-in directory to add new Podcasts. If iPodderX doesn't list the Podcast you're looking for, you can add it by going to Podcasts: Add A Podcast Feed. Then copy the RSS feed address (it usually ends in xm!) and paste it into the Podcast Feed URL field. You can have iPodderX check specified feeds for new content to download. It will add the Podcasts to a new iTunes playlist. If you have your iPod configured for an automatic update, all you have to do is plug in your iPod; iPodderX will do the rest. Here are some Podcasts to get you started: > Daily Source Code (wwwdailysourcecode.com) > The Dawn and Drew Show (www.dawnanddrew.com) > Reel Reviews (www.mwablog.com) > MacCast (maccast.blogspot.com) When you're pleased with the levels, click on the record button and start talking. If you’re alone, imag- ine that you're speaking to someone else in the room and ignore the fact that you're being recorded. You want to make your Podcast as intimate and conversa- tional as possible. When you're done, save the record- ing as an AIFF file. Editing Your Podcast After you’ve recorded your voice track, you can use Audacity to combine multiple takes (getting the best from each one), to delete awkward pauses, or to add embellishments. For editing ideas and instruc- tions on using Audacity, go to macworld.com/0472. ‘To give your recording a more professional touch, consider adding a short musical intro. But remember to stick to noncommercial music that doesn’t require a license from the Recording Industry Association of America. You can create your own clips with programs such as GarageBand. Sites such as FindSounds (www -findsounds.com) and Opuzz. (www.opuzz.com) offer free or inexpensive royalty-free music clips for download. aor Record Sound Record put File > £ & Cancel OK Hitting the Mark Use Amadeus II's volume levels to create a rich, full sound, When you speak, the levels should barely peak into the red areas. Once you’re satisfied with your recording, export it as an AIFF file. Uploading Your Podcast ‘To prepare the exported audio file for the Web, drag it into iTunes and then open that program’s Import- ing preference pane. From the Import Using pull- down menu, choose MP3 Encoder. From the Setting menu, choose Custom. Then set the Stereo Bit Rate to 128 Kbps, the Sample Rate to 44.100 kHz, and Channels to Mono. Return to the library and select the newly imported track. Under the Advanced menu, choose Convert Selection To MP3. Open the song information win- dow (1-1) and fill in the Song (in this case, your Pod- cast entry), Artist, and Album fields. Then press 1-R to bring up the file in a new Finder window, and change the file’s name to better reflect its contents— for example, samplepodcast-2005-06-01.mp3. Once that’s complete, upload the file to a Web server. Many ISPs offer free Web space for cus- tomers. If yours doesn’t, you can usually pay a small fee to have someone host your audio files. Got a .Mac account? Just upload the file to your Sites folder. ‘To make your audio file easily accessible to others, you need to create an RSS feed for it. The easiest way to do this is to create a Weblog. Although you can use any blogging software, Blogger (www.blogger.com) is the easiest to set up. When the blog is up and running, go to www feedburner.com and type in your blog’s address. If you use Blogger, you'll type something like this: myblog. blogspot .com. On the next page, scroll to Additional Services, select the SmartCast option, and then click on the Hide Details link. Enable the ping audio.weblogs.com option at the bottom of the section. Now when you update your blog with new Podcasts, audio.weblogs .com will add them to its list. Return to your Blogger page and create a new entry. You may want to add a little message with details about your Podcast, as well as any technical information, such as file size. In the entry, add a link to the audio file on your Web server. The link will look something like this: <a href="http: //www.example.com/example_ podcast.mp3">Download my podcast here</a> Promote Your Podcast You can publicize your Podcast at Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com) and in the iPodderX direc- tory (ipodderx.com). At Podcast Alley, click on the Add A Podcast link at the top of the page and type in the appropriate information: the title of the Pod- cast, the feed address, and so forth. ‘CYRUS FARIVAR is a freelance technology journalist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His blog is at wwwucfarivarorg. SECRETS BY JIM HEID DIGITAL HUB digitalhub@macworld.com By the Book This article is an excerpt from The Macintosh iLife 04 by Jim Heid (2004; reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., pub- lishing as Peachpit Press). Create CD Inserts in iTunes The iPod and iTunes are great, but sometimes you still need a CD. Maybe you want to listen to music compilations on a long car trip. Or maybe you're backing up the albums you bought from the iTunes Music Store (a good idea, by the way). The problem is, all store- bought CD-Rs look pretty much the same: boring. To give your burned CDs more panache—and to clarify what’s on each one—why not print an insert that slides into the disc’s jewel case? You won’t even need to switch programs. Apple includes print- ing features in iTunes 4.6 that let you do this and more. When printing a case insert from iTunes, you can choose from a variety of designs called themes. Some themes take advantage of the album artwork that accompanies Music Store downloads. You can even put your own artwork on a jewel-case insert with a few clicks of the mouse. CD inserts are also a great way to produce a hard-copy reference of your music library and favorite playlists. Choose Source To switch the artwork display between the currently playing song and the currently selected song, click here. Switch Images ‘A song can contain >} multiple images. al, __ Selected Song, Clicking on the litle arrows displays the next or previous image associated with the song Add Images To display the artwork — ina larger window, click here. To add a new image to the currently selected song, drag the image here. To copy the art into another pro- gram, drag it from here to the program View Art To see album art for a particular song, click on the Show/Hide Artwork button in the iTunes window, Finding CD Artwork iTunes can store album artwork—for example, an image of the CD cover—along with your music. The artwork is embedded into a music file itself, so if you move the file to another Mac, the art moves with it. ‘Music that you buy from the ‘Tunes Music Store usually has artwork. To display it, click on the Show/ Hide Artwork button in the lower left corner of the iTunes window (see “View Art”). From the Artwork pane, you can specify how iTunes displays images, choose between multiple images (if there’s more than one), or even add new images. But what about all the songs in your library that don’t have artwork? If you'd like to add art to them, you have several options. Some free utilities will search for and retrieve artwork over the Internet; I use Fetch Art, by Yoel Inbar (find.macworld.com/ 0045). Like other artwork utilities, it looks up the name of an album on Amazon.com and then retrieves the artwork from Amazon’s site. (For more artwork- related utilities, see www.macilife.com/itunes.) Modify Artwork Settings You can also view and modify a song’s artwork via the Song Information dialog box. Select a song in iTunes, choose Get Info from the File menu (or press 1-1), and then click on the Artwork option. As I mentioned, songs can contain more than one image. But keep in mind that each image increases the size of your music file, thus leaving less free space on your hard drive and iPod. ‘To import a new image into the list, click on Add. To delete an unwanted image, select it and click on Delete. When creating a jewel-case insert, Tunes uses the first image listed in the Artwork Information dialog box. Ifyou have multiple images listed there, you can rearrange their order by dragging them left and right. To use a specific image in a jewel-case insert, drag it so it’s the first image in the list. You can also print your own artwork—for example, a photo from your iPhoto library—on a jewel-case insert. First, add the image to a song. (For a photo, sim- ply drag it from the iPhoto window to the Artwork area in the Song Information dialog box.) Drag the image Powerful Playlist Tricks With iTunes playlists, you can mix and match songs in any way you see fit. You can add a song to as many playlists as you like, or even create a playlist that plays one song five times in a row. After you've created your playlists, you can, of course, play them. But you can also transfer them to an iPod or burn them to create your own compilation CDs. Here are some lesser-known tricks for working with playlists in iTunes 4. Open a Playlist in a Separate Window To open a playlist in its ‘own window, double-click on the empty space to the right of its name. iTunes opens the playlist in a new window and switches its main window to the Library view. You can open as many playlist windows as you like, and then you can simply drag songs between them. This is a handy way to work, since it lets you see the contents of your library and your playlist at the same time. Create a Shopping List In iTunes 4.5 and later, you can drag a song lunes Help Simpe Things simp Things ¢ Sime Things Sime things Simple Things ¢ Get Info Show Song File My Rating Reset Play Count Convert ID3 Tags Convert election to AAC The Lowdown Want to see every playlist that includes a particular song? Just control-click on the song and then select Playlists. Play Next in Party Shuffle add to Party Shuttle povvovuccvny Top 25 Most Played je chilly Faves ‘The Digital Chill Copy preview from the Music Store into a playlist. This can be a handy way to put together a tem- porary shopping list. To help you tell a preview from a full-length song, iTunes displays a 30-second marker (:30) adjacent to a preview song's name. Create a Playlist from a Selection Here's a shortcut for creating a playlist: in the Library view, select the songs you want to include in a playlist, and then go to File: New Playlist From Selection. ‘Tunes will add the songs to a new playlist, which you can then rename. Name Playlists with an iPod in Mind {f you plan to transfer your playlists to an iPod, here’s a trick you can use to ensure that a given playlist will appear at the top of the iPod's Playlists menu. Precede the playlist’s name with a hyphen (-) or a period (.)—for example, "- Mac's Greatest Hits." This cuts down on the time and scrolling required to find a specific playlist. See Where You've Used Songs Curious about which playlists con- tain a particular song? Control-click on the song's name to bring up the contextual menu. Under the Playlists submenu, you'll see a list of all playlists containing the selected song. To jump to a specific playlist, select its name from the Playlists submenu (see "The Lowdown”). From CD to Playlist in One Drag You're about to rip an audio CD and you'd like to add some of its tracks to a playlist. Here’s a shortcut: sim- ply drag the tracks from the CD list to the playlist. ‘Tunes will import the tracks and add them to the playlist for you. so it’s the first one in the list; then print. ‘To reduce the size of the song file, delete the image after printing. Printing a Jewel-Case Insert Step 1 Select a playlist in the Source area, and then choose Print from the File menu. Step 2 Click on the CD Jewel Case Insert option (see “Instant Art”). You'll also see options here for printing several types of song and album lis Next, choose an album design from the Theme pull-down menu. If your playlis India.Arie and Zero 7 India.Arie India.Ari /India.An Strength, Courage, & Wisdom n /india.Ar idle / India.Arie india.Arie India.Arie y Head / India.Arie In India.A\ India.Arie 3, Part Of My Life / India.Arie 4, Beautiful / India.Arie India.Arie 0. Always In multiple albums, you can use the Mosaic themes to produce a collage of album art. Want to use just one album’s art for the cover? Select the playlist song con- taining that art before choosing Print. Step 3 Click on Page Setup and adjust the settings for your printer as needed. Click on OK to return to the Print dialog box, and then click on Print. Step 4 Once it’s printed, trim the case insert using the crop marks at the edge of the image as a guide. Contributing Editor JIM HEID publishes iLife tips at www.macilfe.com. Prine Road Te Instant Art Create a theme for your jewel-case insert by going to the Print dialog box. iTunes adds crop marks to the edges of the finished image to help you get a per- fect cut. Print: CO jewel case insert coe, TE] ke White mosaic | Single cover “Text only (lack & White) Mosaic (Black & White) Single side (Black & White) Large playst Black & White) Gre) RD TS BY JONATHAN SEFF PLAYLIST playlist@me rid.com Fix iTunes and iPod Problems Apple has created a winning combination with iTunes and the iPod— products that are both fun and easy to use. But even these well- designed feats of Apple software and hardware engineering can cause a few headaches from time to time (some of the new difficul- ties are due to changes wrought by Tiger). Here are some problems you're likely to encounter and how to fix them. Sync Contacts and Calendars I used to use iSync to sync my Mac’s Address Book contacts and iCal calendars with my iPod. Now that I've switched to Tiger, my iPod no longer shows up in iSync. Want more tips on digital music? For iPod- and iTunes-related expert advice and breaking news, as well as reviews of all the latest gadgets, check out playlistmag.com. With Tiger, Apple removed syncing for iPods (but not for PDAs and cell phones) from its iSync 2.0 synchro- nization application and moved that functionality into iTunes. To activate synchronization of calendars and contacts with your iPod, first go to iTunes’ iPod pref- erence pane. There you'll find both Contacts and Cal- endars tabs. Within each, you can choose to enable synchronization, as well as whether to syne all con- tacts or calendars or just selected groups or calendars (see “Savvy Scheduling”). The big benefit to moving these functions into iTunes is that the information will automatically update whenever you plug in your iPod—you no longer need to remember to launch iSync and click on the Sync Devices button. Make Your iPod Mount Here are some steps to take if your iPod doesn't mount, or if it doesn't appear in iTunes or the iPod Software Updater utility: 1. Make sure that the iPod is plugged directly into a FireWire port, rather than a chain of FireWire devices (the iPod requires just about all the power a FireWire port can deliver), or that it's plugged into a high-power USB 2.0 port (your Mac won't recognize the iPod if it's using a low-power USB port, such as the ones on your keyboard). 2. Your iPod may be frozen. Reset it by unplugging the iPod and holding down the menu and select (center) buttons on newer iPod and iPod mini models, or the play/pause and menu buttons on older iPods, until you see the Apple logo on the iPods screen. 3. Restart your Mac while holding down the shift key to disable startup items. If your iPod responds well to this treatment (that is, if it mounts properly), you should use the iPod Software Updater to restore the software it shipped with (note that this will delete all the music and playlists on your iPod). 4. If the iPod still won't mount, reset it and then hold down the play and select buttons to start it up in Disk Mode (similar to the Mac's FireWire Target Disk mode), forcing it to mount. An iPod that mounts only in Disk Mode also requires software restoration. —CHRISTOPHER BREEN Savvy Scheduling With iTunes taking over duties from iSync, getting your contacts and calendars onto your iPod is easier than ever Access Your Protected Music Files After | upgraded to Tiger, songs | had purchased from the iTunes Music Store stopped syncing with my iPod and no longer played in iTunes. For some reason, upgrading to Tiger Maes when it comes to iTunes Musi I’ve witnessed people connecting their iPods after an upgrade to Tiger, only to find that their pur- chased music wouldn’t syne as it had before. And the first time I launched iTunes after upgrading, I could select a purchased song in iTunes, but when I attempted to play it on the Mac, nothing hap- pened. If you're having this problem, the solution is simple: select Deauthorize Computer from iTunes’ Advanced menu, and then double-click on one of your protected purchased music files. ‘Tunes will prompt you to enter your password, and it will then connect to a server to reestablish your ability to play and transfer those files (don’t worry, iTunes continues confuses many tore content. PLAYLIST (Computer Authorew-oen. $ mactines are aathoreed ta slay “ume Cuantrorre as surthaved mith fia account Instant Reset Apple makes it easy to deau- thorize all your Macs, wherever they may be, with the click of a button won't interpret this procedure as adding another authorized computer). Reset Your Authorized Macs When | try to authorize a Mac to play my purchased music, iTunes claims I've reached my limit. If you've authorized five computers _ to listen to songs you've purchased — from the iTunes Music Store, then you’ve reached Apple’s limit. To listen on another computer, you'll need to deauthorize one (in iTunes, choose Advanced: Deauthorize Computer). But what if you've swapped hard drives or sold an old Mac, or what if you just don’t have access to one of the com- puters you want to deauthorize? Select Music Store in iTunes’ Source window, and then log in to your iTunes account by clicking on your name next to the word Account in the upper right corner, entering your password, and clicking on the View Account button. If you’ve used up all your authorizations, you’ll see a line that reads “Computer Authorizations: 5 machines are autho- rized to play music purchased with this account.” Click on the Deauthorize All button (see “Instant Reset”), and Apple will clear its database of all Macs authorized to play songs linked to your account— including machines with dead hard drives, those you’ve given away, and so on (note that this button appears only when you've used up all five of your authorizations). The next time you try to listen to your purchased music on any Mac, iTunes will prompt you to enter your password and authorize that computer. Current Hit Sick of not seeing the correct artwork for the current song? Change the album-art window's title bar to Now Playing. Display Artwork for Current Songs When iTunes switches to a new song, the album art doesn’t change along with it. By default, ‘Tunes shows you the album art for the track you’ve selected and highlighted—that way, you 2. CHECK IT OUT Cut the Cord One major problem with traditional headphones is that they tether you to your iPod, and that connecting cord can Teally get in the way. Logitech (www.logitech — com) has come up with a solution: its new Wireless Headphones for iPod. You can use these $150 headphones as far as 30 feet away from your iPod, with the aid of a Blue- tooth 2.1 wireless adapter. Molded in white plastic with chrome embellishments that com- ) plement Apple's original iPod design, the Wireless Headphones are compatible with any iPod that @ uses a dock connector. They're equipped with 40mm full-range neodymium drivers. Controls on the headphones let you adjust volume as well as control what's playing with forward, back, and play/pause buttons. The headphones use a behind-the-head headband design and weigh 3.2 ounces (the adapter adds another ounce). Logitech's wireless headphones rely on rechargeable batteries that last as long as 8 hours per charge and take about 2.5 hours to recharge fully. You can charge the adapter and headphones simultaneously with the included AC adapter.—rerer COHEN don’t have to play a song to see the art associated with it. If you'd prefer to see the cover for the song you’re listening to at any given moment, click on the album- art window's title bar (see “Current Hit”) to toggle it from Selected Song to Now Playing. Exclude Certain Songs from Shuffle When shuffling through the music in my library, | don’t really want to hear comedy routines or my voice recordings—but iTunes doesn't differentiate between those and music. You could create a smart playlist, but another way is to use Tunes’ check boxes. iTunes picks only songs with check marks to the left of their names, so you can just deselect the songs you want excluded— they'll still play if you select them manually. If you have lots of songs to exclude, create a playlist with all the songs in it, and then select all of them and control-click on one of the tracks. iTunes will give you an Uncheck Selection option—much easier than clicking on check boxes one at a time. Senior News Editor JONATHAN SEFF alternates between a 40GB fourth- generation iPod and a 512MB iPod shuffle, and his iTunes library is approaching 19,000 songs. ICON BY PAUL HOWALT SECRETS BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN PLAYLIST playlist@me Want more tips on digital music? For iPod- and iTunes-related expert advice and breaking news, as well as reviews of all the latest gadgets, check out playlistmag.com. Burner Bonanza You can use Toast to burn audio discs directly from cone drive to another. Better Audio Burning iTunes is a great tool for ripping, encoding, and managing your music— and it’s free—but even Apple wouldn't claim that it’s the be-all and end- all for creating audio CDs. iTunes just doesn’t have some advanced features. With a program such as Roxio’s $100 Toast 6 Titanium, $100 Jam 6, or $200 Toast with Jam 6 (www.roxio.com), you can do more with your music and create a greater variety of audio discs. Making Copies Backing up audio CDs with iTunes is a tedious process. You need to rip them as AIFF files (by going to iTunes’ Importing preference pane and changing the Import Using setting to AIFF Encoder) and then burn the resulting files back to a CD-R. And OS X’s Disk Utility won't let you create an image of an audio But ‘Toast makes duplicating audio CDs easy by letting you copy an audio CD directly from one opti- cal drive to another. If you have multiple burners, just choose the drive you want to copy from in the Read From pop-up menu (see “Burner Bonanza”), and choose the drive you want to record with in the pop- up menu that appears at the bottom of the Toast win- dow. Then click on the Record button and watch as ‘Toast copies your disc. Toast also gives you the option of saving audio CDs as disk images (instead of copying them directly to blank CDs)—ideal if you have only one burner or if you plan to make multiple copies of a disc. You can also mount these images, and they'll play back in iTunes as if they were physical audio CDs. And when burning audio CDs, iTunes creates a plain-vanilla disc. If you'd like to create an enhanced audio CD that also includes pictures and text, or if you want to fashion a disc that includes CD-Text (information, such as the album and song title, that appears in the display of compatible players), a tool such as Toast is necessary. Mind the Gap One of iTunes’ aggravating quirks is its inability to create discs with seamlessly connected tracks. For example, the last several tracks of the Beatles’ classic Abbey Road album flow continuously. But even if you configure iTunes so it doesn’t put a gap between the tracks when you burn them Recorder Setiings Pioneer DVD-RW OVE-117D Other Shared Recorder. tant GARRET Perer OVO EW OVA-LEEO senor Wiring | Mecer a Ow a Whe esaee (Ore Oe Nr la seobeayen Saar neni (Go tite Mode oan mw SB Unstey necavtsr Sattngt Before Wreieg Once Is Best Toast’s Disk-At-Once option lets you burn CDs that have seamless transitions or CDs that contain gaps of differing lengths. Burning preference pane), you'll still hear a tiny hic- cup between songs. If you think you might burn audio CDs from your ripped music, consider joining multiple tracks into one at the time of import (Advanced: Join CD Tracks). However, this leaves you with long tracks that you can’t navigate easily. And suppose you want no gap between tracks two and three, but a two-second gap between tracks five and six? iTunes can’t help you. ‘Toast supports a feature called Disc-At-Once (DAO), which keeps the laser on between the tracks it’s burning. DAO maintains the seamless track flow when burning a CD from uncompressed files on your Mae, copying from one CD to another, or copying from a disk image to a CD (see “Once Is Best”). It also lets you record tracks with gaps of different lengths between them (the program offers gaps from zero to eight seconds long). Creating a seamless CD from compressed (MP3 or AAC) files in your iTunes library is a different mat- ter, however. To create smooth transitions between iTunes tracks, you need a tool that can cross-fade one track into another (in other words, overlap portions of each track and fade the first track out while fading the second in). iTunes’ cross-fade feature affects only playback in iTunes, not burning. Although Toast doesn’t include a cross-fade feature, its professional continues PLAYLIST Make It Smooth Jam's cross-fade tools help you smooth over gaps between tracks, rd Coeet sibling, Jam, does. (Note that with Tiger and Quick- ‘Time 7, you can no longer use Toast or Jam to burn protected AAC files.) With Jam, you can not only impose cross-fades on tracks and burn those effects to disc, but also change the cross-fade’s shape and duration (see “Make It Smooth”). This allows you to create a more natural- sounding cross-fade, one that’ likelier to cover up the audio hiccup that occurs between tracks. As with ‘Toast, you can pick gaps of different lengths between tracks—although with Jam, these gaps can be of any length (perfect if you want that surprise bonus track to begin 45 seconds after your listener thinks the last track has ended). CHECK IT OUT Sound Advice For years, Ultimate Ears (www.ultimateears.com) has been offering personalized in-ear- canal headphones (or "canalphones”), which are custom-molded to perfectly fit a user's ears. However, with prices starting at $550, the market for these products has been lim- ited mainly to professional musicians and serious audio geeks. Now the company has introduced the first two models of its new superfi series of consumer canalphones. These models are universal-fit products: you choose the tips— from four rubber-tip sizes and one foam-tip size—that best fit your ears. The $249 super.fi 5Pro features two balanced armatures—one for high frequencies and one for low frequencies—that are identical to those found in the company's $550 UE-5c. The $199 supersi SEB (EB stands for “Extended Bass") consists of one balanced armature and a ported diaphragm for low frequencies. Although the overall sound of the 5EB isn’t as refined as that of the 5Pro, its additional bass response should appeal to people who enjoy certain types of music (hip-hop, rap, and rock, for example). Each model is available in white or black and comes with two cases, and each includes a '/s-to- ‘fa-inch adapter, a /s-inch attenuator for use with ) overly loud airline headphone jacks, and a clean- ing tool (hey, you're sticking these things deep in your ears—wax happens).—DAN FRAKES Added Features Teast and Jam (and Toast with Jam, which includes both apps and additional ‘Toast features) perform other tricks that iTunes can’t. Support for High-Resolution Files iTunes can con- vert the files it supports (44.1kHz and 48kHz AIFF, WAV, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless files) to a for- mat compatible with audio CDs, but it doesn’t know what to do with higher-resolution audio files—files created in professional audio applications with spe- cial hardware. Toast and Jam can burn an audio file of up to 192kHz and 64 bits to a standard audio CD. The ‘Toast with Jam package can even add Dolby Digital files to an audio CD. DVD Audio Discs Although iTunes can back up your music as data to a DVD-R disc, you can’t play these discs in regular AV equipment. Toast with Jam can create DVD Music Albums—DVDs with as much as 36 hours of two-channel, Dolby Digital-encoded music (less in PCM format). The discs include basic navigation menus and on-screen “now playing” infor- mation, and a standard DVD player will play them. Convert and Restore LPs and Tapes You can use iTunes to rip CDs but not to record audio from a computer's audio-input port. With CD Spin Doctor (a program included with ‘Toast and with Roxio’s $50 The Boom Box), you can record your old LPs and tapes to your Mac. The program can recognize gaps between songs and automatically segment albums into tracks for you; it can also remove pops and crackles. Track and Album Normalizing iTunes includes the Sound Check feature, which balances the volume of tracks so they more closely match one another. This isn’t always a desirable effect, because audio engi- neers purposely master recordings so that some tracks are quieter than others, and when you impose Sound Check, you lose the balance between soft and loud recordings on an album. Jam lets you balance (normalize) tracks either individually or in groups; you'd balance them individually to give tracks from different CDs the same volume, and you'd balance a group of tracks to increase an album's overall volume without boosting all the tracks to the same volume. The Next Step If you do little more than rip CDs, listen to music in iTunes and on your iPod, and compile the occa- sional mixed CD, iTunes is a great tool that will serve you well. In fact, Steve Jobs recently announced that iTunes 4.9 will support Podcasting, so the application is clearly growing. If you need more from your audio CDs, however, it may be time to look beyond iTunes. For Mac users, Toast and Jam are excellent choices. ~ Contributing Editor CHRISTOPHER BREEN is the author of Secrets of the iPod and iTunes, fifth edition (Peachpit Press, 2005), and the editor in chief of Playlistmag.com, SECRETS BY JO ATHAN SEFF PLAYLIST world.com playlist@me Want more tips on digital music? For iPod- and iTunes-related expert advice and breaking news, as well as reviews of all the latest gadgets, check out playlistmag.com. Get In 10 AppleScripts for iTunes AppleScripting is a powerful way to automate repetitive (and often tedious) tasks on the Mac. Once you start using a good script, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. The good news is that you don’t have to know how to write scripts in order to take advantage of them. There are tons of AppleScripts on the Web (most of them free down- loads), and quite a few of them are for iTunes. If you're an iTunes user who hasn't yet jumped on the AppleScript train, now’s a great time to climb aboard. ‘To start you off, I asked Doug Adams—who runs the Web site Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes (www.doug scripts.com/itunes)—to offer his top picks from the more than 300 scripts on his site. All the scripts listed here have been certified to work with the latest version of iTunes in Tiger (OS X 10.4). (You can download a zip archive of all the scripts described here from macworld.com/0588, or visit Doug’s site to download these and other scripts.) Once you download a script, you'll need to install it to make it work in iTunes. Quit iTunes if it’s running, and drop your script in /your user folder! Library/iTunes/Scripts. If this is your first foray into iTunes scripts, you'll need to create a Scripts folder (or just download the set and drop the resulting On the Actions AppleScript is great, but not everyone wants to spend time learning how to write scripts. And thanks to Tiger, now you don't have to. OS X 10.4 introduces Automator— Scripts folder in the right place). Then relaunch | sptcacnoce iTunes, and you'll find Tone that you can access your Feria scripts by clicking on the | | aor script icon in the menu bar a (between the Window and Funk, Help items). ae worse 1. | Hate That iTunes a If you're sick of the stan- || SSomanne dard Done chime that ha * iTunes plays after import- aD 2 ing files (or after running some of the import or con- Sound Off Change—or vert scripts described later _disable—the chime that in this article), you're in iTunes sounds when it luck. This applet lets you finishes encoding. choose one of OS X’s built- in sounds, select any AIFF file on your Mac, or turn off the chime altogether (see “Sound Off”). To launch it, you double-click on it instead of selecting scripting for the rest of us. Unlike AppleScript, Automator allows any- ‘one to put together a workflow by dragging and dropping a series of actions into a window, instead of having to learn complex program- ming commands (see "Easy Auto- mation”). Apple includes a bunch of Automator actions for iTunes and the iPod, and Doug Adams. has put together a series of seven. actions—Get Selected Tracks or Selected Playlist, Choose Encoder, Restore Encoder, Convert Tracks, Copy Tracks to Playlist, Copy Tracks to iPod, and Make AAC Tracks it via the Script menu. 2. Find Album Art- work with Google When you buy a music track from the iTunes Music Store, the file contains embedded album art. But for any music you’ve ripped from your own CD col- lection, you'll have to add cover art yourself. This script uses a selected track’s album and song title to search Bookmarkable—that you can download from macworld.com/ 0589 and start using. Easy Automation With Automator, you can create workflows for apps such as iTunes—no programming skills required. (via Google’s Images page) for artwork. You can then manually drag the artwork to a song or group of songs in iTunes to add it. continues PLAYLIST Trash [+il> JLeimie-} 12 phates — Cover Me Easily send album art to a special album in iPhoto 5. 3. Export Artwork to iPhoto If you'd like to keep a collection of your tracks’ cover art handy, this script will export the artwork of the selected tracks or a selected playlist to a new album in iPhoto 5 called My iTunes Artwork (see “Cover Me”). 4. Make Bookmarkable Audiobooks are bookmarkable—that is, they remem- ber where you stopped playing them; when you return, they pick up at the same spot. If you’d like sim- ilar functionality with other files, this script makes any AAC track bookmarkable by changing its file type to M4B. Bookmarking can be particularly useful for long songs, captured streams, or Podcasts (as long as they’re AAC files). 5. Tracks without Artwork to Playlist Want to add artwork to your tracks but don’t know which ones are missing art? This script scans any CHECK IT OUT Sonic Boom : Roxio (www.roxio.com)—maker of the CD- and DVD- burning applications Toast and Popcorn—has just introduced The Boom Box, a collection of five previ- ously released sound utilities to use with iTunes and the iPod. The $50 suite includes Audio Hijack, iPodder X, iSpeak It, MusicMagic Mixer, and Roxio’s own CD Spin Doctor. Rouge Amoeba's Audio Hijack lets users grab audio from nearly any application on a Mac, including streaming audio from RealPlayer and Windows Media Player. Thunderstone Media's iPodder X is a utility that lets you browse, subscribe to, and download Podcasts (features now in iTunes 4.9, too). ZappTek’s iSpeak It converts text files into spoken-word audio files that you can listen to on-the-go. Predixis's MusicMagic Mixer analyzes the sound wave of each audio file and lets you build intelligent playlists for iTunes. And CD Spin Doctor (previously included only with Roxio's Toast) lets you digitize audio from vinyl, cassette, and other analog audio sources—and it includes noise filtering and automatic track creation.—PeTER COHEN selected tracks, playlist, or library, and adds items that don’t have artwork to a new playlist named No Art. You can then add the artwork manually (the Find Album Artwork with Google script can help here). 6. Google Lyric Search Did the Beatles really sing “A girl with colitis goes by” in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”? Find out with this simple script, which searches for song lyrics by submitting the name and artist of the selected or currently playing track (along with the word /yric) to Google, using your default browser. 7. This Tag, That Tag Scripts With convenient online databases, you no longer have to enter tag information by hand every time you rip a new CD. But the information you get on the Web isn’t always right, and sometimes tags get switched or you want to tweak something. These four scripts help you swap and copy data between, and append and prepend data to, tags in iTunes. 8. Quick Convert Say you have iTunes set to rip songs as AAC files, but you occa- Convert tracks using. s ‘ “RAC Encoder sionally want to import songs as AFF Encoder sless files or convert a | MESS : This script lets you | | wavtreoder rip songs from a CD or convert tracks in your library (to a new playlist), using your choice of available encoders, without hav- ing to open the iTunes Import- ing pane (see “Take Your Pick”). After iTunes finishes encoding tracks, the script restores the default encoder you've set in iTunes’ preferences. Take Your Pick Temporarily change iTunes’ encoder without altering its preferences. 9. Rip to iPod Don’t care about keeping songs in your iTunes library—just want your music on your iPod? Then this is the script for you. Run it to rip a CD with your choice of encoder, copy the tracks to your iPod, and then delete and remove them from your iTunes library. It’s the closest thing to seamless CD- to-iPod importing. 10. Import iPod Audio Files Need to copy tracks from your iPod to your Power- Book’s ‘Tunes Library? This script adds songs to your Music folder just as if you were ripping them from CDs locally, and it will even create a new playlist for your imported songs if you want. The included ProgBar application (which also goes in the Scripts folder) shows the download status. (Note that you'll need to have your iPod in the manual-update mode to use this script.) JONATHAN SEFF is Macworld’s senior news editor—and a firm believer in the power of AppleScript. ICON BY PAUL HOWALT SECRETS BY CYRUS FARIVAR GEEK FACTOR vorid.com Powered by Linux With Linux on your third-generation iPod, you'll be able to view very simple images (left) and play many games, such as the ever mesmerizing Tetris (right). The Linux iPod Imagine using your iPod and a regular old microphone to record studio- quality audio. Or sitting on a commuter train and playing Othello, Pong, Tetris, or Asteroids. All this and more is possible when you install Linux on your third-generation or earlier iPod. Best of all, one soft reset, and you're back in Apple’s iPod operating system, listening to your tunes. Do the Deed ‘To get started, you need your iPod, the FireWire cable you use to attach your iPod to your Mac, and free software from the open-source iPod Linux Project. Currently, the software supports all third- generation and earlier iPods. Work is under way on adding the fourth-generation iPod, the iPod photo, and the iPod mini to that list. (To make sure your iPod is supported, go to macworld.com/0372.) Download the iPod-Linux Installer from macworld.com/0373. It will take up about SMB of your iPod's hard-disk space. It’s unlikely that anything bad will happen while you're installing Linux, but it would behoove you to back up your music to your Mac first (if you don’t already keep your master files there). ‘That way, if some unforeseen software glitch happens, you won’t lose your entire collection. The installation process is very straightforward. Plug your iPod in and make sure that it’s mounted on your desktop. If you can’t see it, open iTunes and select iTunes: Preferences: iPod. Select the Enable Disk Use option and click on OK. Now you can run the installer. Once it’s completed, eject your iPod through iTunes or by dragging its icon to the Trash. Disconnect it and then reboot it by holding down the menu and play/pause buttons simultaneously. When you see the Apple logo, press and hold the back button. The smiling face of Tux (the emblem- atic penguin that is Linux’s mascot) should greet you, and then you'll see a rapid series of scrolling text mes- sages (see “Hello, Tux!”). In a few seconds, the new interface should appear. Known as podzilla, it looks very much like the iPod’s familiar facade but includes many new options. Enjoy the Linux Goodies Of course, there is a simple pleasure in having Tux’s mug grace your iPod when you turn it on. But that’s just the beginning of the fun. Record Audio Probably the coolest thing you can do after you install Linux on your iPod is record high- quality audio. Using Apple’s software, you can create recordings only at up to 8kHz with your iPod, and to do so you must purchase and use an add-on device, such as the Griffin /Talk voice recorder ($40; www .griffintechnology.com). A Linux-enabled third-generation iPod circumvents this restriction. You can record mono audio at up to 96kHz. (If you're feeling really geeky, try recording in stereo by using the line-in pins on a modified dock connector. To identify the pins you'll wire the mike to, see macworld.com/0390.) To put those numbers into context, CDs are 44.1kHz, and Digital Audio Tape (DAT) is 48kHz. Most pro studio recording is done at 24 bits and 96kHz. Newer DVD-Audio discs also go up to 96kHz. The higher the quality you have up front, the better your recording will sound in the end. Any simple computer microphone should work as a recording device. In fact, you can even use your left earbud. Mind you, the recording quality is not per- fect, but it’s surprisingly good. Listen to a sample at macworld.com/0374. If you’re a musician, this could be a highly portable way to record your live shows. To try this out, boot your iPod into Linux and plug in'a microphone. Scroll down to the Extras directory and click on Recordings. Scroll down to Sample Rate and adjust it as you see fit. Then scroll back up to Mic Record and press the iPod’s center button to begin recording. Press the play/pause but- ton to stop or restart recording. Voila—you’ll find your recording stored as a 16-bit sample under Voice Recordings. When you connect your iPod to your Mac and soft-reset back into the iPod OS, {Tunes will pick up this recording and create a playlist for it. View Images What else can your iPod do? How about acting as a very crude photo viewer? OK, it won't turn your third-generation iPod into an iPod photo, but the supported iPods can display images (including JPEG, GIF, and BMP files) in black and white. That’s good enough to sneak a quick peek at a scan of your child’s latest drawing (see “Powered by Linux”). ‘To access this feature, hook up your iPod to your Mac, and then create a new folder at the iPod’s root level. Call it something like img. Put a small photo— say, less than 100K—in the folder. Now disconnect your iPod and boot into Linux. Using the scroll wheel, select File Browser and then the img folder. Press the iPod’s center button to open the folder. Select the file name and wait a moment. The image will open in 2-bit gray scale. Simple photos with lots of contrast will come out better; those with subtle color distinctions will look like mud. Play More Games ‘This slimmed-down version of Linux, called uClinux, comes with a number of games, including Othello, Pong, ‘Tetris (known as BlueCube), Asteroids (Steroids), and Minesweeper (Nimesweeper)—it even offers a version of Etch A Sketch called PodDraw. To play a game, use the scroll wheel to open the Extras menu. Scroll down. to Games, and then select a game. Press the menu button to exit. Now when you get tired of music while traveling on a plane, train, or bus, you’ve got other options. Access Other Goodies Under the Extras menu, you'll find a calculator application, perfect for doing simple math at the grocery store. There’s also a Calendar application, but unlike Apple’s version, it What’s Cooking The busy programmers at the iPod Linux Project have more cool things planned. Check the status of upcoming projects at macworld.com/0375. Here’s a sampling: > iPod to iPod Connection Status: beta This program will enable direct transfer of files between two iPods when they're connected to each other, something that's currently impossible. > Game Boy Emulator Status: in progress Play Super Mario Land on your iPod. > Doom Status: in progress Doom, the classic first-person shooter, has been ported to graphing calculators, so why not to the iPod? ~ can’t syne with iCal, nor does it display entries for each day. Ill do for finding out what day of the week the 15th falls on next month. But for any serious personal- appointment making, you'll want to switch to the calendar that’s avail- able through the regular iPod OS. One iPod, el » Two OSes — If you try to play music with your Linux Pod, you'll quickly notice that your songs don’t sound very good. In fact, they probably skip. Ifyou try to play a song and then play ‘Tetris while listening to it, the song stops. In short, don’t bother. A simple soft reset (press the menu button and the play/pause button) is all it takes to switch back to your regular iPod OS. Want to go back to Linux? Press those buttons again; when you see the Apple logo, press the back button, and Linux takes over. The iPod Linux Project is open source, which means new features are always in the pipeline (see “What’s Cooking”), and anyone with sufficient pro- gramming background can help. For details, go to www.ipodlinux.org. The developers also maintain a blog (www.ipodlinux.org/blog) that provides news and updates. Hello, Tux! When the Linux penguin greets you, you'll know you're not in an Apple 05 anymore. Now Hear This! Are you itching to know more about Bluetooth, or to see some of the crazy ways people are still using the Newton? Then go to macworld.com/ 0573 to hear the CYRUS FARIVAR is a freelance technology journalist living in the San Fran- new Geek Factor cisco Bay Area. He was an editorial intern at Macworld magazine in 2004. Podcast. See his blog at cfarivar.org. GEEK FACTOR perrume, the ar course, <a href. ael'n So hoppy you're mine!</p> Drean">last sumer at the beach?</a></p>dr><psiiha bout Janes Broun could express <a hré albun=20 All Tine Greatest Hits |Ssor Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine, Pt. Teel -</as</p> ) start_here <TITLE> Ooh, Baby, Baby-</TITLE> Doh, ay Little snookuns! -broqp=T "LL never forget the night ve met. The moon, the smell of your Hack the iPod’s Notes You're in love, and you’re looking for the perfect present for your sweet-potato pie. You’ve already bestowed red roses, vintage wine, and trips to exotic lands. Why not give a more personal gift—one that expresses your amorous emotions with song? Of course we’re talking about an iPod replete with love notes. The third-generation iPods and the iPod mini include a new Notes area that can hold 1,000 4Kb plain-text files. Packing your iPod with these files is a cinch: just create a plain-text document with ‘Apple’s TextEdit or Microsoft Word, and copy the file into the iPod’s Notes folder. But there’s more to Notes than individual text docu- ments. Thanks to Notes’ sup- port for basic HTML tags, you can link notes to one another and to audio files stored on your iPod. You can also configure the iPod to lock out everything but the Notes area; that way, viewers must start there. Called Notes- Only mode or Museum mode, it holds potential for museum curators, tour guides, or real- tors interested in presenting facts about a painting, a histor- ical center, or an overpriced property. Right now, though, we’re interested in matters of the heart. The Truth about Tags First, we must touch upon the iPod’s limited HTML support. When I say that it supports jodsmusic? Up > the Way T Denote the Note This mishmash of text and brackets (bottom) tums into a love note (top) when dragged into the iPod's Notes folder. basic tags, I mean basic. The iPod can’t display styled text, so you'll find no tags for creating italic or boldface type. Instead, the included tags are designed to help the iPod interpret Web pages and to create links. ‘These tags are limited to line breaks (<br>), open- ing and closing paragraph marks (<p> and </p>, respectively), and a tag for creating titles (<TITLE>The Title You Want</TITLE>). Normal HTML rules don’t apply: a <p> tag, for instance, doesn’t create a space after a paragraph. You need to use a <p> and a <br> tag, as we do here, or use two <p>s or two <br>s. For example, type this into your text editor: <TITLE> Ooh, Baby, Baby</TITLE> Ooh, my little snookums!<br><p>I'll never forget the night we met. The moon, the smell of your per- fume, the drenching rain.</p><br><p>I'm so happy you're mine!</p> Then save the file as plain text and mount your iPod as an external drive. (To do that, select the iPod in the iTunes Source window, click on the Display iPod Options button in the right-hand corner of the iTunes window, select Enable Disk Use, and click on OK.) Copy the file to the iPod’s Notes folder. You'll get a note that looks like this: Oob, my little snookums! L'il never forget the night we met. The moon, the smell of your perfume, the drenching rain. T’m so happy you're mine! The Missing Links You’ve made a good start, but you may find it difficult to really bare your soul ina 4Kb file. You might want to create additional notes and link to them from the original Ooh, Baby, Baby note. To do so, enter <a href="the note you refer to">the link text</a>. For example, you may want to include a link to a love letter stored in a file called Letter] txt, which you've placed in the iPod’s Notes folder. Let’s say you want that link to be the words Words of Love—you'd type <a href="Letter1.txt">Words of Love</a>. On the iPod, the words Words of Love will be underlined. To travel to that note, simply scroll down until the link appears, and then press the Select button. If two links appear on the screen, the active link will be displayed as a solid black line. Other links will be gray. Use the scroll wheel to acti- vate links above or below the currently active link. PHOTO BY PETER BELANGER Noteworthy Tools 1s your mind reeling with possibilities for the iPods Notes feature? You are not alone. Some intrepid folks have already written utilities and AppleScripts that help push it to the limit: > Flying Meat Software's $20 VoodooPad and free VoodooPad Lite (www.flying Mmeat.com) let you create linked iPod-ready notes without having to enter a single line of HTML. > Kainjow Software's Pod2Go (free [donations accepted]; www.kainjow.com/pod2go) can download news feeds, weather, movie schedules, horoscopes, stock information, song lyrics, driving directions, and more onto your iPod. > Tom Sutcliffe's Book2Pod (free; www.tomsci.com/book2pod) converts long plain- text files—books from Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pq/), for example—into small linked-text files. Book2Pod can create files that exceed the iPod's limits of 4Kb per note and 1,000 notes per iPod. > Kainjow Software's BiblePod (free; www.biblepod.kainjow.com) allows you to read books and chapters from the King James Bible on your (Notes-capable) iPod. > Apple's iPod AppleScripts (free; www.apple.com/applescriptlipod/) can do every- thing from extracting a MacCentral.com article from a Safari page and making it iPod-readable to letting you copy text to the clipboard and put it in the iPod's Notes folder as multiple linked text files. > The Mail2iPod AppleScript (free; www.find.macworld.com/0022), posted on macosxhints.com, lets you read Apple Mail e-mail on your iPod. Use the Menu button to return to the main text when you're done. If you’d rather not clutter the top level of the Notes folder with hundreds of notes—and if you want to ensure that your sweetie starts in the right place—you can create subfolders within the Notes folder. To refer to files within one of these subfold- ers, your link must use this form: <a href=" folder name/note name">the link text</a>. For instance, if you have a file called Our First Kiss.txt inside a folder called Great Dates, you might create a Things I’ll Never Forget link to it: <a bref="Great Dates/Our First Kiss.txt"> Things 1/11 Never Forget</a>. File names in links are not case sensitive, but you will need to spell out the full name of the note, including the .txt extension if it has one. And you can’t link to notes stored outside the iPod’s Notes folder. Keep in mind that a folder can be a destination, so you could create a link that takes you to the Great Dates folder (which, presumably, contains several notes) by typing <a href="Great Dates"> Unforgettable Moments</a>. Say It with Song Unless you're romantically linked with someone who understands geeks and loves gadgets, the object of your affection may wonder why you've put a mash note on an iPod. It is, after all, a music player, and you'll get far more bang for your buck if links in your notes play songs or sound effects that describe your feelings. For instance, you might add an entry to Ooh, Baby, Baby that reads, “When I see you, my heart sings.” ‘To link the words my heart sings to the Ohio Play- ers’ “Love Rollercoaster” on the iPod, use this form: <a href="song-Love Rollercoaster">my heart sings</a>. You could just as easily link to a stored recording of yourself reading a Shakespearean sonnet or of the sound of a gentle, lapping ocean to accompany a recounting of hours spent beneath the boardwalk. Like other links, the phrase in the note will be underlined. When you highlight the link by scrolling down the page and then press the iPod’s Select but- ton, the song or sound you've linked to will play. When it’s done, the iPod returns to the note. You can also use links to point to a particular playlist, genre, artist, composer, or album. If you wanted to link to the playlist Funky Love Songs, with the phrase “Select me to groove all night!” you’d create this link: <a href="ipod:msic?playlist=Funky Love Songs">Select me to groove all night!</a>. If your iPod has more than one version of a song—both the studio version and the live record- ing, for example—you can combine filters to zero in on a specific song. A link that reads “Select me to hear how I feel!” could play the studio version of James Brown’s “Prisoner of Love,” from the album Can Your Heart Stand It!! Just use this form: <a href="ipod:music?album=Can Your Heart Stand It!!&song-Prisoner of Love">Select me to hear how I feel!</a>. Locking It Down Your present is nearly complete. But your gift will be far more effective if it launches directly to the Notes screen when your loved one first switches on the iPod. For this to happen, you must configure the iPod to launch into NotesOnly mode. ‘To do so, create a plain-text document and enter this line of text: <meta name="NotesOnly" content="true">. Save the file with the name Preferences, and copy it to the top level of the iPod’s Notes folder. When. the iPod next launches, it will display the Notes screen, and it won’t let you navigate outside the Notes area. You can steer to notes with the scroll wheel and the Select button, but you can’t access screens other than those in the Notes area unless you hook the iPod up to your Mac and remove the Preferences file you placed in the Notes fold