Using an iPod to Store Digital Pictures

If you have ever been taking photos away from your computer and run out of room on your camera’s memory card, you’ll immediately understand why being able to store images you take on your iPod is a good thing. You can quickly upload images from your camera’s memory onto your iPod and erase the card so that you can take more pictures. When you get back to your computer, you can upload the images from the iPod to your favorite photo application.

To be able to store images on an iPod, you need some way to move the images from the camera’s memory card onto the iPod’s hard drive. At press time, there is only one device that allows yo to do this: the Belkin iPod Media Reader. This very versatile device enables you to read files from the most common types of memory cards used in digital cameras, including CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, or MultiMediaCard.

Working with Sound You Have Recorded

There are a number of things you can do with sounds you have recorded. These include the following:

• You can play sounds you have recorded by highlighting the sound you want to hear on the Voice Memos screen and pressing the Play button. You’ll see the Now Playing screen, and the sound will play.
• You can delete sounds you have recorded by highlighting the sound you want to delete and pressing the Select button. You’ll see a screen with Play and Delete options. Select Delete and then select Delete Memo on the resulting screen. The sound you recorded will be deleted.
• The next time you connect your iPod to your computer, the sounds you recorded will be uploaded into your iTunes Library. To find them, search for the dates on which you recorded the sounds, and the sounds you recorded on those dates will be shown in the Content pane. After a recorded sound is in your Library, you can work with it just like the songs in that Library. For example, you can play the sounds, add them to playlists, put them on CD, and so on.
• You can also access the recording files you made directly by connecting the iPod to a computer and opening it as a hard drive from the desktop. Then open the Recordings folder, and you will see one WAV file for each recording stored on the iPod. You can play these WAV files or import them into an audio application for editing or other purposes.

How to Record Sound on an iPod?

To record sound, use the following steps:

1. Move to the Voice Memo screen; if you aren’t there already, choose Main menu, Extras, Voice Memos, Record Now.
2. Highlight Record and press the Select button. Your iPod will begin recording, and the counter on the Voice Memos screen will begin counting the time of the current recording. At the same time, the Pause and Stop and Save commands will appear on the screen
3. Speak into the voice recorder. Whatever sound you make will be recorded.
4. To pause the recording, highlight Pause and press the Select button. The counter and recording will pause.
5. To resume recording from where you left off, highlight Resume and press the Select button. Your iPod will start recording again.
6. When you are done recording, highlight Stop and Save and press the Select button. The recoding process will stop, and you’ll move back to the Voice Memos screen on which your recording will be listed. It will be named with the date and time on which you made it. You can repeat the previous steps to continue recording sound until you have captured all that you are interested in or until you run out of disk space to store the sound you have recorded, whichever comes first.

Choosing a Voice Recorder for an iPod

In order to record sound on an iPod, you need to obtain a voice recorder accessory. By the time you read this, there should be at least two of these units available: the Belkin Voice Recorder for iPod and the Griffin Technology iTalk iPod Voice Recorder. Only the Belkin unit was available when I wrote this, so that is the unit I focus on here. This unit retails for about $50 and enables you to access the recording features that are already built in to the iPod’s software.
Installing the Voice Recorder couldn’t be easier. Simply plug the unit inato the iPod’s Headphones and Remote ports. When you do so, you’ll see the Voice Memo screen. That’s all there is to setting up the voice recorder.

Using an iPod with More Than One Computer

Because the iPod is so very portable, you might use it with more than one computer. And because iTunes is free, there is no reason you can’t install it on every computer you use. Using an iPod with more than one computer only presents one minor complication: When you configure an iPod to be automatically updated, you link it to the iTunes Library on the machine you configured the update on. When you connect the iPod to another machine that also has automatic updating set, you will see a warning prompt that explains that the iPod is linked to another iTunes Library If you click Yes in this prompt, the music currently on the iPod will be replaced by the music stored on the computer to which the iPod is connected and the link will be changed to the current iTunes Library.

If you don’t want to replace the iPod’s music, click No.
Because you can link the iPod to only one computer at a time, you might want to use the iPod to move music from the “nonlinked” computer to the one that is linked with your iPod. If you have music on one computer that you want to store in the Library on another computer, do the following steps:

1. Mount the iPod as a disk on the computer that has the music you want to move to another computer.
2. Create a folder on the iPod called “Music to Move” or something similar.
3. Copy the music you want to move into the folder you created in step 2.
4. Connect the iPod to the computer to which it is linked.
5. Copy the music files from the iPod onto the computer.
6. Add the files you copied to the iTunes Library on that computer. (The next time you update the iPod from this computer, the music files you added to the Library will be placed in the iPod’s music collection if they meet the update’s criteria.)
7. Delete the music files you copied onto the iPod from the iPod.

Using an iPod as a Hard Drive

After you have enabled this functionality, you can use an iPod as a disk by performing the following steps:

1. Connect your iPod to your computer. iTunes will open, and if you have configured automatic updating, the iPod will be updated.
2. On your computer’s desktop, open a new window and select the iPod, which will be listed just like other hard drives in your system.
3. To copy files onto the iPod, drag them from other locations on your computer and drop them onto the iPod.
4. When you are done moving files to or from the iPod, eject it. You can do this from the computer’s desktop by selecting the iPod and choosing the Eject command or from within iTunes by selecting the iPod on the Source List and clicking

the Eject button. The iPod will be unmounted, and you can disconnect it from your computer.

Enabling an iPod to Be Used as a Hard Drive

To be able to use an iPod as a hard drive, you need to configure it within iTunes by using the following steps:

1. Connect your iPod to your computer. iTunes will open, and your iPod will be shown in the Source List.
2. Select the iPod and click the iPod Options button. You’ll see the iPod Preferences dialog box.
3. Check the Enable disk use check box.
4. You’ll see a warning prompt that explains that if you enable disk use, you’ll have to manually unmount the iPod before disconnecting it.
5. Click OK to close the warning prompt.
6. Click OK to close the iPod Preferences dialog b

Using an iPod as a Portable FireWire/USB 2 Hard Drive

Here’s some news for you: The iPod is a fully functional, portable FireWire/USB 2 hard drive. In addition to using the iPod’s hard drive to store music, you can also use it just like any other hard drive you connect to your computer. Because you use FireWire or USB 2 to connect it, an iPod has speedy performance, too.
The uses for an iPod as a hard drive are almost endless; following are a few examples:

• A transport drive—Have files you want to move from one computer to another? No problem. Connect your iPod to one computer, copy files to it, connect it to the second computer, and copy files from the iPod onto that computer.
• Extra storage space—Need a few extra GB of disk space? No problem. Connect your iPod and you have it.
• Temporary backup drive—Have some important files you want to back up? Place them on an iPod and there you go.

Reading Notes on an iPod

After you have placed text files in the Notes folder, you can read them by choosing Main menu, Extras, Notes. You’ll see the Notes screen, which contains a list of all the text files in the Notes folder on your iPod. To read a note, highlight it and press the Select button. You’ll see the note’s text on the screen. Scroll down the screen to read all of the text if you need to.

Moving Notes to an iPod

Connect your iPod to your computer and place the text file you created in the Notes folder on the iPod’s hard drive. (To do this, you need to configure your iPod so it can be used as a hard drive.)