New iPod

Yay, I've finally gone out and bought myself a new iPod. Its the 30GB Video model.

My 3rd generation which I've had for almost 3 years finally died (the padlock icon just switched on, and wouldnt turn off, even after draining battery and restoring with iTunes). Apparently it just happens sometimes...

I was going to get a new one soon anyway, so wasnt too annoyed, but then I read a rumour of the new iPod coming out in september! Doh!

I've played with the video iPods before, so there wasnt really any surprises, apart from how little has really changed! For example, I still cant use the Bass Booster EQ setting without distortion. (And I dont have crappy headphones or anything). To avoid the distortion, you have to use MP3Gain on all your MP3s to limit them to 89db.

I was hoping that after a couple of years things like that would have been fixed!

The lack of Album Art from SharePod is now starting to annoy me.... and thats all I'll say about that for a little while :)

Who doesn't need lists?

I like lists. Lists are great to keep track of what I'm doing (or should be doing...). I usually use simple txt files, but thats really annoying when I'm using different computers.

After a bit of looking, I came across TadaList.com from 37Signals, which gives you simple online lists. Its a couple of clicks to create a list and add items to it. You can tick things off (and un-tick to track your progress) but they've resisted adding lots of extraneous features to it. Which is great :)

Its completely free and you get a nice URL (http://yourname.tadalist.com)

SharePod 3.3

New features in SharePod 3.3

• Drag tracks up and down playlists to re-order them (this is the most requested feature!)
• Fix for non-latin characters in filenames when exporting tracks to iTunes
• Removed the requirement to have an iTunes 7.1+ format database. :) SharePod now does its own compatibility test which is more reliable anyway.

SharePodLib will also be updated to include the new functionality.

SharePodLib Released

SharePodLib, a .NET class library for interacting with an iPod has been released today :)

SharePodLib is for developers only - if you are writing an application in .NET and want to be able to read and update an iPod, SharePodLib will save you weeks of work!

SharePod itself is written on top of SharePodLib, and with 25,000 downloads in the last month alone has proven to be reliable with only minor bugfixes needed.

Best of all, its free for non-commerical usage!

If you wish to use SharePodLib for a commercial product, or want to remove the loading screen, please email jeff@sturm.net.nz for licencing details.

SharePodLib page
SharePodLib documentation

Kittens

Well there haven't been many updates lately, and its mostly these girls faults! My girlfriend and I got 2 kittens from the SPCA last weekend :) Theyre lots of fun but take up a lot of free time too...

Their favourite things are fighting, eating and sleeping in that order!