Hack Turns iPod into PDA

Liquidape writes "Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature. " Obviously it is fairly limited just because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.

Comments

If you don't like this one

[fobbman]

Just go into CompUSA and download your favorite PIM into your iPod and take it home.

Re:If you don't like this one

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please write a iPod app that plays mp3s that are in a slightly modified format. I would love to be able to copy songs from my iPod to a diffrent computer but the copyprotection prevents this. I figure if is doesn't know it's an mp3 it won't know enough to stop me.

Re:If you don't like this one

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my understanding that the iPod get mounted under the /Volumes directory on MacOS X, but is simply hidden by finder.

You can use any of the CLI utilities for files on them, copy to and from. Maybe someone will hack something up to let people do that graphically, but that's a big maybe.

But Now that Photoshop for OS X is out, if you are using OS9, you should be shot, but that's just MHO.

Re:If you don't like this one

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a "cheap way to look cool" then I'm all for it.

Re:If you don't like this one

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, there are already much more secure and trusted ways to avoid ads (like Junkbuster and friends) and have been for ages. I don't think I want to be running scripts from your site...

Firewire Stylus?

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

Now all we need to go with this is a firewire enabled stylus that reads what I write in the air and translates it to incorrectly spelled text and mislabled ToDo lists.

Re:Firewire Stylus?

[einer]

and 5 gigs worth of addresses...

Re:Firewire Stylus?

[RevAaron]

Or, it could use the modern Newton technology, and recognize handwriting almost flawlessly...

Re:Firewire Stylus?

[Pope]

iNewton?

Incidentally, some guy created IMDB listings for the iPod the same way, small MP3 files with ID3 tags.

Hopefully

[Raven42rac]

Hopefully, this hack won't wipe out your hard drive! But seriously, the iPod is one sweet piece of ass, and now that you can make it a PDA, just makes it that much more enticing.

Re:Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

"But seriously, the iPod is one sweet piece of ass, and now that you can make it a PDA, just makes it that much more enticing. "

One sweet piece of ass huh? You got some problems jerky.

Re:Hopefully

[neuroticia]

Isn't the iPod overpriced when compared to other mp3 players/pdas of a similar or better feature set?

Sorry, but I want the best bang for my buck and I haven't seen Apple give us that since the original iMac days, or for the first few months of the white iBook's existence. Mostly they're overpriced, underpowered, fragile, and overdesigned at the expense of the end-user.

(Yes, I'm still pissed off that my rev-a G3 with THREE places to mount hard drives can only handle one at a time without data corruption or third-party drivers that lower the speed.)

-Sara

Re:Hopefully

[einer]

firewire == super-ultra-magna-fast

Most other personal harddrives (archos, terapin mine, et al) are usb. It is my understanding that you are paying for the ability to load your entire mp3 collection in less time than it takes to listen to it.

Re:Hopefully

[Eccles]

Isn't the iPod overpriced when compared to other mp3 players/pdas of a similar or better feature set?

No, because nothing really matches its feature set. None have firewire I/O (a big plus for speed), and all the ones with the same or higher capacity use a substantially larger hard drive. Toshiba was selling the iPod's hard drive at the time the iPod was released for exactly the same price as the iPod.

Re:Hopefully

[red5]

they're overpriced, underpowered, fragile
Say what you will about the price. But these things are NOT fragile I must have droped mine like 10 times now. Not a dent.

Re:Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Most other mp3 players are significantly larger and heavier than the iPod, and at least as fragile (IE not very fragile at all). Hell, the iPod itself is about the size of the bare drive most mp3 players use.
If the iPod's sales are any indication, many people don't like carrying around mp3 players the size and weight of bricks, and are willing to pay for it.

They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[kontos]

Apple isn't going to be too happy about this after they've spent millions developing the iWalk. Look for the DMCA Police to come knocking.

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[HMC CS Major]

If you have a chance to view anything on their site (which seems to be slashdotted, but a similar page from the same company can be found in google's cache), you'll realize that it isnt reverse engineered, and doesnt change the ipod at all. Rather (from the article):

The Panorama iPod Organizer requires no special software on your iPod. To transfer the data to your iPod the software exports the data as MP3 files compatible with iTunes. The next time you sync your iPod all of your contact information will be automatically transferred to the iPod. The organizer information is extremely compact -- in fact, 1,000 contacts will use less than 0.1% of the space on your iPod.

So, this isnt a hack to the ipod, but rather a hack to make the personal info appear to be an MP3. Clever, indeed.

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[kaimiike1970]

Not to mention the iCame, the iSaw and the iKickedAss.

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[Anonymous Coward]

The iCame? Is that the portable smut device?

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[Querty]

in fact, 1,000 contacts will use less than 0.1% of the space on your iPod.

That means storing 1000 contacts requires 50Mb of disk space (the iPod has 5Gb of diskspace).

Extremely compact my *ss

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually .1% of 5 Gb is 5 megs.

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[smaug195]

5Mb actually

Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk

[Querty]

Whoops, quite right, that should be 5Mb... :(

Still quite a lot though.

Retrieve to Music

[dthable]

Does the music change depending on what data your retrieving? Like SMB, the music starts to speed up as your appointment approaches.

Re:Retrieve to Music

[evilviper]

Does the music change depending on what data your (sic) retrieving? Like SMB, the music starts to speed up as your appointment approaches.

Yes, and it does a grammar check as well ;-).

"hack" indeed

[commonchaos]

I might have read the article wrong, but this looks like all it does is use the iPods built-in menu system and just makes a bunch of mp3's based on what you input into your "PIM", kind of like "$ touch meeting-at-12:00-mc_donalds.mp3" ...

Re:"hack" indeed

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Nope, that's exactly what it does. Pretty lame, really. With no input, I still have to carry the Palm, so it's entrirely pointless.

Re:"hack" indeed

[tbmaddux]

It actually uses the ID3 tags instead of the filename, but you've got the basic idea right. It's technically not a hack.

I can't get to Panorama's site right now but there is a little more detail in this article from MacCentral, which I quote below:

"The software doesn't work by hacking the software on the iPod at all -- instead, it turns the data into tiny iTunes-compatible MP3 files -- the files are silent, but the artist and track field information contain the data."

Re:"hack" indeed

[commonchaos]

Well... hack as in "poor, yet, functional solution"

Re:"hack" indeed

[LordNimon]

I think it's a hack - but more of a "data hack" than a "code hack".

Re:"hack" indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a kludge, then.


Yet another overly-literal nerd sucking all the humor out of the joke.

Re:"hack" indeed

[kisrael]

by the lore of "alt.hackers" the Usenet group, it qualifies as a hack, that is using a tool in a way it wasn't intended. This is slightly different than an older definition, these big stunts and pranks MIT students would pull, and a later definition, breaking into systems. There are a few more variations on the theme hanging out there as well.

Re:"hack" indeed

[chiph]

Imagine how much more fun it will be getting a root canal, when you're reminded of the appointment by Steve Martin singing the Dentist song from Little Shop Of Horrors.

"You'll be a dentist -- you've got a talent for causing pain!"

Re:"hack" indeed

[coolgeek]

It may by means of technicality, qualify as a hack. Calling this a "clever" hack is quite pathetic. Punching code in via the front panel on an Altair 8800, and then listening to the music created by the RF radiation on an AM radio, qualifies as a "clever" hack, IMO. I mean, some chins need to hit the floor to qualify a hack as clever...I'm not impressed one bit...And I'll still carry my m505 along with my iPod. :-O

Re:"hack" indeed

[Alan Partridge]

in England such a modification would be hailed as a BODGE.

Re:"hack" indeed

[Alan Partridge]

better still would be a "LASH-UP".

Somebody has done this before

[Sc00ter]

I don't have the link handy, and the pics on the link in the article don't seem to work (slashdotted probably). But all they do is create a folder called Contacts, then in there make another folder called, say, CmdrTaco and in there you put files, one named the phone number, the other named the address.. then you just navigate it like you're looking for an MP3, but you just can't play them.

I bet there's a bunch of MP3 players you could do this with.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[HMC CS Major]

Yep, slashdotted. I dont know if this is the same group, but here's Something similar in google's cache.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[vrmlguy]

Just because an idea is easy to implement, don't assume that "somebody has done this before". If you know of someone that has, provide a link. Yeah, it's something that could be done on lots of other MP3 players, but apparently no one did. And at the risk of being flamed, I suspect that this idea would be patentable.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[Sc00ter]

Schmuck.. I didn't have the link handy.. plenty of people have posted links to similar things.. you don't even need a program to do it, just make the folders yourself, touch the files as .mp3 and sync..

Re:Somebody has done this before

[Triv]

not quite, I think...what it looks like to me is that a single .mp3 file is created with field characteristics matching contact info, etc. So "Track Title" becomes "Contact", "Artist" becomes "Phone #" etc. I think it uses id3 tags instead of individuval files.

That may or may not be "true," it just makes more sense to me that way, knowing how iTunes works.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[dhovis]

Actually it is a little more complicated than that.

What the iPod displays when you select a song is the ID3 tags that are stored in the MP3 files. Then this program just creates a bunch of MP3 files with silent sound tracks (and low bitrates) with your contact information stored in the Artist/Album/Title ID3 tags.

I've notice some people complaining that you can't add contacts on the go, so this is worthless. I think that misses the point here. The iPod is an MP3 player. Apple has never claimed that it can do anything else. But if you carry it around with you all the time, this is a nice little hack to add a little extra functionallity. Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod a full featured PDA.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[doorbot.com]

Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod a full featured PDA.

Except perhaps, Liquidape, who submitted the article:

Hack Turns iPod into PDA
Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's the same group. Good hunting, though.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[dhovis]

...and I would say that it makes the iPod a minimally functional PDA, but not a full fledged PDA. Everything he (or she) said was true. The complainers here are moaning about the submitter did not point out the limitations of using the iPod as a PDA, but if you've ever picked up an iPod, those limitations are kind of obvious. The iPod is a storage device, and the only input is for navigating what is already there. The iPod is supremely good at that. Asking it to do data entry would be like asking your keyboard to spellcheck.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[Chris Pimlott]

I bet there's a bunch of MP3 players you could do this with.

Yep. I got tired of being unable to get in contact with people whose phone numbers I had left at home, so I made a 'phone' subdirectory on my Archos Jukebox 20 and put a bunch of listings like "mom (work) - xxx-xxx-xxxx.mp3" etc. It's come in handy more than once.

I hadn't thought of putting appointments on it or automating the scheme, however.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[MobileC]

My little REX 3000 is marketed as a pda and has virtually no onboard input mech.
Everything is done through the host computer.

So by definition it's crap because you can't input contacts on the go?

I agree, _very_ missing the point.

Re:Somebody has done this before

[Alan Partridge]

have you not heard of MOBILE TELEPHONES yet in your part of the world? I understand that many come with an ability to store several TELEPHONE "NUMBERS". I know, it sounds crazy.

It works great

[pinkpineapple]

That is what people were expecting when Apple announced that it would introduce a device that would revolutionize the world. And that is what people have done without waiting for Apple to keep us waiting for the next big thing. So I've been tired of waiting for Apple to respond to the need of their customers and I just got this. And I just love using it. It's funny that the developer web site shows only Mac OS 9 screenshots though... Stupid Steve! Go Steve! ;-)

PPA, the girl next door

Re:It works great

[Anonymous Coward]

What films have you been in?

Can't seem to find 'pinkpineapple' in the internet movie database...

bored....

IPOD supports Office

[4/3PI*R^3]

Well we already know there is an Office port for the iPod. or was that porting Office via your iPod?

where's my Ipod phone

[johnjones]

I would like a phone apple

not hard dont worry about mic and speaker on the thing use a handsfree one

just use the OMAP from TI that has a DSP for MP3 and link that up with the firewire HD and away you go

please please I want to jog to mates phone number (-;

regards

john jones

Useful? Depends...

[Wintersmute]

On whether you think the warm-n-fuzzy jog dial or the jot language is more the bane of mankind.

802.11b on iPod

[mini me]

Now all the iPod needs is wireless ethernet. Then someone could hack up some software that will automatically discover and sync music collections with near-by iPods.

Re:802.11b on iPod

[InterruptDescriptorT]

That's really a cool idea, actually. Are there any publically available software or hardware development specs for these things, i.e., can you get GCC for iPods yet?

I have to admit that I'm not an Apple person and thus my knowledge lags behind the x86 world (sorry), but I'd be glad to throw myself behind such a project.

Re:802.11b on iPod

[whovian]

Mmmmmmm....iFurby.

Re:802.11b on iPod

[mcspock]

Interesting thought. The easiest way to do this would be to have some sort of firewire->wireless adapter. In terms of "automatically" doing it, that may not be so easy, just because the power considerations of constantly searching for other devices. But i'm sure you could just have an on/off switch and leave it at that.

The harder problems involve mobility; if two devices attempt to sync music collections, and one of them moves out of the wireless range in the middle of a transition, you have a partial song. It just gets messier from there.

Hmm, maybe if they had a wireless cradle that did power and firewirewifi...

Re:802.11b on iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

What about using it to auto-download any apps, etc reachable via wireless? Airsnort for mac anyone?

Re:802.11b on iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to automatically create theft , there mini me!
I bet Michael Eisner's spinning in his grave!

Re:802.11b on iPod

[Sentry21]

The iPod uses an ARM processor. GCC can cross-compile to this. Doing any 'coding', however, would require replacing the firmware in the iPod, which would be rather a pain, and which I wouldn't trust at all.

Also, why would not being an Apple person lag you behind the x86 world? This makes no sense.

--Dan

Re:802.11b on iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in:

The feds try to arrest air for its part in the illegal transfer of mp3's...

Re:802.11b on iPod

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Who needs air? I keep my house hermetically sealed and have no air, just vaccuum. 802.11b works just fine.

Must rush I gotta go outside and breathe.

graspee

It's a cool idea...

[VValdo]

What would be a nice addition is to have the program automatically generate a short MP3 of the touchtones for the contact telephone number.

W

Re:It's a cool idea...

[Icculus]

It would be cool and all, but since there's no external speaker, it would be pretty useless.

Re:It's a cool idea...

[Sc00ter]

considering the iPod is useless without any headphones as it is, chances are you have headphones with you already to hold up to the mouthpiece of the telephone.

Re:It's a cool idea...

[Icculus]

Would it even be possible to get the tones loud enough through those little buds to actually dial anything though?

Re:It's a cool idea...

[qnonsense]

• What would be a nice addition is to have the program automatically generate a short MP3 of the touchtones for the contact telephone number.

It would be nice, yes. But, the iPod portion of the program is not a program! All the organizer does is send your phone numbers as mp3 files to the iPod. No code is actually being run on the iPod, so there is no way to "generate" anything on the iPod.

However, it would be possible to generate mp3s of the numbers desktop-side and send them to the iPod to be played when the number is selected.

ciao

Re:It's a cool idea...

[RevAaron]

However, it would be possible to generate mp3s of the numbers desktop-side and send them to the iPod to be played when the number is selected.

That's what he meant. He said "the program," not "the iPod."

Re:It's a cool idea...

[Arkham]

The only problem with this otherwise cool idea is that the iPod doesn't have a speaker. You'd find yourself holding the headphone up to the telephone to try and get it to dial. The Newton used to do that, but I found that I rarely used that feature.

It would be a cool idea if the iPod had a speaker though.

Re:Ipod bites cause it don't work on Windows

[tarkos]

I have an iPod, I don't own anything else Apple makes. It works fine under windows for me with the windows software out there. Just search for Windows iPod and you will get there.

MP3's w/ DTMF tones?

[su-geek]

I guess you could write a small program to enter the telephone numbers and names save as an mp3 with ID3 tags as contact name and a small MP3 file with the DTMF tones to dial the contact. To bad redboxes don't work any more or the ipod would make a nice phreaking tool.

Re:MP3's w/ DTMF tones?

[Jonny 290]

That's a really cool idea. Good work!

sound forge and cooledit can easily generate dtmf sequences.....and i'm sure there's some open source/*nix solution too. :)

Very appropriate layout...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the new Aqua style put in this story...But just out of curiosity, have you been sued by Apple yet, Taco?

A hack is a hack ...

[The MoMo King]

no matter how small. I'm sure there are many people out there listing to thier IPod wishing there was a way to jot down a simple note. Now they have it ... pretty cool in my book.

iPod Hacks

[Metrollica]

For anyone that has an iPod or is just interested in hacking them, goto iPodHacks.com. It can give you some ideas of what the iPod is capable of.

Re:iPod Hacks

[The Oddity]

On that note, this guy is trying to get the iPod to run on Linux, help him out if you can.

If you have Windows, a free program called EphPod works very will with programs that write to HFS+ disks (such as MacDrive and MacOpener). Progress with EphPod has been speedy, and the developer is very responsive to user suggestions/testing.

Another attempt at providing Windows support - as well as a firmware updater - can be found here. I believe the author intends to port these programs to Linux ... we shall see.

Some other general info iPod sites that are useful:

• iPoding.com
• iPodlounge.com

Re:WTF!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, fuck that, I'm logging out for the last time...

K, see you back here tomorrow, say... right after you get up?

Another program that does the same thing but FREE

[brodiedreamyou.ca]

I ran across this link at www.macnn.com apparently it's a free (for prersonal user) program that is basically exactuly the same. http://www.kohlenbach.de/prod_ipoadress_engl.htm

Re:bye

[gmm]

don't let the door hit yer ass on the way out

And why not? I happen to enjoy closing doors on my ass.

Re:WTF!

[gmm]

Damn....you saw straight through my theatrical posting as though it were....um....see-through.

Re:WTF! (ot)

[gmm]

Score:-1 redundant

Free iPod organizer hacks

[Metrollica]

For those of you who don't want to pay the $20 to try the iPod organizer hack, try some free ones that do a similar job.

Mp3 phone list

Address organizer

iPDA study

And then Disney will cry foul...

[Irvu]

and ask the government to ban 802.11 or, more likely, ALL wireless transmissions (Better safe than sorry). After all, all those people with cell-phnores are really just pirates in the making.

But wait... When I play music sound travels through the air to other peoples' ears! Better get a bill mandating encryption on air, or at least locking down people's ears so they don't participate. Sure we'd all be unable to communicate and, for that matter, breathe but we must preserve Intellectual Property!

Re:And then Disney will cry foul...

[FooKuff]

After all, all those people with cell-phnores are really just pirates in the making.

Sounds good to me. Maybe then they'll hang up and drive. Or maybe I'll be able to hear myself think on the bus. I'm not seeing a downside here. ;)

Re:And then Disney will cry foul...

[NickDngr]

But wait... When I play music sound travels through the air to other peoples' ears! Better get a bill mandating encryption on air, or at least locking down people's ears so they don't participate.

Already have a solution to that one.

Dailtones

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice to make some use of the fact that
the ipod can play music: encode the phone number
as DTMF (or DMTF, whatever it's called) and save it
in the mp3 file. So when you want to call someone
you just play the mp3.

I'm still missing that feature for my iPaq :(

Re:Dailtones

[scorcherer]

DTMF (or DMTF, whatever it's called)

I think it's DTMF as in Dial The M*therF*cking number. The specs are released in the .RTF format which, contrary to popular belief, does not stand for 'rick text format' but 'read the fucking'. In fact a subformat of .RTF, used in writing technical documentation, has the file extension .RTFM.

Re:Slashdot chat

[Anonymous Coward]

Either he is a product of public schooling or he is Eruotrash, and therefore cannot perform simple subtraction.

IWALK

[Anonymous Coward]

is n't there a secert project apple is developing called the IWALK which is a pda?

Re:IWALK

[Alan Partridge]

Obviously not. If it were secret you wouldn't know about it, QED.

Limited Device Input

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously it is fairly limited just because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.

Yeah Taco, we know. It doesn't have a three-button mouse.

Re:Limited Device Input

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the only proper mouse... 3+ buttons... anythnig less and you have an Imac, and we all know how paperweight useless those are.

Thant is all...

Re:Limited Device Input

[Alan Partridge]

what, all SIX MILLION of them?

Re:Ipod bites cause it don't work on Windows

[ohchaos]

I counter that Windows sucks because it doesn't work with iPod.... but for an even more clever hack, how about turning your Apple Newton into an iPod: Here's the site

Hack turns POD into PDA

[fruey]

Yeah right.

Hack of ID3 tag... hmmm

Kinda like burning your own CD-TEXT CDs so that suddenly your CDTEXT player becomes a PDA

Come on

Re:Hack turns POD into PDA

[Anonymous Coward]

Like that's hard ---
s/POD/PDA/g

After looking...

[SomeOtherGuy]

at the details (id3 tags used as appointments) this has about as much relevance as the guy who makes a swimming pool by placing a hose in the back of a pickup truck.... This could be done with any MP3 player that supports id3 tags and subfolders. Why not step back 2 years and look at the mp3 players that had (semi)-REAL pims built into them. The second generation mpman (MP-F30) comes to mind, I owned one and it worked great in linux, and also let me store phone numbers, contacts, etc....Not much of a threat to the PDA market...

hack the gameboy

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish someone had done such a thing for the gameboy

Re:hack the gameboy

[SIGFPE]

You mean like Fabtek's Work Boy? Frommer's also did an organizer - do a web search to see the ROMs (don't use them of course - that's illegal).

clever, yes

[Fletch]

it might have been clever when this guy did it a couple of months ago, but it's not clever anymore.

ObTacoWhine

[mclem]

> Obviously it is fairly limited just because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.

Typical Apple -- it lacks three mouse buttons!

Re:Slashdot chat

[Paradise Pete]

And just when is 3:00PM EST?

One would think you'd have noticed that he also wrote UTC-0500, since you quoted that part. It's amazing that the answer to your question is right there in the text you copied.

Re:Slashdot chat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a proud European.

As far as the substraction goes, I'm perfectly capable of doing it as soon as someone gives me number I'm supposed to substract/add. And no, I'm not going to look it up from Google. That was my point!

If you're going to announce something like this to an international crowd, you really should provide some reference times (Europe, Pacific) so that we don't have to go calculate the timeshift ourselves. It's called good service and being user-friendly.

But I guess that's too much to ask from the dirty GNU/Linux-hippies who think that user-unfriendliness and read-the-fucking-manual/google mentality is great.

-October_30th (banned again even though I'm already posting at -1)

Samsung's Yepp

[rosewood]

I have a Samsung Yepp E64 and it has this "phone number feature". Its kind of gimicky, but then again - so is this hack. I found myself just for the novalty of it entering in a few phone #s but I never use them and have deleted them to give me more room on my meesly 96 megs of space.

The simpsons comicshop nerd speaks

[visionsofmcskill]

"shaw, LAMEST Hack in history" jess, im surprised it took these guys that long to make this piece a poo software, ALL IT DOES IS MAKE MP3's with "organizer" data in their ID3 tags. im SOOOOOOOOO NOT impressed. Is this even a hack?

i mean technicaly speaking, did they actualy DO anything SPECIAL to make this work? it seems like they just set up their own musci genre or whatever (called "ipoddata") and then split off "albums" as contacts, work or whatever, sheesh, youd think these guys were gonna get an award for cleverness, they didnt DO anything special except make a ID3 tag editor that LOOKS like a organizer.

Next week im gonna intro the first text based trivia game for the ipod.... Will i get slashdot notice? lol

whats worst is the ipod IS fully capable of PDA functions, that extra special little port on top (not the firewire one) canplug in a good load of extra special little things like remotes or PDA style pens, hmmmm, i think these guys arent gona be to happy when apple starts releasing their "iUpgrades"

Re:Slashdot chat

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.

How the hell does one know what something like UTC means? Unknown Time Contraction?

Re:WTF! (ot)

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators on crack... mod the parent, not this one... geez...

*whips out red M^2 pen*

Off-topic, PGP goes under?

[Anonymous Coward]

too lazy to submit this just so it'll be ignored, sorry.

PGP enters deep-freeze

"John Ashcroft has been drumming the beat recently, reminding the tech industry that a "lucrative surveillance state" (in our Tom's words) can be built from the ashes of the September 11 attacks. This obviously doesn't extend to personal privacy software. Are we the only people who find the neglect of PGP somewhat fishy?"

(-1,offtopic)

How Long...

[Greyfox]

Anyone wanna start up a pool betting how how long it takes Apple to use them citing DMCA issues? "The lack of any documentation at all on the Ipod is a security mechanism which you are circumventing by hacking it in this way..."

Sorry. The industry has made me cynical.

Re:How Long...

[yomegaman]

Their product doesn't modify the iPod at all, as you would know if you had read the article.

OTOH

[Darth RadaR]

"shaw, LAMEST Hack in history" jess, im surprised it took these guys that long to make this piece a poo software, ALL IT DOES IS MAKE MP3's with "organizer" data in their ID3 tags. im SOOOOOOOOO NOT impressed. Is this even a hack?

Maybe it's not a new or original hack. But it is an interesting course that ventures into doing more with MP3, which I'm certain that Microsoft is just thrilled with.
:)

New Naming Ideas

[red_dragon]

I wonder if this hack will be enough to give Steve ideas for a new PIM product based on the iPod hardware and software. Given that the technology has been in place for a while (going back as far as the Newton), I believe that the most difficult task will be to come up with an appropriate name.

My suggestion: iMan (iPIMp is too obvious, IMO).

Re:New Naming Ideas

[systemaster]

Sorry, but my story got rejected. From an employee close to apple, there are no plans to release an apple PIM product at any time in the future. I also had alot of news about the new imac before it came out but this is /. we only post old news. 2002-01-12 06:31:31 News from inside apple (articles,apple) (rejected)

Finally an Apple PDA

[segfaultdot]

I bet the Newton is rolling in it's ...uh... dumpster.

Seriously, what about a program that also encodes further information about contacts and appointments and such as mp3's using speech synthesis. That would be neat. The filename/tags or whatever would have a basic description and the mp3's would have more information as audio.

Re:Finally an Apple PDA

[Cid Highwind]

Actually, the newton is playing mp3s!
See: MAD for the Newton and the corresponding iTunes plugin.

I've got that beat.

[therion]

As we speak, I'm recording my mp3's to my VoiceStream voice mail.

I'll be able to listen to mp3's using my phone!

Whoo Hoo!

iPod handheld :))

[fabiolrs]

Palm m515: 16mb, no MP3... iPod: 5gb, MP3 till your ears stop working... hmmm... It seens that palm need some serious upgrades on their handhelds...

Re:iPod handheld :))

[maddugan]

Check out Sony's Clie. They have a couple of version that play MP3s and an adapter for the ones that don't. While they don't come near the 5gb of the ipod, they do suppory memorysticks, which 5 gb worth might equal the size of the ipod.

Re:iPod handheld :))

[fabiolrs]

hmmmm... gotta find a way to install linux on the ipod then! :))

Has anyone used it?

[GreenKiwi]

Does it cause problems when the iPod tries to play one of these non-existant songs? Does it have extra long pauses?

Apple competes

[Revolvyerom]

Now what happens if Apple offers an iPod II, with Palmpilot-like software, if this innovation turns out to be a hit? So much for Windows CE, eh? Unless Microsoft wants to start fighting them based on the grounds of "We got here first!"

Re:Apple competes

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will never build another PDA. Steve Jobs said there was never going to be a market for handhelds when he axed the Newton project, and he's too stubborn to admit now that he was wrong.

Re:Apple competes

[Revolvyerom]

That's probably true, actually...he's so filled with visions of 'sleek new designs' (molded computer shells and neon colored iMacs, and cubes that don't need fans), that he's beginning to overlook actual performance

Re:Apple competes

[Anonymous Coward]

"We got here first!" didn't work when Apple did it to Microsoft a decade ago for copying the Graphical User Interface. Of course, Microsoft is a bullshitty company of weasels...

You call that a hack?

[Mupp252]

Jeff K. is light years ahead of you! :)

Re:You call that a hack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aces, not another awful Jeff K. ripoff!

-Ando

A testament to apple's engineering sense

[Joel Ironstone]

The versatility in the iPOD that allows for this is the sign of a well designed product. It takes more time and thought to design a product that both serves its original purpose and allows for upgrades and changes to be made succesffully. I suspect apple will use the iPOD platform for other purposes as time goes on as there is really no other motivation for engineering this amount of flexibility.

Revo

[Jaysyn]

Now I won't be happy until someone hacks a Revo to play MP3's.

Yes, I have a Revo, and I love it...

Jaysyn

Re:Revo

[unimac]

Not sure about the revo, but there is an mp3 player that works on my Mako (revo plus).

http://www.geocities.com/zavorine/epoc/mp3.htm

Re:Revo

[Jaysyn]

thanks, the Revo & the Mako are the same thing.

Jaysyn

Dual Tone Multi Frequency...

[billstewart]

Dail Tone is the sound of the Irish Parliament :-)

You could set up the MP3 file to play the touchtones. If you do, you should probably add a few seconds' pause at the beginning, since you'll need to get the iPod headset to the phone headset after playing with the buttons.

Re:hello!

[Gecko(dude)]

Now, you're the one fucking telling us this, if you had so much of a "life", why the hell are you bothering with us, why aren't you out, getting drunk, instead of posting about how pathetic geeks are on a geek site...

Grow up and get a fucking laugh.. hah

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[monotone]

the previous post was on topic. can't you lousy moderators see this? "to keep this on topic, iPod is neat. Although I wouldn't attempt to use it as a pda considering it's tiny lcd."
I would say that applies to this conversation.
the software is neat, but the screen is too small to make it an effective pda.

moderators, can you see that?

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[Peyna]

Yeah you stupid mother flurcking piece of poo face moderators, don't you know how to read a whole flurcking comment before you moderate it? Come on. What a joke. I wish I was a moderator all the time so I could mod all the good posts -1 offtopic of -1 overrated, and all the funny posts +9999 funny, cuz funny stuff is all that matters.

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[monotone]

why would a person waste their moderation points moderating down borderline off topic posts. Use your moderation points more effectively. Have you meta moderated today?

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[Peyna]

Whatever happened to focusing on the positive? Using moderation points to mod up the good posts. After all, reading the good stuff is more important than filtering out the crap. I do that on my own by browsing at +3.

Mirror Here

[OrangeHairMan]

Check out this mirror: http://web.archive.org/web/20020306130830/http://w ww.ipodorganizer.com/

Orange

Such as a video camera storage device...

[drjzzz]

Use the iPOD for storage on a digital video camera. Just add a lens, a ccd, and a little processing to the firewire input. Sure beats tape and the component nature of the resulting device would make it easier to upgrade.

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[monotone]

and people wonder why there are trolls on /.. It's the moderation abuse that turns perfectly able and willing content contributors into disgruntled, bitter trolls.

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[Peyna]

Yeah no kidding. I'm considering becoming a troll myself. I've posted 400+ comments on /., I've been a member for a long time (user # 14792), and frankly, in the past year or so, I have had very few meaningful dialogues, or seen very few meaningful dialogues here on /.. It's going down the tubes. The comments used to contain more useful information than the article. Now all the comments are "it's a hoax, that's stupid, this is stupid, I'm too dumb to read the article, etc." What happened to intelligent conversation on /.? Someone posts something asking a simple question, they get flamed into the great beyond for not being l33t enough to know everything about everything. Bah. /. is no longer the nice friendly community it used to be.

Re:hello!

[Anonymous Coward]

its NetBSD for the Dreamcast, not OpenBSD you fuckwit.

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[monotone]

undoubtedly. Unfortunately, there is not a forum to respond to this type of degradation, other than to post a comment. Which is then perceived as "off topic" and get's modded down, which ends up being a cyclical mess

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[Peyna]

There was a forum somewhere on /. for this once, but it wasn't really publicized.

Hacking iPod communications?

[switcha]

Wow, just imagine a beowolf cluster of these...

Oh, Jeeze. I'm so very, very sorry...

Re:I know this is off-topic, but I HAVE to say thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering? Becoming? My friend, you are already 99% of the way there. Come over to the dark side!

real ipod hacks

[WesBiggs]

What I'd like to see is an update to the firmware with some real apps. I wouldn't mind giving up breakout if it could be replaced by, say, a text file reader. Apple or any decent embedded systems hacker should be able to do it. It's likely not been done just based on time-to-market and strategy reasons, not technical ones.

Admittedly, the iPod is not a heavy-hitter in the RAM department, but if you can play breakout, you obviously have the system calls to do some cool stuff.

Of course, anyone other than Apple hacking the firmware is illegal under the DMCA. Far be it from me to incite illegal activity.

Wes

Now all we need is...

[option8]

There's an organizer app that runs on the Apple MP3 player?

cool. now all we need is an MP3 player that runs on Apple's last organizer (and one that's GPL, to boot).

oh wow. now how about a new Apple PDA?

While this is neat, it AINT Pixo programming..

[jswitte]

I think the idea of rearraging a bunch of contact data into a folder structure that the iPod can naviage is great, if limited.

The bigger piece of the pie, the one that Apple never game us with the Newton (and still hasn't) is a complete description of how to use the iPods Pixo embedded operating system to program other functions which are more familiar to PDA-people like: sorting, searching data enry via FW keyboard, or FW stylus if you could figure out how to make the display touch-sensative, being able to tell the machine "Make me an appointment with Carol at 5:00 next Tuesday for 2 hours, to ring 45 minues before", and it would auomatically look up Carol in the adressbook modules, check you calendar app to make sure there are no conflicts (and alearting you in that case), then placing the datbook entry, changing the ring parameter to "45 minues before meething" I dont' know if Newton Intelligence (built into the final MP2100) could do quit all that, but it might.

Right no, people trying to extend the iPod past "just an MP3 player" are stuck with the system the iPod has now - basicall a file browser. If Apple would release the lower-lvel APIs to access the hardware and compile C programs down to assembly (for porting Sphinx and Festival, as well a WICKED fast BrickOut game)

Apple did, after some pressure from the Newton community, release the in-house plug-ins and header/libray files for their MPW compilation system (God, what a beast) From the released stuff, people are starting to do some really cook stuff with it, as the recent beta test of an ATA card driver for the Newton by >a href="www.kallisys.com">Paul Guyou has shown, as well as the port of Waba for the Newton by Sean Luke. One person figured out how to do assembly language code programming for the StrongARM chip in Newton, and used this as the basis for a MOD file music player. Another project is aimed at porting an MP3 player to the Newton (I don't know if this is in working beta state yet, but I believe it it)

But many if not all of these endevours "going behind NewtonScript" would be much easier (and faster) if Apple could be persuaded to release all the appropriate headers, memory maps, memory proctection schema in public view (with a licence that says you can't use this in a competing product - althought that would have to be clarified as Apple to my knowledge has never definitively said yea or nea on ever producing a PDA again.

If the QuickDraw hooks were available (the Newton uses a stripped down SE-vintage quickdraw), then program like Waba, instead of using NewtonScript bytecode to do the drawing, which is slow, it could draw directly do the screen. Having the interface to the "Inker Port" which runs the pen input device, would make getting taps and drags to activate the applet faster, as you would have to go though NewtonScript to get them as is done now. If the full specs relating all the communications claases in the "below-Newtonscipt" layer were known, it would be easier to access the serial port, eternet cards from down there.

Some people call for the entire source code to be released, but from what I've heard it was an enourmous mess of speghetti code. But the headers and glue files for the current machines (100,120,130,2000,2100 I believe) could help access these lower level features, which seem to be becoming more an more important as the few Newton users left push their machines to their limits and face compatibility problem with desktop systems.

I don't know about Apple releaseing the entire source code. On one hand, if they released the whole thing, we'd have it but no roadmap; on the other hand, if they cleaned in up, took out the headers and glue, wrote some more comments, it would be VERY expensivive for them (especially as most of the original Newton people are gone from apple) However, in the case that they released EVERYTHING, a community of developers would quickly develop I'm sure to try to figure out what the code does, what should be thrown away in a new implementation of a PDA, and what would be of use to current Newton developers.

Persuading Apple to release the source to the connectivity applications (Newton Book Maker, Newton Tool Kit, and Newton Connection Utilities) would also help, as these apps are the ONLY apps that can interface with the Dock application built into the Newton's ROM. The authentication protocol used includes a DES-encrypted challenge-respononse. This is a BIT of a hitch to making new connectvity apps that can work with the native Dock (as you'd have to after you'd wiped the Newton clean)

Re:While this is neat, it AINT Pixo programming..

[ecki]

Another project is aimed at porting an MP3 player to the Newton (I don't know if this is in working beta state yet, but I believe it it)

It is.

Re:Slashdot chat

[Anonymous Coward]

> How the hell does one know what something like UTC means? Unknown Time Contraction?

In your case, User Too Clueless. You're telling me that on a site for nerds "UTC" wouldn't be recognized. GEEZ.

Your errand could violate copyright

[Ilan Volow]

It's scary to think you could be sued for violating the copyright on such song titles as "get milk at store" and "Dental appointment Tuesday."

The hack that will make me want an iPod

[Laplace]

Ogg-Vorbis support.

Riiiight

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Apple *care*? They sell more iPods, and Apple is hardly a media company. They couldn't care less about the DMCA.

Apple is not one of the bad guys.

Shweat!

[red5]

Works. You have to make sure that FireWire drive mode is enabled.
Then go to: /Volumes/<iPOD name here>/iPod_Control/Music/
In there you'll find a lot of folders named Fxx
Containing all of your mp3's

As for shooting all the OS9 (l)users. What if they have old hardware?

Re:Shweat!

[Alan Partridge]

oh come on! OS9 is - right now - a MUCH more viable OS than OSX. Shitloads faster too.

Re:Shweat!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Commander Benjamin Cisco. Welcome to OS9!

Re:Shweat!

[red5]

Your either kidding or stupid.
Lets see.
No memory protection.
No pre-emtive multi-tasking.
No new development (everyones moving to X 9 is dead).
OSX is way more viable then OS9.
It's like comparing win 3.1 to win2000(or XP).

Re:Shweat!

[Alan Partridge]

You obviously use neither. I use both.

Re:Shweat!

[red5]

I use OSX FTR

"Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod...

[praxim]

...into a full PDA"

Except the person that posted the story.

ShweatOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I just did my migration. File system is still a pain, but just due to behavioral psychology (i just have to train myself). Reward is: all these optical fancies, things mentioned above, everything seems more logical, and much more small apps, i just realized - thanks to all those unix geeks that now port their software AND experience to X. Big THANKS!