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

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: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: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.

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."

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.

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

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

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.

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?

Re:Finally an Apple PDA

[Cid Highwind]

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