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Display News Headlines on iPod
1Eye writes "Wired is running this article on the iPod, about a hack to display XML news headlines."
That's pretty nifty. I wrote a 40-line Perl script to download arbitrary RSS feeds and create MP3s with the headline as the title and the site name as the artist, but it doesn't do long titles (limited to 30 chars by ID3v1, D'oh!) and doesn't manage the MP3s with the iPod.
While it does have a decent cool factor, (made
even cooler by the fact that it was done by a 11-
year-old codegrommit) I've gotta ask how useful
this is? I mean, I get headlines on my pager and
cellphone as it is, and with those, I can always
waste more of my minutes downloading the whole
story. This is essentially the same as pulling
down avant-go pages to a handheld. Cool yes, but
you still need a laptop or desktop to sync it.
Still in all, hacks like this might pave the way
for something truly indipendent down the line.
(bluetooth hookup using the firewire port?)
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
What the /. article fails to mention is that this hack was developed by a 12 year old kid.
does anyone actually listen to music on these things?
Is there any way to unstuff a StuffIt file without a Mac? I want to download his software just to see what's involved with iPod hacking, but I don't have a Mac :-(
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
was it oh so hard to not put them news in vCards, but that clumsy ID3 tags?
Come on, this aint no BECAUSE WE CAN thing. Except if that PERL script actually ran on the iPod itself. That'd be cool.
And I think there is a newsticker thingie out on versiontracker doin it with vcards.
Or if i could use it to back up my digicam. come on theres 5gb on mine 10gb on some, that blows away my 64mb cf card. or if you could hack a cf card reader to back up to the pod, either by extracting the data as raw or just copying it to the hd space.
I want 2D games back.
Now that the iPod supports vCards for its contact lists it should be just as easy to make a hack that turns XML headlines into vCards and drops them into the Contacts folder. Then you could even put some paragraphs of the news into the vCard as well.
Get to it, hackers!
-- thinkyhead software and media
The fact that hackers recognised the value of, and got after what they saw as a 'blank slate' and are even now creating fabulous apps for it should be very encouraging to the /. community.
The Ipod story is one of computing darwinism at its' best!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
...maybe so, but I do like it when people get their facts straight. According to the article the kid who made this hack is 14.
Yes, I know it doesn't make much of a difference, but still this is how the Net (slashdot alike) distorts information so quickly and easily. And on the other hand, back when I was 14 it was very important that I was not confused to an 11 year old kid...
And as for the usefullness of this hack? Who cares if it's usefull? I say that its great that there still are kids out there who do this kind of hacks, even if none find it usefull. Most of the hacks I did back when I was a kid were not usefull to anyone but me. But they sure tought me stuff and that's why I can call myself a pro nowadays - not because of the degrees, they're only worth the paper they're printed on. It's knowledge that counts, not degrees!
And lastly on the usefullness of offline news readers in general. While some people do not find them usefull at all, some do. I for myself like to read news off my PDA while sitting in the metro on my way to work. Yes, I could do it with my phone too, but the screen is too small for it and GPRS does have problems underground...
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...