Welcome to David Pogue’s show notes for episode 3, all about the iPod and its rivals!
In these show notes, I’ll provide a little more detail on stuff you see on the show. It’s kind of like the way cooking shows post the recipes online.
Opening credits. You know how we simulated the Apple iPod ads during the opening? You know, with me in silhouette against brightly colored backgrounds?
Want to know how we did that? Want to know what $5,000 video-editing system we used?
Psych! It’s iMovie. Yep, plain old free iMovie on the Mac. We used one of the effect plug-ins from http://www.geethree.com.
Unfortunately, the iPod Ad plug-in was never released to the public, but the Gee Three guys were nice enough to let us have access to it for our opening.
Opening statistics. When I said, “They’ve sold 65 million iPods,” well, that was true in November, when we filmed this segment. Now the number is well over 100 million!
If there’s a second season of “It’s All Geek to Me,” believe me — we’ll do an episode on the iPhone and its rivals ...
iPod Trivia Contest. Yep, we really did stop people on the street. There is no disclaimer on this game show about “Certain portions not affecting the outcome have been edited”... it really happened the way you see it on the show!
iPod microphone. Belkin, Griffin and other companies make these snap-on goodies. The sound quality is great —CD quality, in fact.
Copy from iPod to computer. The shareware program I demonstrated is Senuti (iTunes spelled backward, get it?). You can download it here: http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/
Using the iPod as a backup hard drive. This is one of my favorite iPod features—and it’s not available on the Zune and a lot of other rival players. If you’re shopping for a non-iPod, ask specifically whether it offers this feature, because it’s awesome.
Rapid CD importing. In the iTunes menu, choose Preferences. Click the Advanced tab. On the Importing sub-tab, open the “On CD insert” pop-up menu; choose “Import CD and Eject.” Then close the dialog box.
This simple step saves you a lot of button clicking!
iPod Accessories segment. Here are the details on the accessories that Pod Macintosh profiled.
Internet radio. Just to be clear: you can listen to these Internet radio stations in the iTunes software on your computer. You can’t tune into them on the iPod itself.
Audiobooks. If you have more time than money, you can just borrow the books-on-CD from the library and rip them into iTunes for transferring to your iPod. Instead of renting them. My wife does this all the time.
TV shows for $2 each. Man, I wish “It’s All Geek to Me” were available for download! So far, Discovery Inc. hasn’t decided whether to do that yet.
YouTube videos to the iPod: Macintosh instructions. To make this happen, you need a program called iSquint for Macintosh. It’s here: http://www.isquint.org/
iSquint is the free version of a more elaborate commercial program called Visual Hub. As a result, iSquint is littered with ads for Visual Hub, and there’s no built-in help at all.
The steps for converting a YouTube video into the format that your iPod can understand aren’t difficult; basically, you just drag the video file off your Mac desktop right into the iSquint window. Step-by-step instructions are here: http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/isquint/index.shtml
No, the bigger question is: How do you get a YouTube video downloaded to your desktop?
The steps for that are here: http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/youtuberip/index.shtml
Good luck!
YouTube videos to the iPod: Windows instructions. To make this happen, you need a program called iSquint for Macintosh. It’s here: http://www.isquint.org/
I couldn’t find a totally free program that converts YouTube videos, but here’s a $10 one called MoviePod: http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/moviepod.win
(Actually, it’s available for Macintosh, too, but I figured Mac fans would rather have “free” than “$10.”)
Once again, the instructions for getting the YouTube video into your copy of iTunes (which puts it into the iPod) are here: http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/youtuberip/index.shtml
Podcasts. OK, let me explain what’s happening here, in this part of the show: You’re listening to excerpts from actual podcasts! But that’s me, in costume, lip-syncing all of them.
Even my sister didn’t recognize me wearing those costumes. It’s all me, dudes. Even Grammar Girl.
These podcasts absolutely crack me up.
iPod rivals. Here are the models I briefly demonstrated on the show:
You can buy music for these players from PlaysForSure music stores like Rhapsody.com, Napster.com, and Yahoo Music.
Or, believe it or not, Apple’s iTunes store. Since we taped the show, Apple has begun selling songs from EMI Records with no copy protection — for $1.30 instead of $1.
These songs won’t necessarily play on PlaysForSure players, though; the non-protected songs are in unprotected AAC format, and not all players recognize AAC files.
Then again, you can always use iTunes to convert your unprotected iTunes downloads into MP3 format, which all players recognize.
Zune. So far, looks like the Zune is a big fat dud. Nobody’s buying it. Microsoft has big plans for new models, though.
Bloopers. This is the only “It’s All Geek to Me” episode with bloopers! Man, we had SO much fun doing those costume bits ...
Questions? Feedback on the show? Email me! I’m pogue@nytimes.com.
And don’t forget — you can watch the show in glorious, widescreen HIGH DEFINITION, starting June 7 on the Discovery HD Theater channel!
