The RSPB required a web application through which they could provide learning material to people interested in birds and birdwatching. Once a user has logged-in they are presented with 6 different modules as well as access to the resource library which contains the RPSB Handbook of British Birds and Where to Watch Birds - Britain.
Six months ago I purchased a 5th gen iPod after noticing a mis-printed price in one of the large supermarket’s monthly magazine. Although I had coveted iPods for sometime I could never see the need for one when my minidisc player worked fine; however at such a price reduction I jumped at the chance.
So six months down the line and with 26+GB of music loaded onto it I’m loving it as much as I did on the day I bought it. The design of the unit is excellent, though I found the click-wheel a little tricky to work with (and still do), operating the device couldn’t be simpler. A couple of things that I am not particularly keen on are the headphone input; the way that the headphone connector sticks out of the iPod will eventually lead to breakages in the headphone cable, and the hold switch colouring. Yes I am being a little fussy, but the orange used to indicate whether the iPod is in a locked state is not in fitting with any of the colours used throughout the device.
Following the purchase I soon bought two docks for the iPod, one for work and one for home with the infra-red ‘eye’. Then as I had infra-red ability with my iPod I purchased the Apple Remote so I can control the device from across the room. The iPod and all accessories were my first experiences of Mac products. I have never owned a Mac computer, I hadn’t even had iTunes installed on my pc.
From my experiences, what seems to limit the iPod’s potential is iTunes. In order to manage the music on your iPod it is pretty much a requirement to use iTunes, however iTunes ties you into only being able to manage the music on your iPod from one computer. Authorising computers only allows you to play purchased songs from the iTunes store on authorised computers from what I understand. This hampered what I intended to do with having two dock; one at work and one at home from which I could listen to my music via the computer. I did however find a way around.
By installing Songbird and relevant plugins to allow iPod connectivity, I can control playback of my iPod through the media player. Additionally with the Songbird Last.fm plugin installed, any tracks played off the iPod are scrobbled and count towards my Last.fm play count. Problem solved? Well not really. Though the guys at Songbird are doing a great job on building a media player and web browser, it is still in beta and doesn’t have a lot of the features iTunes currently has. Also it doesn’t allow for you to add/delete/edit any of the music on the iPod unless you grant Songbird sole ownership of the iPod library, which is what iTunes already has.
Back to the Apple Remote that I mentioned earlier. If I had known of the limited functionality available to control my iPod through the Apple Remote then I doubt I would have purchased it in the first place. The Remote doesn’t allow for any navigation amongst the menu items on the iPod and literally just allows you to navigate through tracks (next/back), adjust the volume, and control playback (play/pause). You cannot select any playlists either custom, by artists, album, genre etc via the Remote as they require traversing the iPod menu items, and the Remote will only work when the device is not in manual disk use mode. It is not possible to control playback of the iPod when Songbird is playing tracks of the iPod due to the way Songbird reads tracks from the device.
All in all I am more than happy with my iPod and being able to carry my entire music collection around with me. Though the computer software used to interface with the device is somewhat limited, the device itself works as intended.
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One Response to “iPod love”
Tis true the ipod is a marvel of design and certainly an icon of the 21st century, but why can’t it play WMA files (which all my music is). Can’t see me bothering to rip all my cd’s into mp3 or AAC.
I can see your problem with the remote but to navigate menu’s etc you’d need a screen (unless you stand next to your ipod using a remote) and then you get to the point where you have pretty much an ipod as a remote to control your ipod in the dock. I think thats where the smaller fm transmitters for the ipod come in useful.
by Kean on August 10th, 2007 at 9:14 am