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Some users complain that iTunes is somewhat limited to how music is managed, and to complicate it further iPods will seemingly only operate with computers they are set up to sync with. This technobabble article will go through some easy steps you can take to get music off your iPod without using iTunes.

Normally, people use iTunes to copy music on and off of their iPods. To prevent unauthorized music redistribution iTunes won’t work with someone else’s iPod on your computer. These restrictions are unfortunate - but this is the sacrifice Apple made for making deals with record labels to sell their music online. Regardless of why or what - if you legitimately have music (say, something you wrote) on your iPod - wouldn’t it be handy to be able to plug that iPod into you’re friend’s computer and share your work?

Navigate your iPod

The iPod works like a USB hard drive. iTunes even has a setting to enable disk use. So when you plug your iPod into your computer you should see it (Windows users will see a drive in My Computer, and Mac users will see the icon on the desktop)

View hidden files

The folders that actually store your music are hidden on the iPod. So first, make sure you are seeing hidden and protected files. Window users can check out the control panel -> “folder options” for this. For mac users, hop into terminal and try this:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Yes, Apple is TRYING to make it hard to get at it Oh, and if you want to hide hidden stuff again try:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

Access your music

Now that you can see hidden stuff, you should see a folder called iPod_Control in your iPod. Inside this folder is another folder called “Music” which contains all the songs on your iPod. Unfortunately, iTunes renames the files with short codes - but the real names of the songs are retained in the MP3 tags. If you copy these files to your computer there are various organizational utilities on the web that will help rename them back, based off the ID3 tags. Hop on google and look for mp3 organization or renaming utilities.

Avoid iTunes alltogether

There are even utilities out there that will allow you to copy files to and from iPods. This is a common thing for Linux users as there is no iTunes in linux. Some example programs: Amarock, Banshee (those are Linux only) also SongBird which is cross-platform. http://getsongbird.com/

The classic Final Fantasy on NES provides fond memories for some, and frustrations for other. Often times, the amount of grinding it takes to proceed is a major turn-off to some players. Others are turned off by the dated graphics. So, to address both of these roadblocks - here are some nifty tools that will crack open this classic.

Final Fantasy Save Game Editor

http://games.technoplaza.net/ffse/

For Linux, Mac, and Windows is this easy-to-use save game editor. With it you’ll be able to fudge the amount of money, experience, items, and magic your characters have.

Hacks and patches

http://www.derok.net/emulation0/finalfantasy.html

This page contains just a few patches that can be applied to the Final Fantasy ROM to update the game in various ways. My favorites here are “Final Fantasy Plus” which follows the original game but with updated graphics, enemies, items, and skill/gameplay. Also, is “Final Fantasy World of Chaos” which uses the original engine but gives the players a whole new world and storyline to explore. These patches can be applied using any IPS patching tool.

Check out the screenshots for both.

FrontRow is the media center software that comes on every Mac - it’s pretty basic, but this makes for a great platform to build a great, customized media center. Below, are a few essential plugins (or “Appliances”) that you can add to FrontRow to give it some really powerful capabilities.

UNDERSTUDY

http://code.google.com/p/understudy/

Understudy is a quick and dirty way to get Hulu feeds in FrontRow. It’s simple but if you have HuluDesktop installed there’s an ever better solution:

HULU DESKTOP LAUNCHER

http://www.nullweb.com/?p=7

The beauty of FrontRow might be it’s ease of use with the remote control. Hulu does a good job with this in Hulu Desktop. Adding this plugin will allow you to access Hulu Desktop quickly and easily.

BOXEE

http://www.holeintheceiling.com/blog/2008/12/12/front-row-boxee/

In a similar fashion, using Front Row as a starting point makes a lot of sense of a Mac media center. Boxee is a great way to explore your videos, pictures, media… and pretty much everything. Adding this to FrontRow gives you another easy way to pick up the remote and start surfin’

HONORABLE MENTIONS

In addition, EyeTV, NetFlix, YouTube and other popular media center items can be integrated into FrontRow. Depending on your needs there’s FrontRow extensions for almost anything media-center related!

My set up is a Mac Mini. I automatically boot to FrontRow, and use a universal remote to access FrontRow which is the starting point to my video, music, photos, and internet TV.

One of the first things I did with my new Windows PC from Best Buy was to torch the OS and install a clean copy of Vista Ultimate. The fact it came preloaded with the google toolbar, and various demo installations just freaked me out. If you have a retail copy of Windows, I’d say round up your drivers and do the same.

Anyways the whole reinstallation deal lead to an observation of mine - I had a 20 gig partition that the Windows installer could not get at, nor could the Computer Management control panel (Disk Management snap-in)

20 gigs on a 750gig hard drive isn’t really a whole lot - but it’s the principle!

So before you embark down this road I’ll give you my usual disclaimer of proceed at your own risk. Back your stuff up! Also, I have a legit copy of Vista Ultimate to fall back on if I really screw crap up. (Not to mention all the Linux utilities and bootloaders) Ok now that all that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business.

1. Go to start, run, type “cmd” to get to the command line. (Do this as a system admin)

2. type diskpart, press enter

3. now you should be in the diskpart utility, you’ll see a special diskpart promp. At it, type rescan and press enter.

4. type list disk and press enter. You should be looking at a list of the drives installed in your machine.

5. now type “select disk x” where x is the number corresponding to the disk with the locked oem partition. e.g. “select disk 0″ press enter.

6. if you type “list partition” you can see the partitions on this drive. you should see in this list the locked oem partition

7. now we need to select that partition. type “select partition x” where x is the locked oem partition

8. this is it, once you’ve selected the disk and restore partition you can type “delete partition override” to blow it away.

9.now, exit out of the terminal window and go into the control panels (classic view), administrative tools

10. in administrative tools you should see computer management, inside that is disk management

11. in disk management you can easily right-click the newly freed up partition, format, and bring up as usable space in your system.

OTHER IDEAS

If you’re hurting for space and don’t want to do a reinstall, you could relocate your swap file to this partition if it’s big enough. This will free up space on your primary drive for more programs and whatnot. Alternatively you could use partition magic and try and merge the partitions together. Or, if you have a copy of Windows, you can drop both partitions within the Windows installer and install a clean copy of Windows on the one, big, partition.

Happy Hacking.

Feeling lazy? Have a couple of Macs around the house? This one’s for you!

Being able to remote control a computer is nothing new, and the Mac OS has supported it for a long while. But with 10.5 it’s never been easier. But before we set up a remote controlled Mac, let’s talk about some of the ways this work.

VNC

VNC - this is a standard that can be found on Linux machines as well as Mac OS. Essentially one computer acts as a VNC server an a VNC client connects to observe or control the server. The Mac OS can run as a VNC server out of the box. In 10.5 this feature can be found in the sharing control panel. One Mac VNC client I’ve used in the past is “Chicken of the VNC” a quick google should turn up a download for this app, if you’re interested

A BETTER WAY

Apple Remote Desktop is a swell way to remote control Macs on your Network, however it’s not free. It is an application designed for a system administrator to monitor or control a bunch of machines. The lite version that comes with 10.5 can be found in iChat - the screen sharing feature! The cool thing, and the hack I’m getting to, is using this screen sharing service to remote control your Macs with the same elegance the full version of Remote Desktop gives you. It’s all there - just disabled!

1) Look in your hard drive in /System/Library/CoreServices - you should find “Screen Sharing” - the application which will allow you to remote control the machines. I put mine in my dock.

2) If you load it, it asks where to connect. You can use the IP as provided by the sharing control panel, but there’s an easier way. Hop into terminal and type this: defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug 1

3) Now when you load Screen Sharing, you’ll see a more detailed window with a list of computers on the network using bonjour and remote management in the sharing control panel.

WHY?

This is useful if you have a desktop Mac in the house - you can connect to and control it from a laptop. It’s also fun for pranks The ScreenSharing solution is also nice because it will scale the higher resolution desktop to fit on your laptop’s screen - Chicken of the VNC doesn’t do this. Most Linux distributions have a VNC client as well so you can get at your desktop Mac from pretty much anything or anywhere. That’s right - if you’re confident with exposing your machine to the world, you can share out this service to the internet and get at your home computer anywhere in the world.