Increase your iPod’s volume
Some MP3s are recorded at annoyingly
low levels, and European iPods actually
have their overall volume level restricted.
euPOD VolumeBoost 1.3.0 ( http://www.ringom.no/
espen/ipod/ ) was designed as a work-
around to the latter, but will work with
any tracks on any iPod. Download it
from the link above, and connect your
iPod to your PC. Unzip euPOD to a
folder, and launch the executable. Once
it finds your iPod, you’ll see a slider
that goes from +0 to +80. Your iPod’s
baseline volume is +0. Every increment
above that raises the volume level of the
tracks in your iPod without affecting
any of the original files.Drag tracks off your iPod
iTunes won’t let you download
music from your iPod back to your
PC, because, as we all know, that’s
the most popular method of file
sharing. Let’s see if we can’t
fix that.
Go to http://www.kennettnet.co.uk/
software/podutil.php and download
PodUtil 2.0. Unzip the file to a
folder, launch the executable, and
give it a few minutes to inspect
your iPod’s contents, after which
the program screen should pop
up. Click the Copier tab: This
allows you to download your
iPod’s contents to anyplace onyour hard drive. Just make
sure you’ve got enough room
first; the Basic option under “Copy
Mode” will tell you how much room
you will need.Share music with iTunes
iTunes is nice enough to permit
streaming of other folks’ music over
a network, but it draws the line at
letting you copy these tracks to your
PC. MyTunes let’s you move that line
in the right direction. Download
MyTunes from http://mytunes.linu.cx (be
patient —the server gets overloaded
often). Launch iTunes first, and then
MyTunes. Peruse a shared folder on the
network, and every time you double-
click a file to play it, that file will also
appear in MyTunes. Double-click it
there as well to download the track.
The default download folder can be
changed under the View menu.Mod Your iPod
Three cool hacks to get the most out of your MP3 player
Digital cameras are changing photography and every-
day life in ways we never imagined. Yes, we know
that memory cards are replacing film and that inkjet
printers are replacing darkrooms. What we didn’t
expect is that, when wielded by ordinary people, digi-
cams would make surveillance photography a univer-
sal phenomenon. This sets photography on a collision
course with privacy rights and terrorism hysteria.
It will soon be possible to surreptitiously pho-
tograph anything, anywhere. Digicams can be
extremely small—smaller than all but the most
exotic film cameras—and incredibly inexpensive.
For little additional cost, a digicam can be added
to another digital device, such as a cellphone or
PDA, that already has the microprocessor and
memory required to support image capture. More
than 170 million camera phones are expected to
be sold worldwide by 2006. I’ve also seen digital
cameras disguised as jewelry and all sorts of com-
mon objects. So what happens when everybody can
carry an unobtrusive or hidden camera?
One result: candid pictures of people in public
restrooms, health-club showers, clothing-store
changing rooms, and other private places. Some
digicams have infrared-sensitive sensors; with a
special filter, they can produce revealing images
of women in wet bathing suits. In California, a
man was recently busted while taking pictures of
women’s crotches with a tiny digicam hidden in his
shoe. One manufacturer has even banned its own
camera phones from its very own factories in order
to protect trade secrets.
Meanwhile, cameras that are identifiable as
cameras are facing more obstacles in public places.
Security guards have harassed people for taking
snapshots of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco,
worried that terrorists posing as tourists might be
studying the bridge’s construction. A few steps away,
hundreds of books filled with pictures of the bridge
are available in the gift shop. How will such witless
authorities cope with millions of nearly invisible cam-
eras? Not very well, I’m afraid.
Ironically, governments and businesses are
installing literally millions of video surveillance
cameras in public areas, intersections, stores, and
workplaces. They want to stare at us, but they don’t
want us to stare back.
Watch out for a backlash against phone cameras
and other inconspicuous digicams. When fast film lib-
erated cameras from tripods in the late 1800s, photog-
raphy changed from a static art that imitated painting
into a new visual art of real-life reportage.Digital Eyes
Everywhere
Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and
now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.FAST FORWARD BY^ TOM R. HALFHILL
Pump up the volumeH
ave you been feeling like
your iPod and iTunes are a
little too uptight? We dug
up a few hacks that offer work-
arounds and tweaks to some of
the more restrictive aspects of
our favorite MP3 player and its
accompanying software.
But remember, these are hacks,
and hacks can easily go awry.
Before applying any of them, make
sure you back up the tracks on your
iPod via MusicMatch or iTunes. If
your iPod hangs, first try a reset
(hold down the Play and Menu
buttons at the same time for about
5 to 10 seconds). In the rare event
that this doesn’t work, just leave
your iPod on until the battery
runs out, then attach it to your PC
again. The reconnect should wake
up your comatose player.Claim other peoples musicReclaim your musicQuick Start
MARCH 2004 MAXIMUMPC