iPod Resources

This Christmas, the biggest item on the daughter's wish-list was an blue iPod nano.

We've tried to buy popular electronic gifts for her at Christmas before, with little success. Like an iPod shuffle when they first came out, and then there was the fiasco of locating a PS2 a few Christmases ago.

So this year we were smart and picked one up early in December.

Lavie suggested I load it up with her iTunes songs first, but I wanted her to have the joy of opening it first.  In hindsight I don't think she would have cared, and Apple seems to design their iPod boxes to be opened and resealed pretty easily.

It really broke my heart (and Lavie's) when we kept having to tell her that we wouldn't be able to get one for her this year, but there was always her birthday.  She had even gone on-line to look up some teen money-raising tips so she could earn the cash herself.  Bless her heart.

The last gift of the morning was...her iPod.

She was delighted.

She pulled it out and tried to power it on.  Nothing.

So we moved to our desktop pc that holds our iTunes collection and plugged it in.

Still nothing.

The system couldn't even see the device.  It was as if I had just plugged an empty USB cable to the pc.  It didn't know it was there. I tried other ports, other connectors (this is the fifth iPod we bought), nada.

I tried powering it on unattached. It was dead.

Daughter was stunned, Dad was crushed, and the store wouldn't be open for a return the day after Christmas.

I let it charge connected anyway for about an hour before we left to make our in-law's visit. Nothing. It was dead and both iTunes and the system refused to acknowledge it even existed.

I did a quick search on Google and tracked down a user who had the same thing. He did a hold-switch toggle and Menu-center button press, left it alone for 24 hours and it restored. So I did that, figuring it wouldn't do any harm and we would be returning it anyway.

When we arrived back home from our visit with Lavie's parents, out of stubbornness, pulled it out and hit the menu button.

It lit up...told me the battery was dead and instantly powered off.

And the daughter screamed and the angles sang hosannas.

We hooked it back up to our pc and it was a recognized device. We launched iTunes and it saw it.

It had gotten just enough juice, apparently, to initiate the system reset I had performed...no telling how slow the processor churned with almost no power, but it managed it.

Daughter has been hard at work managing her songs and playlist.  She got a number of iTunes gift cards and has been downloading her selections.

We share enjoyment of each other's musical tastes (for the most part) and iTunes really allows us to stretch our family's dollars as we can load the same songs on all of our own iPods.  It's fun to share and listen to each other's picks.

This is the first iPod with video support we've had in the family and it is very cool.  I think Lavie has already made her birthday wish known for this year.  The video screen is very nice and the playback is super.  While I am still not sure about watching a full-length movie on it, I must confess, it would be quite doable in a desperate moment.

So, naturally, I've been hard at work collecting links that are for iPod utilities, tips and tweaks.  Here are some amazing goodies lists.

• Feature: The 23 Best iTunes Add-ons - Lifehacker.com

• Feature: The 20 Best iPod Utilities - Lifehacker.com

• 50 Free Tools to make your iPod Better ...and almost 30 problem-specific tips to fix it -MakeUseOf.com

• How to Install Wikipedia on Your iPod - MakeUseOf.com

We already have a number of iPods, my original 2G 80GB brick iPod, two classic iPod shuffles, and the new clip-style iPod shuffle I use in my gear-kit.  This one makes number five

So far we only have one outstanding "problem;" it refuses to register via iTunes.  I've had to register it on-line at the Apple website, but it still is prompting to be registered when we connect it each time.  I go through the steps but then it gives a failure message.  At first I thought this was related to the Apple servers being hammered with lots of traffic, but many others are reporting the issue as well.  It might be an iTunes bug.  I've verified it isn't a firewall problem.  Only thing I haven't done is run a packet-sniffing session to see if there is a bad DNS or IP address issue causing the problem...like happened with Ad-Aware SE updates a while back.

It's no big deal, and I could set the option not to show this again, but Alvis really would like to get the three free video downloads that are being offered.  And the post I linked to show that some users are finally able to get them to go through...so I will keep trying every few days.

I'll update you if I find out anything.

Oh yes, Alvis even named the silly thing; "Caprice."  Because of the color.  Go figure.

She is pretty clever.  While I was setting it up in iTunes, I named it with just her name: Alvis's iPod.  She went back later and updated the name, without asking me how, to "Alvis's iPod (Caprice)."

Clever girl, indeed.

--Claus