Overview of how a Maker solved his audio problem in his new car “iPod your Subaru Outback’s Closed Audio System – For some incredibly stupid reason, Subaru has shipped its popular Outback for the past two years with completely closed audio systems making it near impossible to use them with the immensely popular iPod. Here’s a clean, affordable solution for iPodding your closed Subaru’s audio system.” [via] Link.
Great iPod hack from Fabienne Serriere “For this week’s Nano Hack we will cover how to get power off your iPod Nano’s battery. Power can be useful when you need to run other small low power devices in conjunction with the Nano. These devices can be small circuits, lights, etc. In next week’s installment we will use the power we draw to power a glowing sleeve for the iPod Nano.” Link.
Ars technica has a handy guide on converting videos for your iPod video. The how-to covers encoding on a Mac using QuickTime pro, ffmpegX and handbrake. On the Windows side, QuickTime pro (again) as well as DVD decrypter/Nero and DVD Decrypter/meGUI. Thanks CK. Link.
Washingtonpost.com is offering its users video “podcasts” of select original video news programming. Users will have the ability to subscribe to existing and newly released video directly from washingtonpost.com or via such podcast listings as iTunes, among others. Video available for the launch include news and short-form documentary pieces on the preservation of New Orleans jazz after Hurricane Katrina, large scale evangelism events and updates on National Zoo panda cub Tai Shan. Link.
Ian writes “Frusterated that your new iPod Video or Nano won’t fit in the dock you already have? (Well, it will, but worried about the connector breaking off if you bump it?) Well, worry no more. All it takes to turn an old Dock (in this case, the one that came with my 3G iPod) into a wanna-be Universal Dock capable of accepting the Univeral Dock adapters that come with the new iPods. Sure, it won’t work with the remote, but it’ll get your iPod working with your stereo or just sitting pretty next to your computer, and if you start with a Photo dock, I don’t see why the video out wouldn’t work too.” Link.
Declan writes “…how to capture radio shows with a Griffin Radio Shark, convert then to bookmarkable AAC files, then make them available as a Podcast so iTunes can automatically sync them to your iPod.” Link. Clever hack to get all the podcasts that aren’t in the iTunes directory from NPR.
…Stanford has teamed up with Apple to offer a variety of audio files, such as news, music, sports, and faculty lectures, available for download from the iTunes Music Store for free, by anyone. It’s called Stanford on iTunes, and at the same time that some files are available to the public, course material and advising content is available for students connecting from within Stanford’s network. [via] Link. The files are in m4a format, at the least the ones I downloaded.
