iLounge

1

Do these program work with all iPods or only the new ones?  The battery monitor sounds really cool, but I have my doubts as to whether it wil work with now ancient 5GB pod.

Posted by Mark Castleman in Boulder CO on September 17, 2004 at 7:16 PM (PDT)

2

Full featured notes manager? A few quick thoughts…

a) it doesn’t support hierarchy with folders (this is one main feature of the iPod’s notes reader)
b) notes max out at 4,096 characters in length, not 4,000 (4kb = 4,096 bytes)
c) why won’t it work with Windows formatted iPod. Are you trying not to support it?
d) why would you care about your iPod’s battery when its plugged into your computer and being charged? That’s like monitoring my cell phone’s battery while it’s charging over night…

Anyways just a few constructive criticisms. Looks cool.

Posted by hmm on September 17, 2004 at 7:22 PM (PDT)

3

I do not understand this whole battery thing…

YOU have to manually tell it the charge number? And then it charts it out..?

It doesn’t tell you how the song by song report would work either (I thought maybe by tracking last played etc..)

Posted by Prashant on September 17, 2004 at 8:43 PM (PDT)

4

All great concerns—let me try to clear up what I can.

First, about the Batter Monitor. What it does is upon start (while the iPod is plugged in of course) is first change the battery from the horrible icon to a numeric value. THEN, you *unplug the iPod* and either begin a good charge or start to play the unit. Every 1/2 hour to hour you would want to enter the battery number & hit “iPod still playing.” All the while, the report is being built. Eventually, the iPod dies, and your iPod is hooked back up to the program so we can change the indicator back (it is a preference if you don’t want it changed back) and then you can mail the report, print it, or save it right onto the iPod. Unfortunately, you have to manually enter a battery value yourself; the number is not a stored value, so we can’t retrieve it for you. When all is said and done, you will have a report that you can show your service provider should they question your battery life. They can even get the program themselves and test your iPod themselves!

The Notes Manager is still somewhat in progress; we are exploring the subnotes for a future version. Applescript doesn’t give a lot of the support we would like for file navigation. As for working with Windows, I have no idea why it won’t work. I would assume the formatting of the iPod doesn’t accept Mac-created notes and they really do strange things when you save one to a Windows iPod (We tried). We may up the character limit to 4,096 in the next version.

Thanks for the feedback, though. Obviously, we read it all!

Posted by If Then Staff on September 18, 2004 at 4:07 AM (PDT)

5

I don’t understand anyone would need to buy this Battery Monitor program. You can pretty much do the same thing yourself.

1) Create an empty file called “_show_voltage” in the directory /iPod_Control/Device/ that you can get by browsing your iPod as a hard drive (you may need to enable hidden folders). Now the battery icon on your iPod will be replaced by a numerical value.

2) Every half hour, jot down the numerical value in to a notepad.

3) When your iPod battery depletes, go into a spreadsheet program and make a graph of all of the values you wrote down.

4) Repeat steps 2-3 to show trends.

You just saved ten bucks! There is a problem with this though. The battery indicator on the iPod is wildly inaccurate. It has the same amount of inaccuracy regardless of whether it’s showing a number or an icon for battery life. The numerical value jumps around all over the place. So I don’t know how accurate your graphs are going to be.

Posted by br- on September 18, 2004 at 5:49 AM (PDT)

6

I thought the numerical battery indicater didn’t work, it just told the voltage that the battery was giving off at any point, not the charge left in the battery.

Posted by ns on September 18, 2004 at 7:35 AM (PDT)