Ramblings from the Marginalized

AT&T Inc. announced on July 2, 2007 that millions of its customers with higher speed broadband plans can now receive free access to AT&T's nationwide Wi-Fi network — nearly 10,000 hot spots at popular locations across the country including leading airports, McDonalds restaurants, Barnes & Noble bookstores, coffee shops and popular sporting venues.

Effective now, qualifying new and existing residential and small business AT&T broadband customers instantly benefit from the free unlimited Wi-Fi connectivity at company hot spots. Qualifying AT&T broadband packages include: AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Pro (up to 3.0 Mbps downstream), AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Elite (up to 6.0 Mbps downstream), FastAccess Xtreme (up to 3.0 Mbps downstream) and FastAccess Xtreme 6.0 (up to 6.0 Mbps downstream).

Too bad my little 1.5Mbps service is not listed.

Just in time for the iPhone release perhaps? We have already been hearing rumors of the Edge network becoming faster but this, this adds a new element to the mix.

With Apple using the iPhone to get more people into their iTunes music store (why can't I put ringtones on the iPhone?) I guess it was only a matter of time before at&t figured out a way to hook iPhone buyers into their DSL service.

If only I could run iTunes on an iPhone and use this FREE Wi-Fi bonus to get music...

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So Apple just announced some limited YouTube functionality for the Apple TV. They made it sound as if it were ground breaking news! You might get the impression that watching a YouTube video on your TV was some amazing new thing! Guess again.

If you have a Wii and a broadband connection you can already do this. The Wii also cost less than the AppleTV and it does more.

“This is the first time users can easily browse, find and watch YouTube videos right from their living room couch, and it’s really, really fun. YouTube is a worldwide sensation, and Apple TV is bringing it directly from the Internet onto the widescreen TV in your living room.”

said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO

Some other folks on the Internet have been talking about this but I ignored it for the simple fact that it is not really news.

In fact, if you had been paying attention in the past you would also be aware of the announcement of StumbleUpon bringing video content to the Wii.

So, when will we hear Steve Jobs talk about their ground breaking deal with StumbleUpon to bring video to the AppleTV?

The AppleTV is not a real good product by any stretch of the imagination. It's not a DVR, it only streams content from another computer. Why would you buy such a thing? If you want to put your computer on your TV just get a video-out board. In fact, most new video cards already have a video-out option and some HD TVs have a VGA port.

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It recently occurred to me that I despise and hate my 30 GB video iPod. I’ve had this thing for a little over a year now and it has never lived up to its potential. Between crashing and syncing problems I have just had enough! I’m now ready for something new.

Before I acquired my iPod I used a very poor MP3 player called the iRock. It only held 128MB of music and did not have any sort of stop/resume feature. It worked well enough for music but not for podcasting. If I listened 30 minutes into a 1 hour podcast and then turned it off it would not resume 30 minutes in, this did not work.

When I moved on to listening to podcasts during my morning and afternoon drive times I brought my laptop in my car and plugged it in through the tape deck. This worked but… It was a laptop! I didn’t want to lug that thing around with me all day (or leave it in my car) just for a little bit of podcast listening during drive time.

The iPod worked out great, at first. It allowed me resume listening to a long show right where I left off. It also had the ability to be used as an external storage device. Considering my laptop only has a 20GB drive in it the 30GB drive on the iPod was like having a back-up drive. Unfortunately, I soon encountered problems.

Because my laptop’s drive was not big enough to store all of the MP3 files I ripped from CDs I had to turn off the sync feature of the iPod. After copying songs over I would delete the ripped files from my computer. This worked well until the first time my iPod’s indexing file got corrupted. When that happened I had no choice but to reformat the iPod, losing all of my songs in the process. No, I never did rip them all again.

Later on I tried to update the iPod’s firmware but, in order to do that it wipes the entire iPod clean! That may work well if you copies of everything on your computer but I did not.

The real pain with the firmware updates is that they were forced on me.

I like to watch a particular anime video podcast and it has always worked on the iPod. Several months ago my iPod refused to let me transfer the files. It gave me some lame “your software is too old to view this file” message even though the producer of the content was using the same exact software to make the videos. So I upgraded… and more hell broke loose!

Suddenly play lists were gone and syncing only worked sometimes. Some files would sync and others would not. No amount of cajoling would allow me to move the files over except one method. That method involved dragging and dropping from outside of iTunes and after moving the file it would only appear in the recent area for a few days. It would not appear under music/podcasting/anything… This was a very annoying problem.

Eventually I wiped the whole thing clean and started fresh, this time I set it to auto-sync everything! This has worked well enough but, the other night I needed more hard drive space so I started deleting some of the MP3 songs on my laptop. I did not delete them via iTunes though, just the files themselves.

When I plugged in my iPod this morning to get my podcasts transferred over it erased all of my MP3 songs from my iPod before I could tell it to do otherwise! Why is that? It is like that because there is no way to tell iTunes how to interact with your iPod unless it is plugged in! Once it is plugged in it does its own thing until it feels like letting you do what you want to do. In the blink of an eye iTunes wiped my 10GB music collection…

I thought deleting the files but leaving them in the iTunes index would be OK, I guessed wrong. Some of those files I even paid money for via iTunes… they are all gone now. The only reason I still use the iPod is because I like to watch my iPod video podcasts on my TV with an A/V cable. You know what? It’s not worth it anymore. I have lost too much time fiddling with this horrible music player. I want something new. I want something that does not suck.

Can anyone direct me to a new portable media player that does not suck like the iPod does? Please?

PS: I tried using RockBox on the iPod at one time but it goes into charging mode if I plug in the charger while in the car.

Perhaps I should enter John Chow's contest for a Zune? John Chow is the guy who helps you make money on the internet with a wide variety of articles on blogging.

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Every morning I check my iTunes for new podcasts that download while I sleep. This morning I found two new ones, but they were greyed out... I tried to play them but I could not. I checked my hard drive and the files were there and could be played, just not from iTunes.

A few days ago iTunes had begun pestering me to upgrade, again. I put it off because my computer is old and just meets the minimum system requirements as it is. I did not want to try and install the new version and get hosed.

So, being unable to do anything with these podcasts I bit the bullet and downloaded the newest version of iTunes.

After installing, the two files were no longer greyed out in iTunes but, I could not transfer them to my iPod! No matter what I did iTunes claimed the iPod was in sync with iTunes.

I eventually just drag-n-dropped them onto my iPod but now they only show up in the "recently added" area. To make matters worse, one of them did not transfer at all and I did not find out until I was in my car!

Is there a good alternative to iTunes out there? I can't just reset my iPod because I use it for file storage too and I don't have the space on my computer to pull all of those files.

This is why I avoid upgrading iTunes yet, Apple always forces me to upgrade by breaking the copy I currently use! Grrrr....

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For Christmas I purchased a new 1GB iPod Shuffle for my wife to replace her existing 512MB Shuffle...

After opening it she gave the old one to my daughter and tried to get the new one setup and loaded...

It went downhill from there.

You might be wondering why I would purchase another iPod product after all the difficulty I have been having with my 30GB iPod Video.

To be honest, my wife has NEVER had a problem with her shuffle and she wanted one of the newer smaller ones. She was also being pestered by my daughter who was hell bent on "inheriting" said shuffle.

Purchasing the iPod was pain free. At the Apple store in the Danbury Fair Mall they had a special area for iPod sales. All you had to do was hand them your credit card and an email address and they gave you an iPod.

Wrapping it was also pain free as my daughter did that. She also signed the card as if the gift was only from her but hey, kids do that.

Christmas morning she opened it up and plugged it into her computer...

I know a lot of people got iPods for Christmas and the iTunes store and servers were flooded but... It took forever for her to connect and right away it wanted to update the firmware.

That may have been the biggest mistake.

After updating the firmware she encountered a horrible problem.

The new shuffle was not being recognized by the computer. It didn't always happen either!

Sometimes it would find it right away, load iTunes and work fine. Other times Windows would find it as a USB drive and iTunes would not. Even worse, there were times when iTunes would see it and then it would just vanish... even in the middle of transferring files!

I've checked the Apple Support forums but no one has an answer for this problem (though others do have this problem.)

Here is a synopsis:

1) new shuffle not being seen by computer
2) new shuffle seen by computer but not iTunes
3) new shuffle seen by computer, iTunes loads (set to load on connection) but then iTunes does not see shuffle
4) new shuffle connects properly to iTunes and then vanishes (from iTunes and windows)
5) new shuffle connects properly to iTunes and then vanishes (only from iTunes, windows still sees it)
6) new shuffle is seen by windows and then vanishes from windows

I'm going batty here!

One suggestion I did read was to enable disk use. I tried to do this but every time I get an error message (unknown error -50) and iTunes and the computer "lose" the shuffle...

I thought it might have been a bad dock but the fact that others are having the same problem leads me to believe otherwise.

Also, the new shuffle should have an amber light on while charging. The amber light only comes on when windows "sees" the shuffle. Right now it often blinks 7 times and then vanishes from Windows! How can I charge it if it's not being seen by the computer? The light stays amber while it charges and then goes green to indicate a full charge.

I have had some luck connecting with the shuffle turned on but I still can not enable disk use or restore it without iTunes kicking it out. The above problems also still occur, just not as quickly.

I don't want to drive back to the Apple store but I may just have to.

Links from the Apple Support Boards:

My Shuffle keeps disappearing
2nd Gen Shuffle won't stay connected to iTunes

UPDATE:
I have found the solution to my problem. My wife's computer had an older USB port while my laptop had a slightly newer USB version that sent a little bit more power over the bus. I went out and purchased a USB 2.0 PCI card for her and installed it. Now all of our problmes are solved!

It looks like the new shuffle needs a little bit more power over the bus to operate properly when connected to your computer. If you are having this problem AND you have USB 2.0 ports please let me know.

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I've had problems in the past with iTunes and podcast files, but now I'm angry.

I can deal with having to set all of my podcasts to start at 00:01 to avoid the iPod crash problem but I can not stand having to force my iPod to load a podcast file!

I have re-formated my iPod multiple times now and this is still happening!

	Here we have my iTunes window open. I'm looking at my "recently added" section and I've just completed changing all of the podcasts to start at 00:01 to avoid the problem of my iPod crashing. Everything looks good so I'll select these podcasts and drag/drop them onto my iPod.
	My screen cap did not catch it but, over the highlighted iPod item is a crossed out circle. iTunes does not want to let me copy the files over to my iPod! So I have no choice but to take the two files I wanted to copy and copy them to my desktop.
	Now I am dragging those same two files back into iTunes to put them directly onto my iPod. iTunes accepts this and the files transfer to my iPod. I takes a few minutes for the transfer to go through.
	If you look up on top you will see the status window is telling us that two files are being transferred. Both of these files are podcast files, remember that.
	Hey? Where are my two new podcast files? Why are they not listed as a podcast??? Did they even transfer over???
	There they are... In the recently added listing and that is the ONLY place they show up! Not in the music are. Not in the podcast area. They only show up in the temporary "recently added" area. What good is that? Once they are no longer "recently added" how do I find them? Not only that but, how do I get rid of them?

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There is a new problem with iTunes+iPod+Podcasts.

The other day I went to fill my iPod with new podcasts for my long drive to work. I do this about every three or four days but this morning something went wrong.

I'm using iTunes 7.0.1.8 and about a month ago I gave in and "restored" my iPod to factory defaults due to the 00:001 podcast bug I picked up.

I set my iPod to manual update as the hard drive on my computer is smaller than the 30GB hard drive in my iPod. This allows me to rip CDs, move the songs to my iPod and then delete the songs to make room for more.

This particular morning I did as I always do. I go into the "Recently Added" section of iTunes and drag-and-drop all of the new podcasts to my iPod. When I got in the car I realized something was wrong!

Only two of the seven new podcasts I downloaded had been copied!

I thought it might have been a user error on my part but when I got home and tried to transfer them iTunes refused. It just gave me the slashed-circle.

Feeling I might be suffering with a bad iPod I did the restore again.

After it restored I set it to sync up to my iTunes with no interaction from me. This time I wanted iTunes to move everything over for me. End result? About five out of my 30 podcasts did not get moved to my iPod.

I did find a solution, though I don't like it as it requires me to look and see what did not get copied.

You have to drag-and-drop the podcast out of iTunes, to your desktop or somewhere else. Then you have to drag-and-drop the file back into iTunes and drop it on your iPod.

The podcast file will now be on your iPod but it will not be in the "Podcast" area of your iPod.

It's a pain in the ass and I'm not happy about it.

Maybe I should just buy a Zune?

UPDATE: After numerous attempts to move the files over I gave up and re-formated my iPod (again) with the newest firmware. I am still having some issues where a podcast does transfer over but does not appear in the podcast section but does appear elsewhere...

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I have a 30GB video iPod that I got late last year. I love it! I take it everywhere with me and use it for listening to music and podcasts. Heck, I've even purchased a few videos for it and have the link cable to watch them on my TV!

Recently, Apple did something to earn my disdain...

What did Apple do? Why they forced me to upgrade my version of iTunes and to upgrade the firmware on my iPod!

I am the type of person who does not upgrade until several months pass by. I like to let others experience the bugs of new software upgrades. This time, Apple would not let me wait.

It started simple enough with the usual "There is a new version of iTunes, want to upgrade" message popping up when I ran iTunes. These are easy enough to ignore and I did so.

Then, one day, I was trying to transfer a video podcast to my iPod and I got a new message, "the firmware on your iPod is to old for this media. Please upgrade."

That got my attention! Especially since I was putting some files *back* onto my iPod that had previously resided there with no problems!

So, being the fool, I upgraded iTunes and the iPod firmware. Everything seemed to be OK and I could now put the video podcast back onto the iPod...

Everything went well for a few days as I caught up on recent podcasts then... I tried to play a podcast I had put on my iPod *after* the upgrade and it crashed and rebooted!

I tried again, same thing. I thought, "well, maybe it was a bad download?" but even after downloading the file again I still had the problem of the iPod crashing...

This is when I started searching the 'net for answers. what I found was a lot of people complaining of bugs with the new iTunes...

I'm running the 1.2 version firmware on my iPod now and here is a short list of feature "changes" I have experienced:

1) Certain podcast mp3 files, when played, cause my iPod to crash.
2) All my photos are suddenly gone.
3) All of my "recently xxx" play lists are gone.

I did find a fix for number one. It involves going into the info section of your mp3 file and telling iTunes to start the track at 00:01 rather then 00:00. Annoying, but it now works.

I do not know why number two erased all my photos, but I do not use that feature much anyways...

Number three is the most annoying one to me, and really bugs me.

I have used the "recently xxx" play lists since I got my iPod. I rely on these play lists so that when I add some new songs I can quickly find them! I listen to a ton of podcasts and have a ton of singles from various artists so the only way to find what I have added (in regards to music) is by using the "recently added" play list... Now it's gone...

What's the deal Apple? And, as long as I'm on the subject, why is it that if I add an mp3 file that is from a podcast, but do not add it via the podcast tab using the "update podcast" method it does not get added to the podcast page?

When I was trying to figure out if I had downloaded corrupted version of my podcast files I deleted the one that were in the podcast page and download them fresh to my hard drive. when I went to add them into iTunes they ended up under music! I have no idea how to get them to appear on the podcast tab... A little help anyone?

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