The secret lives of MP3 players

BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER

Come the day that your computer’s hard disk bites the dust, precious office documents are among the files most painful to lose. However, Sebastian Legal-Eagle insures against this disastrous eventuality by periodically making backups of crucial documents, one route being to copy them onto his music player, where he has set aside a few megabytes specifically for data. They will be safe there, and won’t occupy more space than a handful of Geri Halliwell tracks.

STORE AND VIEW PHOTOS

Digital cameras are an essential summer accessory, but, as any eager holiday snapper will know, memory cards fill up quickly. By regularly shifting her hottest pictures onto her MP3 player, Suzie Holidaymaker can keep snapping right to the end of her trip. With an iPod Photo, which is designed to play music and show pictures, she could also look at them on its (admittedly low-rent) colour screen; or, with the right cable, the nearest television. Apple sells a dedicated Camera Connector (£20) that will transfer images directly from most new digicams down a USB cable. This is almost as essential a piece of poolside kit as suntan lotion, even though the process is slow and drains the iPod’s paltry battery life. Alternatively, Suzie could go for an iRiver or Samsung “photo” jukebox, or the one Creative is unveiling shortly. All three have better screens than the iPod, but only the iRiver transfers images directly from a camera.

MAKE AUDIO RECORDINGS

With only his music jukebox and a basic microphone, doting parent James Dadd can record his children’s school concerts directly as convenient MP3 files. Although the iPod cannot record external audio sources, many other players can — including Samsung’s new YH-820 Micro jukebox and Creative’s Flash-memory N200 — which offers a hassle-free way of converting vinyl into MP3. Several Flash-memory players now have built-in mics, handy for James to dictate voice memos or rough audio diaries. Various voice-recorder widgets for the iPod offer only scratchy sound, but with the clever open-source iPod Linux project and an external mic, James can make high-quality audio recordings on Apple’s white beastie. Unfortunately, the software, codenamed Podzilla, as yet works only on older iPods. Rats.

CONSULT A CALENDAR

Estate agent Mike Contract is often left growling at not having his diary to hand of a morning. However, a woefully underused feature of several MP3 jukeboxes is their ability to display diary and contact details. As Mike rarely leaves home without his iPod, this should be a no-brainer. Although Apple users can turn effortlessly to the Mac’s smooth-as-you-like iSync software to order their affairs, things are less straightforward with Mike’s Windows-based iPod — he will have to transfer contacts from his com-puter one at a time. Thankfully, short cuts and clever third-party programs such as iPodSync or iPodAgent can handle this. Some will also transfer to-do lists, grab stories from Google News, even back up an iPod’s music onto another computer. To be fair, Creative jukeboxes integrate more easily with Outlook, but you must use the supplied software.

E-MAIL ON THE MOVE

Webmail is tiptop for checking messages, but, frankly, it has its limitations — restrictions on file size, for instance. And even the big servers can go down. On busy business trips, Sanjeev Charmer wants permanent, portable copies of key e-mails and, crucially, any important attachments, so he launches his own desktop e-mail software straight from a USB-based Flash MP3 player. He has downloaded a portable version of the popular Thunderbird freeware (see box, above) and swiftly entered his e-mail details, including multiple accounts.

Sanjeev’s player will then collect and store mail from any Windows computer — he’d be wise to turn off the junk-mail filter. The seriously shy can update Thunderbird to encrypt e-mail or invest £25 in sleuth-grade Crypto Anywhere, which is equally portable.

INSTANT MESSAGING

Like most teenagers, Mylene Chatterbox struggles to remember all her friends’ instant-messaging usernames when she’s kicking around town. Thankfully, Trillian, a hyper-clever piece of freeware, amalgamates all her accounts (Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and so on) in one place; and the portable version, Trillian Anywhere, works directly from a Flash-memory MP3 player. Setup was a little fiddly, but took Mylene only a few minutes, and she now messages her pals from any com-puter with a USB port. Trillian also offers the increasingly popular voice chat, so she can talk to them for free. Nice work.

BROWSE THE WEB

Daniel Surfer has spent years acquiring the bookmarks that form his personal map of the web, so he felt cast adrift when venturing online away from his usual desktop computer. Now, though, he carries his web browser with him. All it takes is a Flash-memory MP3 player, such as the Creative N200 or iPod Shuffle, and the freeware program Portable Firefox (see box, above, for download source). Daniel plugs his player into the USB port of any Windows computer and fires up his customised browser, without installing anything else. Not only does he have a fully working version of the excellent Firefox software, with all his bookmarks to hand, but any accessories he has previously added, such as thumbnail previews in Google. Eject the player properly on screen, unplug it, and he’s hot to trot.

Pick up a podcast - or try the Martin Clunes alternative

Time-shifting may be one of the digital age’s clunkier buzz words, but what a doddle a personal video recorder made of catching every episode of Doctor Who while we enjoyed our Saturday evening out. The actor Martin Clunes, who so embraces the digital life that he once downloaded the entire works of Debussy from the iTunes store “before breakfast”, clearly also loves escaping from the clutches of schedulers to listen to radio drama when he wants, “depending on what’s going on with my day”.

Intriguingly, he time-shifts most of the BBC’s radio drama output on his Sky+ video recorder, setting the timer to make recordings just as he would for a television broadcast. He transfers the results to his laptop before loading them onto the iPod he was sporting last week on location in Cornwall, where he is filming a new series of Doc Martin for ITV.

As he records at high audio quality, a 90-minute play takes up about 250MB, which sounds hefty, but occupies a thin slice of the hard drive in any MP3 jukebox.

For most of us, though, rescheduling radio is strictly an internet activity. The phenomenon of downloading shows to enjoy later on an MP3 player — quite different from recording a live signal — is called “podcasting”, although, daftly, it doesn’t necessarily involve an iPod. Radio stations, commercial and hobbyist, convert programmes into MP3 files that are free to download after broadcast.

Several flagship BBC shows are offered, including the Today programme’s main interview on Radio 4, but there are global directories to explore, such as Podcast Alley. Simply select your source, along with specific programmes, and the sound files will be downloaded to your computer, then seamlessly shifted onto your MP3 player the next time you synchronise. The main task is handled automatically by freeware such as iPodder (or iPodderX for Mac owners), after which, you can use software such as Windows Media Player to transfer the audio files to your player.

The problem is that the sound quality of most podcasts is rather ropey. “And that’s where I part company with the idea,” Clunes says. He explains that although podcasts are okay for news or chat, “in a play, the sound is one area where you can create a big effect for very little money”, adding, somewhat ruefully: “If clever people have gone to all that trouble, it seems a shame to waste it.”

So, instead of making MP3 files, he converts a radio signal into Alac, a high-calibre, lossless audio format. Clunes insists that he’s no audio snob, and freely admits that “above a certain level, my big ears can’t tell the difference”.

To simplify his multistage routine for creating a perfect digital recording, he could use the optical audio output from his Sky+ box or a DAB radio. Even a phono-plug cable direct to the computer would make timed recordings a one-step process. Mac owners need the foolproof Audio Hijack Pro software (£16), while for Windows there is Replay Radio (£16), which also offers a built-in media guide.

In fact, anyone with a Freeview or DAB expansion card in their computer can record high-quality radio for transfer onto their MP3 player. Alternatively, iRiver’s latest H10 jukebox has a built-in timer and an audio input for recording straight to the player itself. The biggest issue is deciding which option to take.