Adding DVDs and video files to your iPod that aren’t in iTunes.  I don’t have an iPhone, but I imagine this process could work for that too.

Want to add your favorite DVDs to your iPod, but don’t want to pay to download content from iTunes that you already own? The process is surprisingly simple. I’ve done this with both videos on my computer, and commercial DVDs. You need a program that can convert video files to the iPod format, and I use Xiisoft Video Converter 3 and Xiisoft DVD Ripper Platinum 4 to accomplish this.

Converting a DVD.

1. Insert the disk into the disk drive.

2. Open Xiisoft DVD Ripper.

3. Goto File->Add DVD Folder. Select the drive you put the disk in.

4. All the videos are loaded onto the screen. Make sure you check only the ones that you want. You can tell by the duration of the file. The others are title screens and special features, which you can preview and check if you so choose. (If you’re ripping television shows, there will often be a ‘play all’ track thats a couple hours long)

5. At the bottom of the window, choose a destination, and select ‘iPod Video2(640×480) MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4)’

6. Click the button with the red circle, or select ‘rip all checked’ from the file dropdown.

7. Add to iTunes and your iPod the usual way. If you sync, ripping these files to the proper folders should be enough. If you don’t, you need to goto File->Add Folder to Library in iTunes, and then move those added videos onto your iPod.

Converting an existing video. Perhaps something you’ve downloaded.

1. Open Xiisoft Video Converter

2. Click Add and select the files you want to convert.

3. Select a destination. (Perhaps your iTunes folder) Make sure profile reads ‘iPod Video2(640×480) MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4)’. Make sure all videos are checked.

4. Click Encode. Or File->Encode.

5. Add to iTunes and your iPod the usual way. If you sync, ripping these files to the proper folders should be enough. If you don’t, you need to goto File->Add Folder to Library in iTunes, and then move those added videos onto your iPod.

Listen/Watch and enjoy.

I thought it was time to upgrade my iphone to an iphone 3g, so I went to the nearest apple store and figured I would just bang it out.  I did the initial proceeding online, and setup an appointment for an apple “genious” to assist me the rest of the way.  Now why a 15 year old peddling mp3 players to anything that moves is a genious is another story all together.  As I go to checkout, I notice something rather amusing.

Apple uses windows mobile OS to process their credit card transactions.

Let me repeat for those of you that are hard of reading.  APPLE SUPPORTS WINDOWS MOBILE OS!  Now granted, I am all for why reinvent the wheel when a good solution is right in front of you.  If the credit card processing software works to apple’s standards and they don’t need to develop something new, why bother?

To me, it makes sense, but there are many mac addicts out there that wouldn’t be able to grasp such a conccept.  For example, if I want to use an exchange email account, I would use windows outlook and not entourage or thunderbird.  Those products are subpar when it comes to email.  If I want to have a conference call with upper management, nothing works better than the isight and my mac laptop.

As I degress, so I ask my 15 year old genious, whats up with the windows mobile and he said that it  is the only device in the apple store that is not made by apple.  I’m sure that this is not true, but everyone has an image to uphold eh?

I don’t know about you, but I hate the fact that iTunes wants to open up every time I plug in my iPhone.  It has to be the most annoying feature that apple has to offer.  It wouldn’t be so bad if iTunes didn’t utilize so much of my resources.  While I can go on and on about how much I hate iTunes, lets get down to business.  In order to turn this feature off, you need to turn off automatic sync on your device properties in iTunes.  Once done, the only time iTunes opens, is when you tell it to.  I don’t know about you, but my computer is saying THANK YOU!!!

I was given an iPhone this morning and it had a lock code on it.  The user also provided me the unlock code which did not work.  I was very worried that this was a stolen phone but the person swore up and down that it wasn’t.  I figured I would do a little bit of searching on the internet and found the following:

You can re-sync the phone to your computer that you initially synced with and it will unlock the code.  This doesn’t work for him since his laptop is busted.  Convenent right?  Well now I totally think it is a stolen phone.  For giggles, however, I tried to do a soft reset.  I held down the top and front buttons until the phone turned off.  I turned the phone back in, inputted the code, and it worked!  Seems that the iPhone just had locked up via the software and was acting retarded.

Moral of the story is, not all phones are stolen!

Well, there finally is an app for the iPhone to write blog entries. As with all bleeding edge technologies, I decided to give it a try. The app seems decent for reading blog entries and writing posts. I would of liked to see some admin functionality to it though. I do not see a place to manage comments. This would be helpful and hppefully will be included in an upgrade. Also, spell checking (besides what the iPhone does) is also lacking.

All in all, if you needed to do a quick entry, this app is your man! Anything else, stick with the computer. I will follow the progress of wordpress for iPhone and wait for more functionality to emerge…..

Well, it seems that you learn something new every day. A user requested to have this program Xcode installed on her computer. After a little bit of research, it appears that Xcode allows you to develop applications on the mac and iPhone. I found the location to download the application and sent it to the user.

http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html – Just in case anyone was interested.

The download includes Xcode IDE, Dashcode, Instruments, interface builder, and the “rest” of the developer tools. If I knew how to develop code, this would interest me greatly! Oh well, at least I got to research something I never heard of before!

Well, I updated my iphone to 2.0 only to brick the device. During the update, it got an error and said it needed to rollback. During the rollback, I also got an error.

Now since everyone else is updating their phone at the same time, I am getting the following error:

“We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection timed out.

Make sure your network settings are correct and your network connection is active, then try again”

I am unable to do anything with the iPhone but I will attempt to find a resolve.

UPDATE:
According to google, the way to “fix” this is to keep go back and forth between itunes store and the iphone. I have the 1.1.4 firmware downloaded so all I need to do is install it. I need the store to come up just so allow me to do this. This is the worst solution to the problem! I hated itunes before, now I hate it more now!!

UPDATE: I HAVE ROLLED BACK TO 1.1.4!

Ok, first you need to go to recovery mode. Here are the directions to do this.

Step 1. Turn off your iPhone.

Step 2. Hold down the power and home button.

Step 3. When you see the Apple logo, release the power button but continue holding the home button down.

Step 4. Open iTunes and wait for it to tell you that its in restore mode.

At this point, iTunes will not look for apple to validate or whatever and will try to roll back the software. My phone is recovering as we speak!

UPDATE: still bricked. Apparently, it needs to do some verification even when rolling back to 1.1.4. My mac contact LIED TO ME!!! Oh well, I’ll keep trying…

UPDATE: Finally worked. I am on 2.0 now. What a waste of a day!

You know what annoys me about the iPhone? I waited a few months for the first price decrease. I ended up spending 400 dollars on a 8 GB model. I mean, the phone does everything I need it to do so why not…

A month after I buy it, rumors of the iPhone 2.0 or iPhone 3G start rumbling around. I think to myself, meh who cares. It will probably cost more and I’ll pick it up in 2 years when my contract expires. As I read more about it, I find out the 8 GB model is only going to be 200 dollars!!! WHAT? Let me get this straight here. Better, for cheaper? How does that work? Well, lets go over a few of the gimics the iPhone will be released with and perhaps you can tell me.

1. Faster networks. Apple is trying to break into the Japanese markets and they need the phone to be a bit more zippy. (Don’t look at me, I quote zippy out of Steve Jobs mouth)

2. Better language support. While this feature excites those international users, I will hit the snooze button…

3. Exchange integration (This software should be released for the iPhone 1.0…not sure why we are getting excited that our cheaper brother would not have it…)

4. Better VPN Support (see point 3…)

5. App store (see point 3…) I do think that this will be cool. I would rather get the third party apps legally than having to hack the device…

6. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, nothing like saying screw you to your existing customers…AGAIN! Perhaps there will be a buying incentive for existing users to get a credit for the new device or something. I don’t know, but I just don’t see why the current iPhone is so much more than the newer iPhone….

A client called me up and said that his iTouch is malfunctioning. About a year ago, I would run to the hills with a call like this, since well, I hate ipods. The iPhone has given me a new light on the subject now. I took this call with both eyes open and actually read the error message.

this ipod cannot be used because the Apple Mobile Device service is not started

This struck me as odd and noticed that the service was indeed not started. I threw this message into google and was floored with the resolutions.

REINSTALL iTunes?!?!?!?!

I see no reason why I should reinstall iTunes so for giggles, I decided to check out the services and see if the service was indeed not started. Indeed the service was disabled. In the back of my mind, I wonder why this is but changed that to automatic and started the service. Immediately, the iTouch started to work.

If the issue is virus related, it will occur again and I will have to do more research, but, at this moment, it seems that the issue is resolved! If it is virus related, I will update.

Last night, I was playing an intense game of iCopter on the iPhone and I got a warning that I had 10% of my battery life left. I thought, ok, when the phone dies, I’ll plug it into my computer and let it charge overnight. As I got a score of 700ish from iCopter, the phone died. This always seems to happen when I am doing well in that game!

I let it charge overnight and when I look at the battery percentage, it only had a sliver left and it was red. I thought that was strange but chalked it up to my computer just not charging it last night. I mean, if the computer if frozen, that would happen. Since I do not have a lot of time to futz around with this stuff, I figured I would leave it until I get into work.

During my 2.5 hour commute into NYC, the phone never turned off. Generally, I only have about 15 minutes in the red line before the thing dies. I use the iPhone nonstop and eat the battery on the thing. So after I get into work, I plug it in again. I let it sit for an hour and the thing is still sitting on the red line.

CRAP!

I then went on the internet to find out what my options are. I found a few interesting points.
1. The iPhone is covered under 1 year of warentee. The battery life averages 10 months. My battery is only 3 months old so I thought this was very odd.
2. It costs 70 dollars to buy apple care support. This support is for an extra year of replacement parts. They claim it is for 2 years, BUT the first year is free! I can also buy this at any point during my first year of owning the phone so why would I do it now? I mean, it would be nice to have if I break the screen, but to replace the battery? Apple claims that the battery costs 80 dollars to replace.
3. I cannot speak for the screen, but this website has a rather sweet battery replacement plan:

http://www.ipodjuice.com/iphone-battery-replacement-products.htm

They will replace the battery for you for 20 dollars. How can you beat that? Now the only reason why I would want to get the applecare plan would be if the screen cracks. I think I will take my changes don’t you?

As I was looking for the number to call apple, (since I am under warentee and all) I figured I would try something first. All windows computers seem to work better after a reboot so I figured I would reboot the iPhone and see what happens. I mean, it can’t hurt right? So I hold down the top and middle buttons and the phone turns off and back on and low and behold, I have full battery life again! Seems I will be holding off on that call to Apple…