Odds are that if you have an Apple iPod Touch, you have surfed the web to death to try and find everything and anything you can do with it. We all know that it is not as powerful as it’s cousin, the Apple iPhone, but it sure is close and there is no lack of use for it!
I was lucky enough to get one for free, but in hindsight, I would have happily paid the $299 entry fee for one for myself. If I had known how well it works and how much it can do, I would have bought one in a heartbeat.
iPod Touch Tips and Tricks
This screen is a fingerprint magnet! I can’t seem to get the fingerprints off with the included wipe, it just does nothing for me. I happened to have a different screen cleaner that came with my Protection Pack for Macbook Pro. The material is a microfiber and I am not sure where you can get something like it, but I have also found that a slick wipe like you get with a camera lens cleaning kit or the kind for cleaning glasses works miracles on this little bugger.
Now that you have coverflow so small, you have to have all of your album artwork don’t you? iTunes goes a long way towards finding most of it, but did you know that what it misses, you can locate on Amazon and simply drag into the box for album art on iTunes? Just open itunes and go to View > Album Artwork or press ctrl-G on a PC and Apple key – G on a Mac. Drag in your art and re-sync for all of your gorgeous cover flow glory!
As nice as the browser is, still browsing big sites can be a pain. Although the list of applications and sites is growing ( see www.apple.com/webapps/ ) there is still a solid base of mobile web sites that were developed for the more, um, traditional mobile devices. These are super handy to bookmark for faster viewing over sluggish browsers like the iPod Touch or iPhone. Look at some of the following sites for more:
1. Google Reader: Fast and easy access to RSS feeds. Since you’re accessing the same data you’d access through a computer’s web browser, you avoid syncing issues. It’s missing a few features you’ll find in the browser version, including the ability to email stories to friends, but the speed and ease of use are amazing. Bloglines Mobile does offer emailing capability – without an integrated address book, so you need to remember your friend’s addresses – but falls short when it comes to consuming stories in a mobile friendly manner. Clicking a category immediately marks all stories in that category as read – even if they’re never viewed on the device. http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/
2. Dodgeball – Dodgeball’s mobile site provides much easier access to the restaurant directory, leading to more accurate check-ins. Oddly, the main Dodgeball site is about the least mobile friendly thing I’ve ever seen, so the mobile version is critical. However, it’s missing the top-10 most recent and highest ranked Dodgeball users lists, which takes away from the coolness. I haven’t seen much new development on the mobile or non-mobile site in months, so I’m trying to be content with the application as it exists today. http://www.dodgeball.com/mobile
3. Twitter – A fast and and easy way to update your Twitter status and read tweets from friends. It’s a better interface for reading recent Tweets than being bombarded on your phone – especially for people who don’t have threaded SMS messages. http://m.twitter.com
4. Amazon – Amazon’s main site’s pages are so huge, they’d take forever to load on a mobile device – if at all. Once logged in, making purchases using your main credit card and shipping address on file is a snap. Picking an appropriate category for your search helps a lot. I tend to use it to make impulse purchases of books I hear recommended on the radio while, um, waiting at a stop light. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/h.html
5. GoDaddy – Godaddy’s mobile site is a great place to check the availability of domains that sound perfect after that 3rd pitcher of beer. http://www.godaddymobile.com
6. Ebay - Similar to Amazon, but better for random crap. I’ve used this mobile version of Ebay for some time now. The URL is ugly, so make sure to bookmark it after getting there the first time: Ebay Mobile
7. Facebook – A great way to get a quick update on what’s going on with your friends, update your status, review some pics, etc. While you can SMS your status updates to Facebook, the mobile site is a better option for consuming content. I receive friend and wall updates via SMS, and this is how I check them out when I’m away from my computer: http://m.facebook.com
8. Flickr – A great way to review recent activity on your photos, pull up a picture from your account to show a friend in a bar, or to show someone what a Yugo looks like. It’s a bit over-optimized, showing only three thumbnail photos per page for search results, but other than that, it’s a well designed mobile version of the photo site. http://m.flickr.com
9. Yahoo – This covers a LOT more than just search. Access tons of Yahoo services, including news, weather, your MyYahoo headlines, driving directions and Finance to name a few, from this mobile version of the portal. I’d recommend bookmarking your favorite sections within the portal that you find yourself going back to regularly rather than the homepage to speed things up a bit. http://m.yahoo.com
10. Google – The mobile version of Google search is a automatically attempts to mobile-optimize the pages you visit when clicking on a result (Google Reader and Bloglines do this as well). This doesn’t always work as expected, but they do provide a link to view it in it’s original state. That helps if you want to grab and email a URL to someone. You can build out a personalized Google homepage with news, weather, and finance information, which will save you a few clicks while slowing down the homepage load time. http://www.google.com/xhtml
11. Gmail – The mobile version of gmail provides faster access to your emails by providing easy navigation using power keys. It gives up a few features along the way, such as the ability to mark messages as spam, and a biggy – to select more than one message at a time for batch deletion, spam, etc. However, it is very fast for read functions since it has so much less code to load than the non-Ajax version of gmail.com. http://m.gmail.com
Thanks to Ed Kohler for putting this list together.
Now you want to watch more video on your iPod Touch than you can download via iTunes right? Well let’s figure out the skinny on that. Check out some apps like Wondershare’s iPhone Video Converter ($29.95) or the iPhone Video Converter to get you started. If you are on a Mac, also consider that you can export video to iPhone compatible formats with iMovie!
Now Don’t forget Apps and Games J!
Well, how could I forget that? First and foremost you have to check out http://macmost.com/iphonegames/ for a good selection, I can also recommend PodCade for more free games to play.
Another of my personal favorites is Gridgets.com. Beyond links to some great content apps and games, it has a super slick iPhone Home type interface to help you manage your own web based dashboard of apps, check it out!
Last but not least, be sure to book mark this site as it too is iPhone/iPod Touch compatible!!!
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