Doodahs and thingimy jigs- What's an IPod?

By Scott Cornwall

Very few of us can escape modern technology and one of the words I am sure we have all heard banded around over the past year or so is IPod. It seems this strange item is the new must have for every teenager, but what is it? How does it work? And is it of benefit to anyone old enough to vote?

In short the IPod is a brilliant gadget ideal for anyone aged between eight and eight hundred. It’s a tiny little flat box – not much bigger than a credit card that is able to electronically store hours (actually days) worth of sound. The little IPod gadget plugs into your computer (via a special socket) and duplicates any sound files stored on your PC. You can then use your IPod (like a stereo) to playback your computer stored sound files either through headphones or speakers. It’s great because it’s so small you can simply slip it into your pocket, put on your headphones and go about your business.

Younger people typically ‘download’ songs and albums onto their computer and then from their computer transfer to the IPod. Downloading songs (or any audio files) has become really easy thanks to Itunes. Itunes is a website which contains millions and millons of audio files – ranging from songs, albums, talking books, tutorials and much more. It’s a little like an internet Woolworths, where as we once went here to buy our singles and records – we can now go to Itunes, choose the music or album we want, pay for it (online) and within minutes our purchase is downloaded to our PC – meaning the purchased sound file is sent through the internet to our computer. We can also put CD’s into our computer and then copy them across to our Itunes directory, so when we plug our Ipod into the PC we can not only hear music and audio we have purchased online, but we can also hear the CD’s that have been sitting on the shelf all these years! Also, many radio stations are now offering Podcasts of their programmes in case you missed them live. A Podcast is an audio file which can be downloaded from a website onto your computer and then played back via your Ipod, a Podcast is also typically free.

Because an Ipod can store days worth of audio files, it’s a great way of listening to talking books and plays. Its major selling point is the simplistic way we can find our songs or audio files. It has a tiny (but easy to use) wheel called ‘a click wheel’, which we can scroll through all our Ipod stored songs and files which are listed by name, artist, album, genre even composer! Even better – on your Itunes computer software (remember that’s the programme on your PC which we plug our IPod into and buy our music, audio files and copy our CD’s to) we can easily create our own albums by selecting our favourite songs and labelling the file! This means that if you want hours worth of continuous music for a party – be it contemporary, classical or jazz, you can transfer it all to your Ipod, plug your Ipod into speakers and not have to worry about changing the music all night (or day come to that!).

Itunes – the software which enables us to easily download music and audio files onto our computer – and which an IPod is fuelled from, can be obtained free by going to:- http://www.apple.com/itunes/ it only takes a couple of minutes to download onto your computer and once its there you can begin buying music and audio online (which is much cheaper than doing some from the shops!) and also transferring your CD’s – which is extremely simple!

This site also explains a great deal more about IPods, but if you feel like taking the plunge and buying one of these little magic boxes yourself, Argos now have a good selection to choose from at www.argos.co.uk found in ‘sound and vision’ and then ‘MP3 players’ and costing between £99 and £169. As a note of advice – if you are planning to store lots of talking books on your Ipod, the more expensive model has higher storage space ideal for ten hour audio books! [ Back to Features ]