Apple doesn’t want you taking music off your iPod and putting it onto a computer, because they’re worried about unauthorized trading. But if your hard drive crashes and take your entire music collection, being blocked from shifting your iPod contents back onto your new laptop is going to be infuriating. Fortunately, there are ways.

The Do-It-Yourself Windows Solution

If you’re trying to get your music onto a Windows machine, it’s not so hard. Windows thinks of your iPod as a simple storage device, and if you know how to find the files, you can grab them as easily as you’d pull them off a thumb drive.

For step-by-step instructions, check out Method One in this easy-to-digest article. That 2007 article is a little outdated — it goes on to suggest several software programs that are no longer available — but its instructions for getting into your iPod’s hidden music folder (where everything will look like alphabet soup) are still good. Depending on your version of Windows, finding the hidden files might be slightly different process (in Windows 7: After clicking on the iPod under My Computer, click on Folder Options, and under the View tab, select “Show hidden files, folders, and drives.”)

But pay attention to that initial step about not having your iTunes set to automatically sync your iPod, or the first thing you do will be to wipe your iPod clean. The writer here had only tested the technique with music files, which works fine (although you lose the metadata). I haven’t tested it yet with videos and other media.

This video also outlines how to browse – and transfer from – your iPod as if it were just another hard drive:

If you’re looking to get the iPod content onto a Mac, you’ll need a software program that will do it for you.

Free Software Solutions

If you want a program that will transfer music from iPod to PC without you having to do the backdoor work yourself, Sharepod comes pretty highly recommended. Download.com gives it a glowing review, and the program promises to grab songs, pictures, videos and other content, as well as your playlists, album art and ratings, from your iPod (or iPhone) and pull them to your PC.

Floola is a freeware program that offers to do a lot of things besides copy music off your iPod, from copying YouTube videos to synchronizing with your Google Calendar. Comments I’ve seen are strongly positive but, like any free program, slightly mixed. Check out reviews at Download.com and Lifehacker for starters.

If music is your only problem, FreeSync for Mac will readily move the files. If you’ve got video, photos, etc., the maker will want you to pay for the more robust version (see below).

Another free solution is iPod Folder, which works for both PCs and Macs. The drawback: Not only does it not do video, it only handles MP3 files, so if you’ve purchased music from the iTunes store, or ripped your CDs into any format other than MP3, this one won’t help you.

Solutions You Can Pay For

There are a number of programs you can buy for, of course. They’ll usually start you out with a free demo that gives you a number of days and songs before you need the license. I’m limiting the scope of this quick survey to free solutions, but here are a couple of pay-to-play programs that kept popping onto my radar:

First, as I noted in my update to the original music transfer post, there’s iPod to Computer software for PC, which starts with a free trial and goes on to a $29.95 license, and iPod to Mac Transfer program, which licenses at $28. Both are available at my partner site.

Another leading contender is Senuti, which gives you 30 days or 1,000 songs free before asking $18 for a license. Here’s a full review that walks you through the process of transferring your music from iPod to Mac.

iSkySoft, whose FreeSync for Mac moves songs for free, offers to get everything off your iPod with either of two programs, SyncPod for Mac, which will run you $39, or SyncPod for Windows, whose lower price tag ($19) may be due to the greater number of free solutions for the PC user.

What Else Have You Got?

I won’t get around to actually experimenting with these programs and techniques until either the book hits the shelves or a hard drive failure wipes out my iTunes library, but until that great or disastrous day, this post should get you started. If you’ve used any of these programs or techniques, or have a different or better solution, comment away!

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• If you are a Windows user and don’t want to go through all of this hacking, you can buy iTunes Transfer software at my partner site. It will help you back up your library – with playlists – and transfer it to your other computer.
• If you’re trying to transfer music from your iPod to your computer, unfortunately, Apple won’t let you do this freely, but you can buy iPod to Computer software for PC (free trial download), or iPod to Computer software for Mac at my partner site that will allow you to do this.
• if you just have the hard drive of your old PC, Ben has shared with us how to make the transfer
• if you aren’t keen on messing with XML files – and play count isn’t important to you - Oden has a simple process, involving smart playlists, for retaining song ratings when you transfer your iTunes library.
• Collin has a simple way to find out those duplicate songs that you may end up with when transferring your catalog.
• Aaron devised a clever way to transfer while retaining playlists in your collection.
• If you are transferring between Macs, pbaron has a method involving FireWire mode.

[Original post]

Since I’m moving, I wanted to transfer all of my music from the iTunes library on my work computer to the iTunes library on my home computer. This is pretty simple – just transfer my music from my work computer’s iTunes library onto my Firewire Hard Drive, take it home, and transfer the music onto my home computer – but I rely on all of my song ratings, accumulated over thousands of hours of listening to iTunes while I work, to populate my iPod Shuffle with songs from the “My Top Rated Songs” Smart Playlist. I couldn’t find any information on how to transfer my iTunes music, while still retaining my song ratings, but I finally figured it out.

Move Your Music Library

Before you do this, you’ll have to first transfer the actual files to your new computer. You may choose to burn CDs, DVDs, or use a thumb drive; but using a FireWire cable is easiest for large libraries, unless you have a portable hard drive.

Move Your Metadata

Here’s a video tutorial I put together. Written instructions are below.

1. Export the source iTunes library as an XML file (File>Library>Export Library…). This will create a file that holds information about the location, song filenames, and *song rating*!
2. Replace the file paths in your XML file with the path that the songs from the source library will be in when you import them. This path may point to your FireWire Drive, a DVD you have burned, or a temporary folder on your hard drive that you have copied your music to. Just to be sure of the new path, copy one of the files from this location to your library, export your destination library, and look at the file path to that song in the resulting XML file. To actually replace the file paths, I did a Find/Change in TextWrangler but you can just use TextEdit (Edit>Find>Find…).
3. Set the preferences in iTunes in your destination library to “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library.” This is under “Advanced.”
4. Import your library (File>Library>Import Playlist…).
5. Delete redundant files. If you’re like me, you have some duplicate songs in your multiple libraries. This is a tedious task, but I plan to do it over time.

Of course, you can prevent all of this by being organized in the first place. I probably should have just had an iPod that I synched with my home computer and brought to work.

If you need help getting the actual files over to your new computer, this video will show you how to copy your music to your new computer using iTunes Home Sharing:

UPDATE: If you’re looking to transfer music from your iPod to your computer, I’ve put together a short guide here. I hope to improve upon it soon, but please share your findings in the comments.

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Step 1: hang the scarf behind your neck. Position the scarf so that the majority of the length of the scarf hangs over your right shoulder, leaving a shorter length over your left shoulder.

Hangin' out.

Step 2: cross the short end of the scarf over the long end. Hopefully you still have plenty of length on the long end, because you’ll be needing it.

Don't cross me. Cross your scarf.

Step 3: wrap the long end of the scarf around the back of your neck. Hold onto some of the length to leave a loop. You’ll be using that loop!

Kadavy, Inc. is not responsible for accidental hangings.

Step 4: feed the long end of the scarf back through it’s own loop. Remember that loop you made in Step 3? That loop.

Slam dunk!

Step 5: pull both ends. Hopefully both ends are of equal length. If not, no biggie, just try again, adjusting the lengths of scarf accordingly.

Kadavy, Inc. is not responsible for accidental decapitations.

Step 6: look awesome. You’re welcome. You have now tied a perfect scarf. Have a nice winter.

Want a video demonstration? Well, here ya go:

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I know that I can save myself alot of time and distraction if I just put these e-mails somewhere far, far away, so I’m going to filter them to an entirely new account. Then, I can set up a schedule to manage them in “batches”. Maybe I’ll check the account once a day, maybe three times a week. Maybe once a week. What’s important is that they will be far away from the more important e-mails that go directly into my inbox.

If e-mails from social networking sites are distracting you I’m going to show a special trick to get them out of your way. Check out this screencast.

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Here’s the summary:

• Search on Craigslist for the item you want, and do the appropriate neighborhood filtering.
• Click on the “RSS” icon at the bottom of the search results.
• Copy and paste the URL for the RSS feed into Pingie.com (if you’re on Safari, you’ll have to change the “feed://” at the beginning of the URL to “http://”) Of course, you’ll have to enter your phone number, carrier, and e-mail address as well.
• Next time an item shows up with your search criteria, you’ll get a text message or e-mail notification, and hopefully – just what you were looking for!

I love buying items off of Craigslist because 1) it’s cheaper, 2) it’s good for the environment, 3) you can find more interesting stuff, and 4) I even make friends in the process!

Check out the rest of the Eight Life Hacks for Health Wealth and Happiness

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When I returned to The States, I was starving for more. My design program wasn’t concerned with these aspects of design, but my university’s library had any book I needed about typography and proportion. In addition to my regular class work, I regularly spent 16 hours a day, alone in my apartment, devouring all of these books. My curiousity with the relationship between proportion and beautiful typography became an obsession. I even conducted my own exercise, where I laid out copy from a deodorant stick onto a canvas using nothing but proportionally-derived space to create a hierarchy. A few years later, when I taught a typography class, it was this odd exercise that I adapted into a lesson plan that was published in Ilene Strizver’s Type Rules!.

After all of this experimentation, I, of course had to re-do every project in my portfolio to live up to my new standards. I developed a sort of technique, which I demonstrate in this video. No, I’m not using the golden ratio. I’m simply creating a series of “blocks,” of descending size, based upon the aspect ratio of the “canvas” itself. I then use those blocks to determine margins, the size of elements, and the size of spaces between those elements. Oh, just watch the damn video.

I talk about this technique a little in my Design for the Coder’s Mind presentation, but this video should give you a much clearer picture.

——–

Image via briangeek

Hey, FREE book!

Best comment (relevant & thought-provoking) will receive a free copy of Kim Elam’s Geometry of Design, a book which I personally find fascinating. It’s full of illuminations of geometric proportion’s influence in beautiful design. Deadline: midnight PST Wednesday, February 18th.

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1. Design for Hackers (the book) is here!

You try working at home, but you get so lonely you start talking to your cat – and he just can’t hold up his end of a conversation when it comes to foreign policy.

So you hit the cafe. The freedom to change venues based upon your whim suits your creative line of work, and at least now there are some people around; but you don’t know any of them, and every time you try to strike up a conversation with the Barista, he just glares blankly from under his emo bangs and offers you a scone. Every couple of hours, you’re faced with The Laptop Dilemma.

Then you hear about coworking. “Brilliant!” you think, and sign right up. You love having access to a whiteboard and a meeting room now and then, but then it sinks in that you’re paying $500 a month to commute to the same place every day again, and you’re pretty sure the guy in the desk next to you has never used a Kleenex in his life.

Can you identify with any of this? Then Moworking is for you. Moworking allows independent professionals to gather together to work in the same location at the same time. You get the variety of working from wherever you choose, with a community of like-minded people that you can trade tips with, do business with, or just use to watch your laptop while you take a walk around the block.

How Moworking…Works

Moworking works by protocoled use of Twitter‘s hashtags and wiki knowledge sharing to allow independent workers to gather to work in a particular location at the same time.

Start a Moworking “Pod”

1. Start working in any publicly-accessible place with good Moworking amenities (WiFi and power outlets are key), like a cafe, for example.
2. Twitter “#[moworkingcityhashtag] at [locationnameandrelevantdetails], http://moworking.org” (the link to Moworking helps spread it)

Find/Join Moworking Pods

1. Track the [moworkingcityhashtag] of your choice on Twitter. Make sure your device updates are on, and you’re set up to receive updates on your Mobile Device. To track a City Tag, just Twitter “track [moworkingcityhashtag]“
2. When you get a tweet that includes [moworkingcityhashtag], go to the location mentioned in the tweet. If you know the person who sent the tweet, then finding them will be easy – otherwise, hopefully they have a clear picture on their Twitter profile.
3. Briefly greet the Pod member(s) and start Moworking.

Moworking in Motion

David is feeling social today, so instead of working from home, he decides he wants to Mowork from a cafe. He lives in San Francisco’s Mission District, but decides he wants to try a different neighborhood. He checks out the Moworking Directory, and sees that there’s a Moworking-friendly cafe Downtown called Golden Gate Perk. So, he hops on the train and heads to Golden Gate Perk. He’s happy to see that it has WiFi, plenty of outlets for his laptop, and staff that doesn’t seem to mind him getting some work done on his laptop.

David is happy at Golden Gate Perk, but would like some company. So, he starts a Moworking “Pod” by Tweeting according to the Moworking Protocol: “#moworkingsf at Golden Gate Perk, Downtown http://moworking.org.”

Rob is just getting up for the day, and is thinking it’s a good day to hit the cafe circuit. Rob Moworks with David often, so when he gets David’s Twitter message, the decision is easy for him as to where to go. He hops on the train and heads to Golden Gate Perk. When he gets there, he greets David and checks in according to the Moworking Protocol.

Fayza is running some errands Downtown, but is hoping to get some work done this afternoon. Since she tracks “moworkingsf” on Twitter, she gets both David and Rob’s messages directly from her phone. “There’s quite the Pod developing at Golden Gate Perk!” she says to herself. She knows David, but hasn’t met Rob before, though she remembers seeing his picture on the Moworking Wiki. She steps into Golden Gate Perk and sees David and Rob, plugging away on their laptops. After David briefly introduces Fayza and Rob, Fayza checks in according to the Moworking Protocol, and the three of them are one happy Moworking Pod. 

They get the pleasure of working at the cafe, but don’t have to do so alone – and they have friends to watch their laptops when they go to the bathroom!

Find out more about Moworking, and add your favorite venues on the Moworking Wiki.

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Turn on device updates for the friends you're most interested in hearing from
     
• Turn on device updates for your close friends. Maybe you have some friends who you always want to get the Tweets of. Just make sure Device Updates are on for them (and off for other people), and switch on Device Updates in your Preferences. Now next time someone from your posse is looking to borrow a power drill, you’ll get the message.

Track your own username, not mine!
• Track your username. When someone mentions you, you want to know about it, right? Just send Twitter “track yourusername” and next time someone you don’t know responds to your hilarious observation on baby strollers in Noe Valley, you’ll hear about it right away*. This is also good for hearing from those friends who are too noisy to track on device updates.

Don't forget that you have some control over your mobile phone preferences.
• Turn off device updates for when you’re snoozin’. For now it looks like you have to settle for blocking out a time for each day, so you may miss out on that 2am burrito run on Saturday night.

So fear not about turning on Device Updates on Twitter. It’s alot more fun when you can have the relevant stuff coming to your mobile, while you leave the rest of it for the occassional web update. *Keep this in mind if you have yet to sign up for Twitter, and be sure to pick a really unique username that isn’t likely to appear as part of normal conversation, or even as a part of a word. Otherwise, this just isn’t going to work. Sorry, @t.

Photo by cjsorg.

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• Get a blank t-shirt.
• Order some letters. bonus typographer points if you can piece together something decent from a sheet full of individual letters.
• Spell out your favorite designer brand on the t-shirt, using the letters, and iron them on.
• Wear your stylish new shirt proudly on the street.

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Check in online

With Southwest, you can check in online as early as 24 hours before your flight. Don’t concern yourself with whether or not you have access to a printer to print out your boarding pass. If you don’t, simply check in online, and then re-check in at the airport using one of Southwest’s electronic kiosks.

Do pre-flight investigation

Look around the gate area a bit and identify people you may or may not want to sit next to. This will depend on your mood that day. Maybe you don’t feel like talking that day so you want to sit next to the bookworm, maybe you want to chat up that pale-faced brunette, hey maybe today you _want_ to sit next to the baby or the nervous flyer.

Board at the right time

If you checked in online early, chances are you got an “A” boarding pass. Unless you’re flying with friends that you want to sit next to, you certainly don’t want to wait in the “A” line before boarding. Just remain seated and board at the end of that group. Probably the best time to board is at the end of the “B” group, and you can certainly just hold on to your “A” pass and wait to board at the end of the “B” group. More on this strategy later.

Check with flight attendant

When you first step onto the plane, ask the flight attendant how full the flight is. Generally, they will give you some percentage, or tell you that it’s totally full.

Make your selection

Now you’ve reached the moment of truth. When all of that preparation and planning finally comes together, yeilding you a seat that will facilitate an enjoyable flight. Why didn’t you rush to be one of the first people on the plane? Because you could have gotten your “A” pass and waited in line and been that first person and gotten the seat you wanted, but how would you control who decides to sit next to you? You could try making strange facial expressions, but that’s just a gamble.

You let all of those people get on the plane before you, because now _you_ get to pick whom you sit next to. For example:

• If the flight is around 75% full and you’re looking for some peace and quiet, if you see a person of large proportions sitting in an aisle seat grab the window seat in that same row and you can bet noone will sit next to you.
• If the flight is full, you know you’re going to have to sit next to _someone_, so it may as well be that hot chick (or whatever your fancy) or promising business connection. Since the flight is nearly full, you won’t seem too forward, creepy, or stalkerish. I mean, you probably are if you put this much thought into it, but just keep that to yourself.

So now you can see some of the strategies one can employ to find that perfect seat. Check out this article if location in the plane and room is more important to you than whom you sit next to. If you learn to use these strategies, you may even start to prefer Southwest’s seating arrangements, but don’t go telling too many people as this obviously wouldn’t work if everyone used these strategies.

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