How to Hack Your iPod: Six Great iPod Tricks

The iPod is a deeply personal device. The music, contacts, calendars, and notes you keep on it reveal a lot about your personality. From play counters to playlists, our iPods can tell others what we enjoy, how we think, and even who we are. But if you really want to transform your iPod into an engine of extreme personal expression, why not customize it?

Hacking your iPod, whether it’s modifying the case, installing custom software, or cracking it and doubling the memory, can transform the ubiquitous music and media player into something unique.

Note: You should be aware that trying any of these tricks carries the risk of ruining your device.

1. penguin power

iPod Linux is the essential hack, stakes on the table for many of the other hacks you might want to try. It is fully compatible with iPods in generations 1-3 and has been successfully installed on all others with screens. You should take ‘Podzilla’, which will add a graphical interface to iPod Linux. There are several versions of Podzilla available to choose from. Once installed, iPod Linux and Podzilla will allow you to boot your iPod into a basic Linux mode. In addition, it will serve as the basis for many other tricks.

two. Wikipedia on the go

Everybody loves Wikipedia. It is a free user-created encyclopedia with entries on more topics than Britannica. It’s a great information resource, but what if it’s not on your desktop? Now, you can get it on your iPod and take Wikipedia with you wherever you go. Unfortunately, it’s not yet available for all iPod models; Nano and video users are out for now, and since there’s no screen on iPod shuffle, there’s no point installing Wikipedia. First, you will need to install iPod Linux.

3. double your memory

Not satisfied with the 4 GB of memory on your iPod nano? Why not double it? First, you’ll need to buy a broken nano on eBay. Open it and remove the memory. Then open your working nano, solder the memory chip from the broken nano to the empty pad it works on, seal it back up and do a factory reset. You now have a working nano with 7.2 GB of space.

Four. Mobile movies on the go

Transfer DVD movies to your iPod easily and for free using free software (HandBrake) available for both Mac and Windows. Be careful, though: unless you use an analog capture method, it’s illegal to copy DVDs you own on your iPod.

For Mac (and Linux) users, grab a free copy of HandBrake. Handbrake is now available as a universal binary—good news for those with a new MacBook, Mac mini, or imac—and it can rip DVD video directly to MPEG-4 video, the format you’ll need to watch it on your iPod. . Windows users need to perform a few additional steps. Get a DVD ripping program like DVDFab Decrypter or DVD Decrypter. Convert your video to AVI using a decoding tool. Finally, convert the AVI file to MPEG-4 video that you can play on your iPod using Videora iPod Converter.

5. ipod to tv

Do you want to see the content of your iPod on your TV? You can easily do this by buying a £15 iPod AV cable from Apple or using a standard mini-jack to three-plug RCA cable. These cables cost between £7 and £10 at outlets such as Maplins (www.maplins.co.uk). Set up your iPod for TV output, connect the cable through the minijack, and connect the RCA connections to a TV using a non-standard setup. Apple sends the video from the iPod to the red wire, instead of the traditional yellow. So you’ll need to plug the red wire into your TV’s video (yellow) jack, the yellow wire into the white jack, and the white wire into the red jack. This is an easy trick that anyone with an iPod can try.

6. pac attack

Thanks to iPodMAME, you can play Pac-Man on your iPod. This trick will install a version of MAME, the arcade game emulator program, on your iPod. As with the Wikipedia hack, iPodMAME requires you to install iPod Linux first. The program comes with romsets (the set of files that includes all game data), including one for Pac-Man. PodMAME should work with any iPod with a color screen.