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Media (Apple) Businesses Media Apple

Hack Turns iPod into PDA 193

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-clever dept.
Liquidape writes "Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature. " Obviously it is fairly limited just because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.
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Hack Turns iPod into PDA More

Hack Turns iPod into PDA

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  • If you don't like this one (Score:4, Funny)

    by fobbman ( 131816 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:33PM (#3119445) Homepage
    Just go into CompUSA and download your favorite PIM into your iPod and take it home.

    • Re:If you don't like this one (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Could someone please write a iPod app that plays mp3s that are in a slightly modified format. I would love to be able to copy songs from my iPod to a diffrent computer but the copyprotection prevents this. I figure if is doesn't know it's an mp3 it won't know enough to stop me.

      • Re:If you don't like this one (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's my understanding that the iPod get mounted under the /Volumes directory on MacOS X, but is simply hidden by finder.

        You can use any of the CLI utilities for files on them, copy to and from. Maybe someone will hack something up to let people do that graphically, but that's a big maybe.

        But Now that Photoshop for OS X is out, if you are using OS9, you should be shot, but that's just MHO.

  • Firewire Stylus? (Score:4, Funny)

    by AlaskanUnderachiever ( 561294 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:33PM (#3119448) Homepage
    Now all we need to go with this is a firewire enabled stylus that reads what I write in the air and translates it to incorrectly spelled text and mislabled ToDo lists.
  • Hopefully, this hack won't wipe out your hard drive! But seriously, the iPod is one sweet piece of ass, and now that you can make it a PDA, just makes it that much more enticing.

    • Re:Hopefully (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "But seriously, the iPod is one sweet piece of ass, and now that you can make it a PDA, just makes it that much more enticing. "

      One sweet piece of ass huh? You got some problems jerky.
  • Apple isn't going to be too happy about this after they've spent millions developing the iWalk. Look for the DMCA Police to come knocking.

    • Re:They Beat Apple to the iWalk (Score:5, Informative)

      by HMC CS Major ( 540987 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:45PM (#3119541) Homepage
      If you have a chance to view anything on their site (which seems to be slashdotted, but a similar page from the same company can be found in google's cache [google.com]), you'll realize that it isnt reverse engineered, and doesnt change the ipod at all. Rather (from the article):

      The Panorama iPod Organizer requires no special software on your iPod. To transfer the data to your iPod the software exports the data as MP3 files compatible with iTunes. The next time you sync your iPod all of your contact information will be automatically transferred to the iPod. The organizer information is extremely compact -- in fact, 1,000 contacts will use less than 0.1% of the space on your iPod.

      So, this isnt a hack to the ipod, but rather a hack to make the personal info appear to be an MP3. Clever, indeed.
    • Not to mention the iCame, the iSaw and the iKickedAss.

  • Retrieve to Music (Score:4, Funny)

    by dthable ( 163749 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:35PM (#3119466) Journal
    Does the music change depending on what data your retrieving? Like SMB, the music starts to speed up as your appointment approaches.
    • Does the music change depending on what data your (sic) retrieving? Like SMB, the music starts to speed up as your appointment approaches.

      Yes, and it does a grammar check as well ;-).

  • "hack" indeed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by commonchaos ( 309500 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:37PM (#3119479) Homepage Journal
    I might have read the article wrong, but this looks like all it does is use the iPods built-in menu system and just makes a bunch of mp3's based on what you input into your "PIM", kind of like "$ touch meeting-at-12:00-mc_donalds.mp3" ...

    • Re:"hack" indeed (Score:4, Informative)

      by tbmaddux ( 145207 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:48PM (#3119580) Homepage Journal
      It actually uses the ID3 tags instead of the filename, but you've got the basic idea right. It's technically not a hack.

      I can't get to Panorama's site right now but there is a little more detail in this article [macworld.com] from MacCentral, which I quote below:

      "The software doesn't work by hacking the software on the iPod at all -- instead, it turns the data into tiny iTunes-compatible MP3 files -- the files are silent, but the artist and track field information contain the data."

      • Well... hack as in "poor, yet, functional solution"

        • Re:"hack" indeed (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That would be a kludge, then.


          Yet another overly-literal nerd sucking all the humor out of the joke.

          • Re:"hack" indeed (Score:3, Interesting)

            by kisrael ( 134664 )
            by the lore of "alt.hackers" the Usenet group, it qualifies as a hack, that is using a tool in a way it wasn't intended. This is slightly different than an older definition, these big stunts and pranks MIT students would pull, and a later definition, breaking into systems. There are a few more variations on the theme hanging out there as well.
            • It may by means of technicality, qualify as a hack. Calling this a "clever" hack is quite pathetic. Punching code in via the front panel on an Altair 8800, and then listening to the music created by the RF radiation on an AM radio, qualifies as a "clever" hack, IMO. I mean, some chins need to hit the floor to qualify a hack as clever...I'm not impressed one bit...And I'll still carry my m505 along with my iPod. :-O
      • I think it's a hack - but more of a "data hack" than a "code hack".
  • I don't have the link handy, and the pics on the link in the article don't seem to work (slashdotted probably). But all they do is create a folder called Contacts, then in there make another folder called, say, CmdrTaco and in there you put files, one named the phone number, the other named the address.. then you just navigate it like you're looking for an MP3, but you just can't play them.


    I bet there's a bunch of MP3 players you could do this with.

    • Yep, slashdotted. I dont know if this is the same group, but here's Something similar [google.com] in google's cache.
    • Just because an idea is easy to implement, don't assume that "somebody has done this before". If you know of someone that has, provide a link. Yeah, it's something that could be done on lots of other MP3 players, but apparently no one did. And at the risk of being flamed, I suspect that this idea would be patentable.
      • Schmuck.. I didn't have the link handy.. plenty of people have posted links to similar things.. you don't even need a program to do it, just make the folders yourself, touch the files as .mp3 and sync..

    • MP3's w/ DTMF tones? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by su-geek ( 126437 )
      I guess you could write a small program to enter the telephone numbers and names save as an mp3 with ID3 tags as contact name and a small MP3 file with the DTMF tones to dial the contact. To bad redboxes don't work any more or the ipod would make a nice phreaking tool.
    • not quite, I think...what it looks like to me is that a single .mp3 file is created with field characteristics matching contact info, etc. So "Track Title" becomes "Contact", "Artist" becomes "Phone #" etc. I think it uses id3 tags instead of individuval files.

      That may or may not be "true," it just makes more sense to me that way, knowing how iTunes works.

    • Re:Somebody has done this before (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dhovis ( 303725 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:50PM (#3119590)
      Actually it is a little more complicated than that.

      What the iPod displays when you select a song is the ID3 tags that are stored in the MP3 files. Then this program just creates a bunch of MP3 files with silent sound tracks (and low bitrates) with your contact information stored in the Artist/Album/Title ID3 tags.

      I've notice some people complaining that you can't add contacts on the go, so this is worthless. I think that misses the point here. The iPod is an MP3 player. Apple has never claimed that it can do anything else. But if you carry it around with you all the time, this is a nice little hack to add a little extra functionallity. Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod a full featured PDA.

      • Nobody is claiming that this makes the iPod a full featured PDA.

        Except perhaps, Liquidape, who submitted the article:

        Hack Turns iPod into PDA
        Provue Development has released a personal info and contact manager app called iPod Organizer. The program enables use of iPod for storing and retrieving phone numbers, email addresses, flight numbers, appointment times and other data. It also comes with a sync feature.
        • ...and I would say that it makes the iPod a minimally functional PDA, but not a full fledged PDA. Everything he (or she) said was true. The complainers here are moaning about the submitter did not point out the limitations of using the iPod as a PDA, but if you've ever picked up an iPod, those limitations are kind of obvious. The iPod is a storage device, and the only input is for navigating what is already there. The iPod is supremely good at that. Asking it to do data entry would be like asking your keyboard to spellcheck.

    • I bet there's a bunch of MP3 players you could do this with.

      Yep. I got tired of being unable to get in contact with people whose phone numbers I had left at home, so I made a 'phone' subdirectory on my Archos Jukebox 20 and put a bunch of listings like "mom (work) - xxx-xxx-xxxx.mp3" etc. It's come in handy more than once.

      I hadn't thought of putting appointments on it or automating the scheme, however.

  • It works great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pinkpineapple ( 173261 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:39PM (#3119506) Homepage
    That is what people were expecting when Apple announced that it would introduce a device that would revolutionize the world. And that is what people have done without waiting for Apple to keep us waiting for the next big thing. So I've been tired of waiting for Apple to respond to the need of their customers and I just got this. And I just love using it. It's funny that the developer web site shows only Mac OS 9 screenshots though... Stupid Steve! Go Steve! ;-)

    PPA, the girl next door

  • IPOD supports Office (Score:4, Funny)

    by 4/3PI*R^3 ( 102276 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:39PM (#3119507)
    Well we already know there is an Office port for the iPod. or was that porting Office via your iPod [slashdot.org]?
  • On whether you think the warm-n-fuzzy jog dial or the jot language is more the bane of mankind.

  • 802.11b on iPod (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mini me ( 132455 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:44PM (#3119534)
    Now all the iPod needs is wireless ethernet. Then someone could hack up some software that will automatically discover and sync music collections with near-by iPods.
    • That's really a cool idea, actually. Are there any publically available software or hardware development specs for these things, i.e., can you get GCC for iPods yet?

      I have to admit that I'm not an Apple person and thus my knowledge lags behind the x86 world (sorry), but I'd be glad to throw myself behind such a project.
      • The iPod uses an ARM processor. GCC can cross-compile to this. Doing any 'coding', however, would require replacing the firmware in the iPod, which would be rather a pain, and which I wouldn't trust at all.

        Also, why would not being an Apple person lag you behind the x86 world? This makes no sense.

        --Dan
    • Mmmmmmm....iFurby.

    • Re:802.11b on iPod (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mcspock ( 252093 )
      Interesting thought. The easiest way to do this would be to have some sort of firewire->wireless adapter. In terms of "automatically" doing it, that may not be so easy, just because the power considerations of constantly searching for other devices. But i'm sure you could just have an on/off switch and leave it at that.

      The harder problems involve mobility; if two devices attempt to sync music collections, and one of them moves out of the wireless range in the middle of a transition, you have a partial song. It just gets messier from there.

      Hmm, maybe if they had a wireless cradle that did power and firewirewifi...
    • and ask the government to ban 802.11 or, more likely, ALL wireless transmissions (Better safe than sorry). After all, all those people with cell-phnores are really just pirates in the making.

      But wait... When I play music sound travels through the air to other peoples' ears! Better get a bill mandating encryption on air, or at least locking down people's ears so they don't participate. Sure we'd all be unable to communicate and, for that matter, breathe but we must preserve Intellectual Property!
      • After all, all those people with cell-phnores are really just pirates in the making.

        Sounds good to me. Maybe then they'll hang up and drive. Or maybe I'll be able to hear myself think on the bus. I'm not seeing a downside here. ;)
      • But wait... When I play music sound travels through the air to other peoples' ears! Better get a bill mandating encryption on air, or at least locking down people's ears so they don't participate.

        Already have a solution [slashdot.org] to that one.

  • It's a cool idea... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @12:46PM (#3119558)
    What would be a nice addition is to have the program automatically generate a short MP3 of the touchtones for the contact telephone number.

    W
    • It would be cool and all, but since there's no external speaker, it would be pretty useless.
      • What would be a nice addition is to have the program automatically generate a short MP3 of the touchtones for the contact telephone number.
      It would be nice, yes. But, the iPod portion of the program is not a program! All the organizer does is send your phone numbers as mp3 files to the iPod. No code is actually being run on the iPod, so there is no way to "generate" anything on the iPod.

      However, it would be possible to generate mp3s of the numbers desktop-side and send them to the iPod to be played when the number is selected.

      ciao
      • However, it would be possible to generate mp3s of the numbers desktop-side and send them to the iPod to be played when the number is selected.

        That's what he meant. He said "the program," not "the iPod."
    • The only problem with this otherwise cool idea is that the iPod doesn't have a speaker. You'd find yourself holding the headphone up to the telephone to try and get it to dial. The Newton used to do that, but I found that I rarely used that feature.

      It would be a cool idea if the iPod had a speaker though.

  • iPod Hacks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Metrollica ( 552191 ) <m etrollica AT hotmail D0T com> on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @01:03PM (#3119682) Homepage Journal
    For anyone that has an iPod or is just interested in hacking them, goto iPodHacks.com [ipodhacks.com]. It can give you some ideas of what the iPod is capable of.

  • Another program that does the same thing but FREE (Score:4, Informative)

    by brodiedreamyou.ca ( 542180 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @01:09PM (#3119719)
    I ran across this link at www.macnn.com apparently it's a free (for prersonal user) program that is basically exactuly the same. http://www.kohlenbach.de/prod_ipoadress_engl.htm

  • Free iPod organizer hacks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Metrollica ( 552191 ) <m etrollica AT hotmail D0T com> on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @01:21PM (#3119788) Homepage Journal
    For those of you who don't want to pay the $20 to try the iPod organizer hack, try some free ones that do a similar job.

    Mp3 phone list [realisticsoftware.com]

    Address organizer [kohlenbach.de]

    iPDA study [dsitri.de]

  • Dailtones (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @01:28PM (#3119826)
    It would be nice to make some use of the fact that
    the ipod can play music: encode the phone number
    as DTMF (or DMTF, whatever it's called) and save it
    in the mp3 file. So when you want to call someone
    you just play the mp3.

    I'm still missing that feature for my iPaq :(
    • DTMF (or DMTF, whatever it's called)

      I think it's DTMF as in Dial The M*therF*cking number. The specs are released in the .RTF format which, contrary to popular belief, does not stand for 'rick text format' but 'read the fucking'. In fact a subformat of .RTF, used in writing technical documentation, has the file extension .RTFM.

    • Dail Tone is the sound of the Irish Parliament :-)


      You could set up the MP3 file to play the touchtones. If you do, you should probably add a few seconds' pause at the beginning, since you'll need to get the iPod headset to the phone headset after playing with the buttons.

  • Limited Device Input (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously it is fairly limited just because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.

    Yeah Taco, we know. It doesn't have a three-button mouse.

  • Yeah right.

    Hack of ID3 tag... hmmm

    Kinda like burning your own CD-TEXT CDs so that suddenly your CDTEXT player becomes a PDA

    Come on
  • at the details (id3 tags used as appointments) this has about as much relevance as the guy who makes a swimming pool by placing a hose in the back of a pickup truck.... This could be done with any MP3 player that supports id3 tags and subfolders. Why not step back 2 years and look at the mp3 players that had (semi)-REAL pims built into them. The second generation mpman [mpman.com] (MP-F30) comes to mind, I owned one and it worked great in linux, and also let me store phone numbers, contacts, etc....Not much of a threat to the PDA market...

  • clever, yes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fletch ( 6903 ) <fletch@NosPam.pobox.com> on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @01:48PM (#3119964) Homepage
    it might have been clever when this guy [ipodhacks.com] did it a couple of months ago, but it's not [realisticsoftware.com] clever [kohlenbach.de] anymore [ipodorganizer.com].
  • > Obviously it is fairly limited just because of the input for this device, but its quite a clever hack.

    Typical Apple -- it lacks three mouse buttons!
  • I have a Samsung Yepp E64 and it has this "phone number feature". Its kind of gimicky, but then again - so is this hack. I found myself just for the novalty of it entering in a few phone #s but I never use them and have deleted them to give me more room on my meesly 96 megs of space.
  • Anyone wanna start up a pool betting how how long it takes Apple to use them citing DMCA issues? "The lack of any documentation at all on the Ipod is a security mechanism which you are circumventing by hacking it in this way..."

    Sorry. The industry has made me cynical.

  • I wonder if this hack will be enough to give Steve ideas for a new PIM product based on the iPod hardware and software. Given that the technology has been in place for a while (going back as far as the Newton), I believe that the most difficult task will be to come up with an appropriate name.

    My suggestion: iMan [i-iman.com] (iPIMp is too obvious, IMO).

  • I bet the Newton is rolling in it's ...uh... dumpster.

    Seriously, what about a program that also encodes further information about contacts and appointments and such as mp3's using speech synthesis. That would be neat. The filename/tags or whatever would have a basic description and the mp3's would have more information as audio.
  • As we speak, I'm recording my mp3's to my VoiceStream voice mail.

    I'll be able to listen to mp3's using my phone!

    Whoo Hoo!
  • Palm m515: 16mb, no MP3... iPod: 5gb, MP3 till your ears stop working... hmmm... It seens that palm need some serious upgrades on their handhelds...
    • Check out Sony's Clie [sonystyle.com]. They have a couple of version that play MP3s and an adapter for the ones that don't. While they don't come near the 5gb of the ipod, they do suppory memorysticks, which 5 gb worth might equal the size of the ipod.
  • Does it cause problems when the iPod tries to play one of these non-existant songs? Does it have extra long pauses?
  • Now what happens if Apple offers an iPod II, with Palmpilot-like software, if this innovation turns out to be a hit? So much for Windows CE, eh? Unless Microsoft wants to start fighting them based on the grounds of "We got here first!"
  • Jeff K. is light years [rojo.org] ahead of you! :)
  • The versatility in the iPOD that allows for this is the sign of a well designed product. It takes more time and thought to design a product that both serves its original purpose and allows for upgrades and changes to be made succesffully. I suspect apple will use the iPOD platform for other purposes as time goes on as there is really no other motivation for engineering this amount of flexibility.
    • Use the iPOD for storage on a digital video camera. Just add a lens, a ccd, and a little processing to the firewire input. Sure beats tape and the component nature of the resulting device would make it easier to upgrade.

  • Revo (Score:1)

    by Jaysyn ( 203771 )
    Now I won't be happy until someone hacks a Revo to play MP3's.

    Yes, I have a Revo, and I love it...

    Jaysyn
    • Not sure about the revo, but there is an mp3 player that works on my Mako (revo plus).

      http://www.geocities.com/zavorine/epoc/mp3.htm
  • Wow, just imagine a beowolf cluster of these...

    Oh, Jeeze. I'm so very, very sorry...

  • What I'd like to see is an update to the firmware with some real apps. I wouldn't mind giving up breakout if it could be replaced by, say, a text file reader. Apple or any decent embedded systems hacker should be able to do it. It's likely not been done just based on time-to-market and strategy reasons, not technical ones.

    Admittedly, the iPod is not a heavy-hitter in the RAM department, but if you can play breakout, you obviously have the system calls to do some cool stuff.

    Of course, anyone other than Apple hacking the firmware is illegal under the DMCA. Far be it from me to incite illegal activity.

    Wes

  • Now all we need is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by option8 ( 16509 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @05:00PM (#3121298) Homepage
    There's an organizer app that runs on the Apple MP3 player?

    cool. now all we need is an MP3 player that runs on Apple's last organizer [40hz.org] (and one that's GPL, to boot).

    oh wow. now how about a new Apple PDA?

  • I think the idea of rearraging a bunch of contact data into a folder structure that the iPod can naviage is great, if limited.

    The bigger piece of the pie, the one that Apple never game us with the Newton (and still hasn't) is a complete description of how to use the iPods Pixo embedded operating system to program other functions which are more familiar to PDA-people like: sorting, searching data enry via FW keyboard, or FW stylus if you could figure out how to make the display touch-sensative, being able to tell the machine "Make me an appointment with Carol at 5:00 next Tuesday for 2 hours, to ring 45 minues before", and it would auomatically look up Carol in the adressbook modules, check you calendar app to make sure there are no conflicts (and alearting you in that case), then placing the datbook entry, changing the ring parameter to "45 minues before meething" I dont' know if Newton Intelligence (built into the final MP2100) could do quit all that, but it might.

    Right no, people trying to extend the iPod past "just an MP3 player" are stuck with the system the iPod has now - basicall a file browser. If Apple would release the lower-lvel APIs to access the hardware and compile C programs down to assembly (for porting Sphinx and Festival, as well a WICKED fast BrickOut game)

    Apple did, after some pressure from the Newton community, release the in-house plug-ins and header/libray files for their MPW compilation system (God, what a beast) From the released stuff, people are starting to do some really cook stuff with it, as the recent beta test of an ATA card driver for the Newton by >a href="www.kallisys.com">Paul Guyou has shown, as well as the port of Waba for the Newton [gmu.edu] by Sean Luke. One person figured out how to do assembly language code programming for the StrongARM chip in Newton, and used this as the basis for a MOD file music player. Another project is aimed at porting an MP3 player to the Newton (I don't know if this is in working beta state yet, but I believe it it)

    But many if not all of these endevours "going behind NewtonScript" would be much easier (and faster) if Apple could be persuaded to release all the appropriate headers, memory maps, memory proctection schema in public view (with a licence that says you can't use this in a competing product - althought that would have to be clarified as Apple to my knowledge has never definitively said yea or nea on ever producing a PDA again.

    If the QuickDraw hooks were available (the Newton uses a stripped down SE-vintage quickdraw), then program like Waba, instead of using NewtonScript bytecode to do the drawing, which is slow, it could draw directly do the screen. Having the interface to the "Inker Port" which runs the pen input device, would make getting taps and drags to activate the applet faster, as you would have to go though NewtonScript to get them as is done now. If the full specs relating all the communications claases in the "below-Newtonscipt" layer were known, it would be easier to access the serial port, eternet cards from down there.

    Some people call for the entire source code to be released, but from what I've heard it was an enourmous mess of speghetti code. But the headers and glue files for the current machines (100,120,130,2000,2100 I believe) could help access these lower level features, which seem to be becoming more an more important as the few Newton users left push their machines to their limits and face compatibility problem with desktop systems.

    I don't know about Apple releaseing the entire source code. On one hand, if they released the whole thing, we'd have it but no roadmap; on the other hand, if they cleaned in up, took out the headers and glue, wrote some more comments, it would be VERY expensivive for them (especially as most of the original Newton people are gone from apple) However, in the case that they released EVERYTHING, a community of developers would quickly develop I'm sure to try to figure out what the code does, what should be thrown away in a new implementation of a PDA, and what would be of use to current Newton developers.

    Persuading Apple to release the source to the connectivity applications (Newton Book Maker, Newton Tool Kit, and Newton Connection Utilities) would also help, as these apps are the ONLY apps that can interface with the Dock application built into the Newton's ROM. The authentication protocol used includes a DES-encrypted challenge-respononse. This is a BIT of a hitch to making new connectvity apps that can work with the native Dock (as you'd have to after you'd wiped the Newton clean)

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