storing other data on an ipod

You can mount the iPod as an external hard drive, which allows you to keep any data you like on it. Here's how you do it:

1. Connect your iPod.
2. If it appears on the desktop, then you can just drag any files you want to it like a hard disk.
3. If it doesn't appear on the desktop, open iTunes and select the iPod in the left sidebar.
4. Click the button with the picture of an iPod at the lower right corner of the iTunes window.
5. In the dialog box, check the box labeled "Enable FireWire Disk Use."
6. Your iPod should now show up on the desktop. Drag whatever files you want to it.
7. When you're done, drag the iPod to the trash (which will become an "eject" icon) and disconnect it.

If, however, you want to store data on the iPod that you can view on the screen whenever you want, you'll need to use a special program to make a special vCard. A vCard is just the type of file used to store contact information on the iPod, for viewing with the Contact list included in the latest versions of the iPod software.

There are a couple different ones on VersionTracker:

PodWriter: <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14121&db=mac" target="_blank">http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14121&db=mac</a>

PodNotes: <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14156&db=mac" target="_blank">http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14156&db=mac</a>

PodNews: <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14261&db=mac" target="_blank">http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14261&db=mac</a>

Some have extra features. PodNews, for example, will allow you to download news from hundreds of news websites for later viewing.

I think the limit is 1000 characters for a text entry, so you'll have to have a separate entry for each species.

Although PodNews doesn't have the best interface & isn't the best news syncing program (it definitely needs to group news items together in the contact list by incorporating a prefix character), for notes, it seems awesome!

1000 character limit? P'shaw. I've just tested it successfully with a 14000 character document. I'll test it with something bigger, like a chapter of a book, later.

Unfortunately, navigating such a document in the iPod is a tad slow.

Unfortunately, the iPod re-parses the text file for each redraw. With a file of 20,000 characters, it takes about four seconds just to show the next location, and you can't judge by feel whether you've scrolled enough to show the next few lines or whether you've overshot by a few pages. I even got to a point where no amount of scrolling could make the thing react, as it would time out and return to the now playing screen before the scroll occurred.

That makes the iPod useless for files of this size, even if it can display them.

I've broken up my book chapters to pages of about 4000 characters and it works well enough, though scrolling is still horribly jumpy.

Thanks to Project Gutenberg, there's quite a database of royalty-free texts on line, which means I may actually do quite a bit of reading on my iPod using this procedure. I've already read a chapter or so of Vanity Fair on my iPod, and my eyes are doing okay. I'll post more on the subject later.