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Manage your iPod sans iTunes with Floola
Adam Pash over at lifehacker has a great post up on managing your iPod without iTunes. The post focuses on cross-platform tools for adding music and video to your iPod from practically any computer, the most interesting of which is Floola. Floola has a bunch of features, allowing you to copy music (in both directions), manage playlists, podcasts, etc. Best of all, Floola can be installed on your iPod (you must enable disk usage to run Floola), so you can run it on any computer you happen to have access to (including, if you are rather unfortunate, a Windows PC) directly from the iPod. In addition to Floola, Adam also mentions running myPodder, again directly from your iPod, to manage your podcast subscriptions, as well as some Windows specific tools. I'm not quite ready to give up iTunes just yet, but if you carry an iPod back and forth between two computers, as I do, Adam definitely has some good suggestions.Floola is a free download, but donations are requested. myPodder is also a free download, but you must register with podcastready in order to use it.
Apple not shutting down all use of "podcast"; still not so hot on "pod," though
You probably remember our post this past weekend citing a Wired Listening Post story which claimed that Apple was trying to claim ownership of the word "podcast"; we even got -- OMG -- Slashdotted. Well, Wired Listening Post has now printed Apple's letter to the company in question, Podcast Ready, and it seems that the real situation is a bit murkier than our original post might have led you to believe. While Steve and friends are definitely gung-ho about Podcast Ready abandoning the use of "myPodder" for its automation software (claiming that it is "very similar phonetically to Apple's iPod mark and appears to have been chosen intentionally to capitalize on the fame and goodwill of Apple's marks"), the letter goes on to say that "Apple, of course, has no general objection to proper use of the descriptive term 'podcast' as part of a trademark for goods and services offered in the podcasting field." What it basically comes down to is this: Apple objects to "Podcast Ready" trademark applications which cover "portable listening devices" and "software to manage digital content for portable media players," but is fine with an application for that branding which only refers to podcasting in general. It's still confusing as hell, since it's not entirely obvious where one would draw the line between "podcasting in general" and podcasting as it relates to portable listening devices and software for managing podcasts for portable media devices, but either way what is very clear is that Apple is determined to protect its turf and prevent anyone from using the words "pod" and "podcast" in any manner they believe might possibly infringe on its trademarks. [Via MacRumors]
With "pod" on lockdown, Apple goes after "podcast"
Now that Apple's lawyers have scared the pants off of small entrepreneurs selling products like the Profit Pod and TightPod -- items that have nothing to with portable audio in any way, mind you -- it seems that the next targets are companies that have the audacity to use the word "podcast" in their names. Wired's Listening Post blog is reporting that Steve's legal eagles have sent one of those scary cease and desist letters to a company called Podcast Ready, whose premier product, myPodder, gives users an automated way to download 'casts to their portable devices. CEO Russel Holliman claims that he'd consider changing the name of the program if necessary, but seems to be justifiably reticent about rebranding his entire business, considering the fact that "podcast" may not be "owned" by Apple nor even a derivative of "iPod" in the first place. Robert Scoble -- whose own company, PodTech, may be at risk in this witch hunt -- has weighed in on the issue by suggesting that the tech community as a whole adopt other terms like "audiocast" and "videocast" (or alternately, "audcast" and "vidcast") to describe this type of content, while other folks feel that fighting Apple and generating a ton of negative press for Cupertino is the best solution. Our take? Apple should be happy that its golden goose is getting so much free publicity, and if it isn't, we know of several companies that probably wouldn't mind if zencast, zunecast, or sansacast became the preferred terminology.Update: BBHub's own Russell Shaw delves into this issue a little further over at ZDnet, and finds that Apple is having trouble getting certain iPod-related phrases trademarked, including the word "iPodcasting."Read- Apple's nastygramRead- Scoble's take[Via calacanis.com]
