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The iPhone and iTunes surprise me with a cool feature

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itunesI have been using an iPhone for about 5 months now and love the thing, it is the single greatest gadget I have ever bought.  One reason I bought it was to  replace my aging iPod Mini.  I listen to as many podcasts as I can on my commute to client sites but also listen to the same podcasts on my PC when I am working at home.

One feature of iTunes and the iPhone I totally stumbled upon is one of its syncing features;  When I am home listening to a podcast and then take to the road I always sync my iPhone so I have the latest podcasts from my subscriptions.  I get in my car and finish the podcast I was listening to in my home office and viola…it starts in the same place I left off.  How cool is this??   Sure, it’s a small thing but it’s one feature that makes me glad I own an iPhone.  Topping it all off is when I come back home and sync the iPhone again, it updates the spot in the podcast I left off at in my car.   Two-way book marking, very cool indeed.

My old iPod did not do this, but either the iPhone or the latest iTunes has added this great little feature. 

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Comments

  1. Jeffro says

    This is a GREAT feature! I use my ipod in a similar way. I have a ipod photo and after a recent firmware update was able to specify that mp3s save their positions when replaying. I don’t believe I was able to do that before, and was in the middle of converting my mp3s to aacs for this feature, then came across the option in the ‘get info’ option of mp3s. unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be enabled by default, so every mp3 you upload you’ll need to set/enable, but works out well if you upload in batches.

  2. Jeffro says

    This is a GREAT feature! I use my ipod in a similar way. I have a ipod photo and after a recent firmware update was able to specify that mp3s save their positions when replaying. I don’t believe I was able to do that before, and was in the middle of converting my mp3s to aacs for this feature, then came across the option in the ‘get info’ option of mp3s. unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be enabled by default, so every mp3 you upload you’ll need to set/enable, but works out well if you upload in batches.

  7. Jeffro says

    I thought the same thing – I haven’t come across a great listing of iPod tips/tricks yet, but I’m sure there’s one out there.

    I find that (either iTunes or iPod) updates occasionally add new features I didn’t have previously. Just this week, I found a new one: while an “audiobook” is playing (.m4b file – that I converted in iTunes from an .mp3 file), I can click the center button and switch from volume control, to file position, to the 5-star rating. Just this week my iPod got updated to give me a 4th option – play speed (slower, normal, faster). I could have done this before under the Settings menu, but now I can do this from within the context of the item being played – so I keep it on the Faster play-mode and if I happen to get lost because of the speed I can quickly slow it down to Normal and follow along better. I’m not sure if this is available with the .aac formatted files, but I’ve been working with this feature on .m4b formats, which I’ve converted all my podcast .mp3s to this from within iTune’s library and let’s me zip through my podcasts a bit quicker!

  8. Jeffro says

    I thought the same thing – I haven’t come across a great listing of iPod tips/tricks yet, but I’m sure there’s one out there.
    I find that (either iTunes or iPod) updates occasionally add new features I didn’t have previously. Just this week, I found a new one: while an “audiobook” is playing (.m4b file – that I converted in iTunes from an .mp3 file), I can click the center button and switch from volume control, to file position, to the 5-star rating. Just this week my iPod got updated to give me a 4th option – play speed (slower, normal, faster). I could have done this before under the Settings menu, but now I can do this from within the context of the item being played – so I keep it on the Faster play-mode and if I happen to get lost because of the speed I can quickly slow it down to Normal and follow along better. I’m not sure if this is available with the .aac formatted files, but I’ve been working with this feature on .m4b formats, which I’ve converted all my podcast .mp3s to this from within iTune’s library and let’s me zip through my podcasts a bit quicker!