walki-talki.com Travel Blog

iPodLinux Installer 0.1 - MacUpdate

For those who are not particularly fond of the iPod’s operating system and who are rather technically inclined, there is now a solution. Get the software (linked above) and install your favorite flavor of Linux on the iPod.

“Why?” you may ask? There is no other motivation for the geek other than the fact that a challenge is there, but just as the geek curiosity to use the iPod to record internet broadcasts turned into the podcasting craze, this obsession with the iPod’s operating system may eventually lead to entirely new uses for the iPod. Should that happen, we here at walki-talki.com will be sure to be at the forefront.

Some time ago, I wrote about iTunes Agent, a free program that allows you to synchronize your iTunes library with any device.

Another fabulous and free program that can be used to manage your iTunes library and to synchronize your music with a large variety of music players and mobile phones is Floola. Floola is difficult to describe, but it promises to be the ultimate piece of software to read, to process, to manage and to synchronize your iTunes playlist with your iPod, certain mobile phones and mp3 players. Best of all, Floola is available for all platforms: Linux, Windows, and OS X.

So, bear in mind that you need not get trapped into the iTunes/iPod juggernaut. It’s not total freedom, but a definite break from the mainstream.

A while ago, I wrote about how the new iPhone and the iPod Touch may well be the perfect platform for our walking tours. It was awfully nice to read that the Telegraph of London agrees! The Telegraph recently reviewed mp3 walking tours, and in one article, The Telegraph placed walki-talki.com in its list of essential links for the iPhone.

Incidentally, in the other review, The Telegraph mentioned walki-talki.com as one of the best overall tours. So, if you’ve been looking for that perfect travel companion for your iPod or iPhone, look no further.

Clint Bagwell Consulting: Subway for iPhone

We told you earlier about subway maps for your iPod. It is not surprising at all that a similar service is now available for the iPhone. Why should this iPhone service be better than the iPod service? The iPhone offers more visualization features than the iPod. (Although the new iPod Touch matches many of the iPhone’s features.) Along with the bigger screen, the new visualization features of the iPhone and iPod Touch make it possible for you to use the device to follow the pdf map for each tour, as well as examine the additional media that we supply with each track.

This is awfully convenient from walki-talki.com’s point of view, of course, because the iPhone and the iPod Touch can each serve as a single comprehensive solution for deploying our walking tours. You can play our tours, view the pdf map, and decide which subway route to take to your next stop.

King James Bible + Proverbs + Psalms for your iPod

In my own travels as of late, I have noticed that fewer and fewer hotels store a copy of the Bible in the desk drawer. This development never bothered me, but there were at times a sense of unease. Nothing bad ever happened, of course, but it felt as if I was being cared for perhaps a bit less than in times past. If you have ever had this feeling, or if you ever feel it is necessary to have a copy of the Bible with you on your travels, follow the link above to take a copy of the King James Bible with you on your iPod along with our mp3 walking tours of Europe.

For a slightly higher price, you can order the Old Testament, too.

None of this should be construed as endorsements of any kind. Rather, these are merely links to satisfy any curiosities you may have had.

Payam

In case you did not know, walki-talki.com has opted not to use any digital rights management (DRM) scheme in our walking tours. You may surmise that this is purely a consequence of either our lack of resources or of our laziness. Well, you would be wrong on both counts. walki-talki.com is but one of many internet sellers of digital media (music, photos, etc.) who are the avant-garde of digital distribution. We know that we can trust our clients, and we will prove that respect and trust are reliable commodities in the business of digital distribution.

Before you poo-poo this notion, bear in mind that just last week, Apple, Inc., (Yes, their official new name) started selling DRM-free music. Of course, Apple is very clever about it. They are using it as a marketing ploy to charge an extra 30 cents per song–the “theft premium”, if you will. That’s probably what they mean by iTunes Plus. (In the interest of full disclosure: I am an Apple stockholder.) So, this is a very real trend, and we are pleased to be at its frontier.

And, unlike Apple, we do not embed any personal information into the audio files that we deliver to you.

So, if you want DRM-free media to become the norm, put your money where your mouth is. Buy your walking tours from walki-talki.com, and buy your music from DRM-free outlets like www.audiolunchbox.com, ww.pastemusic.com, www.bleep.com, and www.betterpropaganda.com among many, many other outlets of DRM-free music. Of course, it’s now fair to count the iTunes Music Store as one of these outlets.
You will be shocked to learn how little it costs to start a revolution. To be precise, it costs roughly $0.99 a track. Substantially less at walki-talki.com.
Payam

Yes, here at walki-talki.com, we emphasize how easy our tours are to use with iPods, but we are committed to making tours that work with any music player. That’s why we record and distribute our tours in standard mp3 format so that they are playable just about everywhere. One thing is for certain, however: iTunes sure does make the process of transferring files to the iPod very easy.

Then, the question that may come up is this one: can I use my generic mp3 player with iTunes? The answer is “yes”! Enter iTunes Agent. This is but one of the many wonderful free, open source software titles we will mention in this blog. iTunes Agent is a completely free program that synchronizes your iTunes library with any mp3 player. As you can see in the graphic, you can synchronize your iTunes library with mobile phones, too.

So, if you like the simplicity of iTunes, but you are not impressed by the hype around the iPod, get iTunes Agent, and take your music with you. Better yet, take our self-guided mp3 audio walking tours of your favorite European cities with you.

iTunes agent is for Windows only, so we Apple users will have to wait.

Payam

The self guided mp3 audio walking tours at walki-talki.com could have been the first travel application for the iPod, but William Bright beat us to it by creating iSubwayMaps. “Little Bill” created this site as soon as the photo-capable iPods were introduced. He surmised, quite correctly, that it would be useful to have subway maps on the iPod. So, he painstakingly adapted high resolution photos of various subway systems around the world to be used on the iPod.

Why painstakingly? Because the documents had to be broken up into pieces so that you could zoom in on a particular part of the system when you need to do so. The result is quite nice, and by now, the selection of maps is large enough that you are almost guaranteed to find the map you want.

But, just in case you can’t find the map you want, go to amadeus.net There you will almost certainly find the map you need. amadeus.net provides maps in pdf and Micro$oft Word formats, only. Therefore, you will have either to figure out how to view pdfs with your iPod or other media player or to take a printout with you.

In due time, I hope to cite enough resources to allow you to take everything you need on your iPod. For now, you have walking tours and subway maps, and that may suffice.

Payam

PS If you read the posts on the isubwaymaps.com home page, you will learn that New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority prohibited Bill from using the MTA’s official map. So, he had to create one from scratch in order to avoid their alleged copyright violation. Bill also had to change the name of the site because Apple objected to the word “iPod” in the site’s original name. It is always interesting how progress is achieved despite the best efforts of large business and big government. PNM