I've been trying to figure out how to determine the beats per minute for music I play on my iPod. I don't have the abundance of time available to sit and count out every beat and manually edit each song, so I needed some software to do it.

I found BeaTunes and gave it a try.

It will analyze and determine the BPM for any song that can be played in QuickTime (no copy protected stuf

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Why doesn't iTunes have built-in support for finding lyrics? Why doesn't iTunes have a decent method of finding song information and album art?

I don't know why, but I know what fills this gap. It's called iArt.

iArt is a cover art and lyrics search program that is very powerful and automatically updates your iTunes library, letting you skip a l

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Now that I have an iPod, I needed a way to get all my Plays For Sure wma files into iTunes. I did not want to have to go through the tedious process of recording them all to CD and then re-ripping them to MP3's so I went looking for a solution.

I found MuvAudio2. MuvAudio creates a virtual sound card on your PC and records real time ripping of audio files into non-copy protected formats (MP3 are my preferred format due to their universal acceptance by all media players). It can simultaneously record up to 10 streams at once.

I used it to convert about 80 Plays for Sure files into MP3s. Based on MuvAudio's analysis of my system, it said I could record from 4 files simultaneously, however, after listening to these files I heard some skips and had to re-record them. Based on my experience, I'd recommend going with half the number of simultaneous conversions that the software recommends, just to be on the safe side. It'll take longer initially, but save you time in the long run.

The MP3s that resulted from the conversion (once I fixed the skippers) sound just as good (or bad, if your a super audiophile with golden ears) as the wma originals. MuvAudio2 is a great way to get any DRM'd audio files that can play in Windows Media Player (a prerequisite) into a non-DRM format. If the files are not DRM-protected, using other conversion methods that work faster than real-time (like iTunes included "convert to MP3 feature) is much faster and gives better results (0% chance of skips) that MuvAudio does. I've also found MuvAudio is a neat way to extract audio from video files, and have used it as part of a ring-tone generating process to make ringtones from lines or theme songs in movies and TV shows.

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I purchased the iLuv 603 external battery and case for my 5.5^th generation 30GB iPod shortly before a long business trip (that would have me on planes and waiting in airports for 36 hours each way). Initially I only wanted a stand-alone charger for my iPod (which ranged from $10 to $60, with reputable models in the 20’s), but later became intrigued by the independence of an e

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