Description: Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder is a web service that can give you a list of free wireless internet locations for any address of your choosing and present these locations visually on a map of the area.

If, say, you’re going to a conference, going to visit relatives, or for whatever reason will be in an unfamiliar part of town and wondering about the available options for wireless internet check out this neat service. Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder allows you to enter an address (e.g. a zip code) and gives you a list of Wi-Fi hotpots in that area. It will also place these venues on a Google map mashup.

Of course, this will only help you if you’re planning ahead, unless you have an internet-enabled mobile phone in which case you can log-on and get this information on the spot when you need it. I tried this with mine and although the Google maps service does not show inside the browser on my iPhone I was still able to get a list of Wi-Fi places.

I tested this service on the two locations which I know the most: my neighborhood where I live, and the downtown area where I work, and I can report that it was able to identify more than 95% of places (in both cases it missed only one place that I knew of, but revealed a number of others that I had not known about previously).
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Description: AlbumArt.org is a site that provides searchable CD and DVD art in large format.

I’ve always used Amazon to download album art, which doesn’t provide large size images, and is on occasion unable to deliver artwork for some titles. My second resource is typically Google image search, which is unpredictable.

This is why I was very pleased to discover AlbumArt.org. It allows you to search for either CD or DVD artwork and instantly produces (mostly) large format results. It also contains album art from international and/or rare realeses. A search for "Radiohead" produced a staggering 468 results, which certainly says something about the breadth of this resource. And as the folks over at the CD Design and Album Cover Art blog indicate, in many cases the size of the images is larger than that provided by the album artwork resources in Itunes.

[Via the CD Design and Album Cover Art blog]
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Description: Tunestor is an extension for IE and Firefox that allows for downloading MP3s and adding them to your Itunes library in one fell swoop from the browser context menu.

This browser extension aims to condense what would typically involve 4 different steps into a single, simple right-click command. While normally you would need to (1) click to download an audio file, (2) select the location to save the file, (3) start ITunes, and (4) manually add the file to the Itunes Library, with Tunestor you would simply right-click on the mp3 download link in the browser and select “download directly to Itunes”.

What I like about this is the convenience of knowing that I can download something then find it in the music library when I open Itunes, ready to be synched with my Iphone.

Here are some notes on this program:

• Tunestor downloads files to the “My Music” directory by default. While this is probably a good choice, it would be better if it enabled you to change the default download directory in case the user prefers another location. Come to think of it, having the ability to optionally introduce a “save as” dialog to choose the save folder would also be good (albeit it would add a step).
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 0.9.2

Description: ITunes Art Importer is a plugin for Itunes that downloads album art from Amazon.com and saves it within the music files ID3 tag. It adds an additional layer of user control over the process of finding album art beyond that provided by ITunes.

While ITunes provides a fairly decent ability to mass-retrieve album artwork for a music library, it suffers from problems in that (a) ITunes will not retrieve album art for tracks that do not contain album info or are not tagged exactly the way it expects, and (b) ITunes requires the user to have an ITunes account and be logged in in order for the album art function to work (simple to set up but requires a valid credit card).

ITunes Art Importer can provide a very practical (and powerful) tool to get the album art for your music collection. It can be used to auto-import album art for an entire music collection (or part of one), but for those tracks for which auto importing will not succeed, ITunes Art Importer is versatile enough to be used effectively on a per-case basis to get album art imported for all of your tracks.

• Auto Importing: ITunes Art Importer can scan an entire library (or part of one) and automatically import the album art for tracks. When in doubt, it can be set to automatically use a ’best guess’, and can be instructed to either leave all tracks that already have images alone or re-process them. In my experience, auto-importing by best guess works brilliantly.
• User assisted album art downloading: for those tracks that auto importing doesn’t identify, you can manually override the automatic search by typing an alternative search string in the search box. This will typically generate a list of possible entries to visually browse through and work from, and is an extremely handy way to quickly take care of all those tracks in your library that don’t auto import their album art.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 0.14

Description: MP3 to iPod Audio Book Converter will combine a number of MP3 files into a single .M4B audiobook file. Ipod M4B audiobooks support a number of features including remembering last listening position and the ability to adjust reading speed.

Having recently transferred an audiobook consisting of some 56 MP3 files into my new IPhone, I realized that it wasn’t possible to use ’song shuffle’ without getting these files played as well, interrupting the music, and requiring a human intervention. I had tagged these MP3s as "audiobook" genre but being as there is no "shuffle songs from all genres except" function I started searching for an MP3 to Audiobook converter and found this program. (Why use an app like this instead of an audio converter or transcoder? because it will both convert and combine in one action, as well as provide an interface for sorting chapters correctly and editing the tag info of the resulting audiobook).

Fitst, here’s a list of reasons why Apple’s audiobook M4B format is a good thing:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.0.8

Description: Ipodifier is a video to Ipod conversion software that can be scheduled to scan user-specified directories for video files and, when found, convert these to Ipod mp4 videos. Once the conversion is complete it can transfer the resulting video to iTunes and your Ipod. The basic premise is that if you capture videos from a source such as TiVo, SageTV or another device or download through Torrent or any another source, Ipodifier can be set up to work with these files once they become available and take them through all the necessary steps to get them on your Ipod without any user intervention.

Picture this: you’re sleeping, but your favorite TV show is being saved on your computer’s hard drive from TiVo or Torrent. As soon as the download or capture is finally completed, Ipodifier starts converting it based on your pre-defined conversion settings. When done, it transfers the files to your Ipod. In the morning your TV show is ready for you to watch on the bus ride to work.

At least that’s the basic idea. Here’s what you need to know about this program:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.0.83

Description: Ipod Video Converter for Free converts a myriad of video formats into Ipod-compliant MP4 container videos, including WMV, MKV, ASF, FLV and VOB as well as the usual AVI (DivX, Xvid) and Mpeg formats. It will also download and convert Youtube Videos.

[Update Jan 17 2008: since reviewing version 1.0.0.83 of this program, the author has released newer ADWARE versions. Although not malicious, I nonetheless DO NOT recommend using these adware versions. Unfortunately I no longer have the setup file for the non-adware version, but will find it soon and post it on this page.] 

From the makers of Free Easy CD DVD Burner comes this straightforward video-to-Ipod conversion program. What’s interesting about this is the number of formats that it can handle, not least the FLV format that Youtube and other sites have made ubiquitous. Here’s what you need to know about this program.

Note on Ipod video resolution . The maximum resolution for an Ipod compatible video depends on the Ipod’s firmware version. For Ipods with firmware 1.2 or later the max resolution is 640×480 or lower. Ipods with earlier firmware versions can handle video resolutions up to 320×240 (more info here). I would advise you to check your Ipod’s firmware version (from the Ipod main menu > settings > about) and update the firmware using the iTunes sofware if necessary. Maximum audio bitrate is 160bps.

The interface: very simple.. Allows batch encoding of files. Also includes a video preview option which I suggest you switch off as it will slow down the conversion process.

Custom settings: you can change these depending on the output resolution, quality, and file size you want. Unfortunately, there is no documentation to speak of for this program that I could find either with the installed program itself or on the developer’s website (or on third-party websites for that matter). It is possible to get a good, high quality converted video nonetheless. Read more »

Rating: 5

Description: Sideload.com is a sister website to MP3Tunes.com which aggregates all MP3 files that the users of MP3Tunes have found on the web and “sideloaded” into their MP3Tunes lockers. Sideload allows you to search MP3s, listen to them and/or copy them into your own MP3Tunes account.

This review will adopt the question and answer format:

Q: Where does this music come from? What is Sideloading?
A: Sideloading refers to music files that users of MP3Tunes.com find on the net and ask MP3Tunes to download straight into their MP3Tunes Locers. This is done from within the browser using either the Internet Explorer or Fireforx extensions of Oboe, MP3Tunes’ music management/uploading software. For more info on MP3Tunes check out the Freewaregenius review here.

Q: Can anyone use the Sideload.com service? Do you have to have an MP3Tunes.com account?
A: Anyone can use the Sideload.com website to search for and listen to music. You can also download files to your hard drive or transfer them into your MP3Tunes.com locker. You can get a locker for free on the MP3Tunes.com website

Q: What kind of music is available? How many files does the service provide?
A: There apparently are more than 250,000 files available on Sideload, from every conceivable genre. Read more »

Rating: 5

Description: MP3Tunes.com is a web service that allows you to store your music collection online and offers unlimited storage space for this, even for free accounts. It makes your music available for you to listen to or download from anywhere through the MP3Tunes.com web interface.

How it works: first, you create an account (called a ’locker’) with MP3Tunes.com. Initially this will likely have a 1-Gig maximum ceiling, but eventually will be upgraded to unlimited storage. There are a number of ways to upload/download your music into your locker, foremost of which is Oboe, a little program for Windows, Mac, or Linux which is installed locally and can sync your audio files between your hard drive and your online locker (or you could just do one way uploads or downloads if you prefer).

If you are downloading music from the internet you could use ’webload’, a feature within the MP3Tunes.com site, that will transfer the files (if you have the URL to download from), straight into your locker, without the need to download on the hard drive first. MP3Tunes.com also provides plugins for IE and Firefox that can identify tracks that you might encounter on websites and ’sideload’ these straight into your locker.

What would you do with unlimited online storage for your MP3s? Here are some of the possibilities:

• Make your music collection available anywhere there is an internet connection. Tired of lugging that external hard drive with all your MP3’s to work and back? Good, because once you upload all of your audio files to MP3Tunes you wouldn’t need to do that any more; you can have your music streamed into your work computer through the MP3Tunes.com website.
• Safely back-up all of your music: just imagine; you have your entire 80 Gigabytes of music in an external drive which you accidentally drop. Not a pretty image. With MP3Tunes you can have all that music backed up safely on the MP3Tunes.com servers.
• Store your entire music library in a single location. my music collection, for example, is 80 Gigs and growing. I have a 60 Gig Ipod and can only afford to store 25 Gigs or so worth of music on my laptop. The only way I can everything in one place is to buy an external hard drive. MP3Tunes.com is an option that I can resort to instead, although it is an open question whether it would be more convenient than simply buying a hard drive (see below).
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: b29

Description: Floola is a small, cross platform app that can copy music files, video files, and playlists to and from your Ipod on any computer without having iTunes installed.You can also use it to manage your audio collection straight on the Ipod, including editing or deleting files and or artist/album/genre information, as well as creating playlist and/or playing your Ipod-resident music files. It can also manage Motorolla phones that are supported by iTunes.

Here’s what you need to know about this software:

• Yes you read it correctly; finally a free iTunes replacement that can move video files to and from the Ipod
• Installation is a breeze, and involves simply moving the Floola executable into the Ipod from within the Windows file system. Note that you have to (a) enable the Ipod as a portable hard drive (Ipod will appear in ’My Computer’), and (b) switch off the Auto-sync option in iTunes (to prevent iTunes from erasing the files you independently copy to your Ipod with Floola). To uninstall, simply delete Floola from the Ipod.
• Installing Floola on the Ipod itself means that you could copy files to/from your Ipod on any PC; just plug it in, run Floola, and you’re on your way.
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 2.3

Description: Free YouTube to iPod Converter is a tool that can download YouTube flash (FLV) videos and convert them into Ipod Video, PSP, or Mobile device compliant MP4 video file formats.

Here’s how it works. Find a video on YouTube that you want and copy its URL, then paste it into “Free YouTube to iPod Converter”. Next choose the quality setting for your desired video and, after a brief wait (depending on the size of the video file) your file is done, ready to be uploaded into your Ipod or device.

What’s really cool about this program is that for each type of supported device (Ipod, PSP, mobile) it has three predefined quality settings that you could choose from that make it extremely easy to use. The user has nothing more to decide than low, medium, and high quality. After that the video is downloaded and converted efficiently and , in my experience, without problems (no missing audio, no audio/video sync problems).
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2.5.4.978

Description: MediaMonkey is an advanced music manager comprising a music player, cd ripper, audio converter, ID3 Tag editor, and playlist generator. It also supports external MP3 players, including the Ipod.

If you’ve been looking for a free program that can be a kind of one-stop-shop of audio, doing everything that you might possibly want to do with your library of audio files (and doing it well) - MediaMonkey just might be that program.

Here are some of the reasons why this program is so cool:

• Audio format conversions. Supported formats are MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, and FLAC.
• Rips and burns music CD’s.
• Powerful Tag editing functionality: as good as it gets, with support for importing ID3 tags and album art from external resources like Amazon and Freedb. Auto tagging tracks and saving album art from Amazon is just beautiful!
• Organization: allows you to automatically change your music library’s folder structure based on your audio files’ tag information. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Description: Vixy is a website that provides 3 services; it can download YouTube and other embedded FLV videos straight into a number of different video formats, including Ipod MP4, and it can Generate video RSS feeds or video Podcasts using either a YouTube URL or keyword search.

I’ve been looking for a good solution for how to download YouTube videos into Ipod MP4 video for some time, and this is certainly it. I’ve found some software that does this, but the quality of the MP4 video was rather poor. I am happy to report that Vixy’s video conversions are simply excellent. Read more »

[This page last updated Dec 9th, 2006] 
I’ve noticed people are searching for this. Here are some solutions.

For Google Video:
Google Video now allows you to download videos straight into MP4 Ipod video format (see screenshot). My advice to you if you have a lot of videos already downloaded is to simply re-download in the MP4 format.

For YouTube
The Vixy web site provides an online conversion service that is fast and efficient (click here for a review of Vixy on Freewaregenius). 

Another, less elegant solution is as follows:

• Download your Youtube video using Vdownloader in AVI format (yes, this program does exactly that).
• Re-Encode the AVI video file into MP4 using Free Ipod Video Converter. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  1.34 build 892

Free Ipod Video Converter is a tool that converts most video file formats into MP4 files, the video format playable by video Ipods (as well as the Sony PSP).

It is a simple yet solid program that delivers exactly what it promises. Supported formats include AVI, MPEG, WMV (ASF), RM, RMVB, DivX, and ASF.  It also converts VOB files, which means that you can rip a DVD to your hard drive (see the RipIt4Me review) and then convert the VOBs straight MP4s (I tried this and it works very well, although you do end up with 4 to 7 MP4s, depending on how many VOBs you have. You can then merge them together with a freeware program called Yamb).

Video conversion is done quite literally in 4 clicks. First: select the file/files to convert (will process files in batches); second: select size in pixels (you will typically default to the Ipod’s maximum 320×240): third; set the quality sliders for both audio and video (a process which will also show you an estimated file size to help you make a decision); finally, if you choose to, you can type in any tag info for your video file, or the program will get this info automatically if the input files contains them. Read more »