fun with iTunes

here’s a tip for those of you who like podcasts, use an iPod shuffle (like i do) when working out, or just want an easier way to sort music.

when i purchased my shuffle, i intended to use it mostly for listening to podcasts while i worked out. when i discovered that there was no way to automatically upload podcasts to it, i was disappointed. i was able to find a simple workaround, however.

iTunes has this nifty feature called a smart playlist that allows you to define playlists by song characteristics, such as length, artist, genre, and so forth. i was able to transfer the contents of a smart playlist to the iPod shuffle by dragging and dropping. so, i created a smart playlist that only grabs songs of the genre “Podcast”. when i want to put podcasts on my shuffle, i simply drag and drop the smart playlist onto my iPod’s icon in iTunes.
another neat feature of the iPod shuffle is that it updates the play count of each song on it when it’s synchronized with iTunes. to ensure that i get podcasts that i haven’t heard before, i modified the smart playlist to only grab podcasts that have a play count of 0.

and that’s my neat tip.

Published by

Grant

I'm just this guy, you know?