Mark Dalton

Okay so like most of the planet my music collection lives in iTunes, together with my podcasts, audio books, and home movies. Now being on the move a lot I use my 5th Generation 80GB video iPod to listen and watch the varied content, but what happens if I am away for more than a few days. Well, usually I have watched / listened to the podcasts and tend to rely on my audio books and music. I do however take advantage of the duty free shops at London Heathrow on a regular basis, collecting CD’s and DVD’s, or services such as audible.com to download more audio books . The problem you ask? Well getting them onto my iPod means coping them to my local iTunes library, which means when I get home I have multiple iTunes libraries that I need to keep synchronized.

Well, the answer it would seem is an application from

SmithMicro

called “

Tune Ranger

”.

Tune Ranger

allows you to keep up to 4 Mac’s/Windows machines and / or iPods in sync with each other (You obviously need at least

one Mac or Windows machine running iTunes) and better still gives you complete control over what it is you are synchronizing. You can synchronize by play list, genre, artist, file format, the list is extensive. You can also choose to replicate one way or another overwriting the destination, or being overwritten. You can merge one way, both ways or even allow it to duplicate. You can set it to avoid items you already have, items that are orphaned the list just goes on.

The killer thing is that they don’t have to be all

Now I wonder if there is an iPhoto version?

So after I got the Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air setup and configured I hit a problem I was all to aware of, keeping the informations synchronized. Now Apple has always had the iDisk for quite some time now and the .MAC service which allowed you to synchronize your mail, calenders, bookmarks, etc. With the Launch of the second generation iPhone Apple announced the new name for .MAC and some additional features, including “Push” email. MobileMe arrived along with the 3G iPhone, but the arrival was marred slightly as MobileMe struggled under the load, inevitably leading to outages. In fact three weeks later some people are still struggling.

However for me it worked and proved to be exactly what I needed. Now which ever Mac I am using, or indeed if I am out and about I have access to my email, calendar, contacts, and bookmarks. If I add, delete, or modify any one of these items it’s almost immediately replicated to all the other devices. Better still the information is all available via the MobileMe website which means I can effectively access the information via any internet enabled device, where ever I am!

Now for the issue of documents and data! Apple’s iDisk is a little bit like Microsofts offline folders in as much as it allows me to have a folder located on a server and synchronize it for offline use with my Mac. However Apple’s iDisk actually lives in the cloud, my which I mean out on the Internet, and it allows me to actually connect to it from multiple Mac’s and the MobileMe interface. So any documents that I place in my iDisk are within a short period of time, available on any of my Mac’s and via any Internet enabled device via the MobileMe website.

Now I hear what you’re saying, is that safe? Well, I had the same question, and to be honest up until now I remain unconvinced. So for now I have only placed what I would call reference information on my iDisk.

The next step is to figure out how I do the same thing with my sensitive data, music, and photo’s.

That however is another story.

Would you spend 16,000 on a set of headphones, well I did and no I am not mad! First things first, when I say 16,000 I am talking Indian Rupees which is about £200, and the headphones in question are the Bose

.

Now I was introduced to these by a friend of mine who loves traveling but finds it hard to sleep on a plane. I’ll be honest and say I have never paid more than £30 for a set of headphones in my life, but I tell no lies when I say if I lost these tomorrow I would be back at the store with another £200.

If you travel regularly and travel internationally crossing time zones, you will understand what I mean when I say “You grab sleep where you can!”. Well these things are just fantastic. The sound quality is excellent and they come with all the cables and connectors you need including an extension cable, and the dual pin adapter loved by some airlines. What is even better is the cable disconnects at the headphones themselves so once you have watched an inflight movie and numbed yourselves with a few bottles of red wine, you can unplug yourself and fall asleep without the noise of the aircrafts engines, small children, and the constant ding that emanates from those people summoning the attendant for more red wine because they can’t sleep, knowing that you aren’t going to strangle yourself.

Now I did look at the newer

, and while they were lighter I didn’t like the fact that they sat on my ears rather than around them.

Next time you pass a Bose shop, stop and take a look.