Making an MP3 file appear as podcast in iTunes

To make an MP3 file imported into iTunes appear as a Podcast as against music in the library a tag needs to be added to the MP3.

To make a file appear as a podcast first edit it using ID3-TagIT

Switch to "Shown TAG Ver. 2".

select your file and right click on it.

then "Tag Ver 2 functions" - "Edit Tag Ver 2"

and you will get a display with 7 tabs.

Putting information in the "Main Entries" for Lead Artist, Title & Album
will make this appear in iTunes but the tab needed to make a podcast is "User Defined Frames".

Put "PCST" in the text frame descriptor and "Podcast" then click "Add user text frame" then click "OK".

This will have added a tag which ITunes will recognise.

Now import into iTunes.

At this point when the file in in "music" do "Get Info" and "options" and tick "Remember playback position" and "OK".

Then, "Get Info", "Options", and change Media Kind: to "Podcast"

Then the file appears in iTunes in the "Podcasts" section.

To make your recording come up with a nice picture a small JPEG can be added to the file. Add through "Options" "Artwork" "Add" "OK".

(later addition)

You can skip the first bit by importing the file as a normal song and then setting the "media kind" to "podcast".

The iPod Touch

An iPod touch has appeared in our family.

I'm very impressed with the user interface. It also works well over WiFi.

There was a modest amount of messing around getting the WiFi key in. The answer was putting the full hex key in, for some reason the pass phrase didn't work.

A jolly good device and I'm sure it will be popular.

Three SMTP server smtp-mbb.three.co.uk is back !

With as little publicity as when it went, the Three SMTP server smtp-mbb.three.co.uk has started working again.

Perhaps I should have stuck with it but the indications from Three when it stopped that this was by design rather than accident.

Very strange.

I get the iPad !

I've been toying with buying an iPod touch or perhaps an iPhone but neither device does it for me.

The iPod touch is little more than a version of my Nokia N810 which does less and the iPhone is another phone.

I want a larger device for mobile use. What I would really like is to connect to a phone using bluetooth.

As announced the iPad has bluetooth but the level of functionality is unknown. The touch has limited bluetooth functionality but the iPad might link to my phone and be the device I'm looking for.

If it does that I will be in the queue.

Virtual Radio

I've been trying another internet radio application, Virtual Radio recently.

http://www.vradio.org/index.php?js=a

The Java version works OK ish on my Sony Ericsson but seems to strangely drop out every half an hour. It also has somewhat random adverts.

The S60 Nokia version seems fine but perphaps less robust on the move than Nokia Internet radio.

Both worth a try for free though.

Three SMTP server smtp-mbb.three.co.uk stopped working

I have used the 3 (Three) mobile provided smtp server " smtp-mbb.three.co.uk " for about 9 months with my Sony Ericsson k530i to use "legacy" POP3 e-mail accounts.

I've been on the Internet for more than a decade and I've collected a few e-mail accounts with different dial up providers as the deals changed.

For the last 5 years or so I've kept them going by making a dial up connection every couple of months and using ISP provided smtp accounts.

This worked with 3 as well as they had a little known SMTP server ( smtp-mbb.three.co.uk ) however some time in early November 2009 I noticed it had stopped working.

After an hour of customer services web chat (it's better than the call centre - trust me !) I got to what seems to be the bottom of the matter, smtp-mbb.three.co.uk is no longer available.

There are other work arounds (using google mail to send for example) but it's not as good.

It is irritating that Three will sell handsets with built in e-mail but stop you using the feature.

I'm afraid that, although it may seem a minor loss of facility in what is still an attractive overall offer, I'm considering other options.

If another network offered, say, 1GB of data on a phone with no time limit for, say £10, with a SMTP server I would be off.

So far only Vodafone offer data which doesn't expire and they haven't had the sense to make the same available on a phone.

I watch the market for developments.

Connecting the Palm Lifedrive to S2 Skypephone

Some brief notes which I might later expand.

First I set up the Bluetooth pairing between the two devices and set the Lifedrive as "authorised" on the S2.

Then set up a connection on the Lifedrive in Preferences>Connection> and create a new one with a name of your choice.

The device used is the name the S2 gave in bluetooth pairing, it was "unnamed device" in my case.

For some odd reason the dial string on the Lifedrive had to be *99***1# (*99***2# was my first go and didn't work).

This is all to make better use of the "free" Three data with a PAYG top up.