April 25, 2011
The tabs across the bottom of the iPod app on iPhone and iPod touch provide one-touch access to the contents of your iTunes media library on your device. Out of the box, the tabs are Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos, and the other choices -- which include Albums, Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, Genres, and iTunes U -- are available through the More tab. If you'd rather have Podcasts directly available instead of Songs, for instance, select More, use the Edit button on the upper left, and drag the one you want to display on top of the one you want to replace. Tap Done on the upper right when you're finished.
April 18, 2011
Electronic publishing is expanding the turf surrounded by the word "book," even as it makes what we've thought of as books since Gutenberg easier to acquire and consume. iTunes provides access to the full range of what's available and emerging through its App Store and Audiobooks sections. The free iBooks app in the App Store is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and serves both as the gateway to the iBookstore and the more than 200,000 titles already available there, and as your library and reader for what you acquire to read. It will open and save PDFs as well as ePub documents, and delivers a reading experience that supports bookmarks, highlighting, syncing across your devices and more. And it simply feels good to use.
Some books are already appearing in the iBookstore that take additional advantage of the screen and interactivity--full-page color children's picture books for instance, and material like the historical video clips and interviews in the enhanced version of Del Quentin Wilber's Rawhide Down about the Reagan assassination attempt. Meanwhile the Books and Reference categories in the App Store are portals to whole new offerings that fit under "books and guides" but also include interactive graphics and audio. Children's classics and new creations alike are exploring ways to delight and instruct through kids' natural instinct to explore by touching. Further along the age scale, iSolar System for iPad by Marcus Chown explains, informs, and includes rotatable planet views plus working models of solar system orbits available from every "page." And in the Reference category, efforts like iBirds Pro HD hand you the sort of guide you've always wished you had--maps, songs, photos and more, and controls to use and move among them.
You can find audiobooks via the Audiobooks tab in iTunes on the computer screen and under More in iTunes on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and thanks to the efficiencies of digital distribution, new titles like Tina Fey's Bossypants and Michael Connelly's latest mystery/thriller The Fifth Witness, are available as audiobooks right alongside their publication in other forms.
April 11, 2011
Regardless of where you are in the iTunes store, when you enter some text and use the search box in the upper right corner of the iTunes window, you'll get a page displaying possibilities for every part of the store where iTunes found a match. The Power Search column on the left lets you focus the results on particular sections within the store--Music, Movies, TV Shows, Apps, and so on--and move among them. Clicking Power Search at the top produces a set of categories relevant to the media type you're viewing--Actor or Director/Producer in the Movies category, for instance--plus a pop-up menu to the left that lets you switch to other media types. You can also go directly to Power Search via the Quick Links section on the main iTunes Store page.
April 4, 2011
With the Internet as its network, iTunes as its directory, and personal computing equipment as a studio, podcasting extends the ability to publish and distribute video and audio content to anyone with something to say or show or do -- witness the more than 240,000 podcasts already available in more than 30 languages. Making a Podcast covers the details of creating and managing a podcast feed and includes tips about how to make it show up in relevant searches in the iTunes Podcast directory. FAQs: For Podcast Makers provides answers to the questions frequently asked by podcast creators. Tips for Podcast Fans covers ways to use the directory and manage podcast subscriptions, and FAQs: For Podcast Fans provides answers to the questions frequently asked by podcast fans.
