Can you use your iPod for VoIP communication? Touchmods have accomplished this never thought before use of an iPod and is sharing it with us.

I read about this on Hackszine.com. Thetouchmods is a place where you can find all kinds of DIY hacks for your . They have got tutorials for all the hacks too, but the most popular one is the VoIP on iPod hack.

The story starts when the Touchmods team built a mic input for the iPod touch. The line-in pin is clearly visible in the pinout of iPod connector shown on the iPod wiki. From then they came a long way through making their first hand soldered mic to now selling neat small mics on their site.

This is the schematic of the first mic circuit they made for the iPod touch.

They have got their own SIP VoIP servers running now. If you are a DIY hacker or just want to buy the ipod touch mic go to the touchmods blog which has been moved to Wordpress due to unavailability of their site on blog.com

Encyclopodia is an open source project to bring WikiPedia to the iPod. It can beinstalled as said on iPod generations one to four as well as mini and photo.

Installation :

Download the installer (version 0.9.1 – http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/encyclopodia-setup-0.9.1.zip ) (please go to the download page for the newest version) from the install page on sourceforge. To install the Encyclopodia they have got right to the point instructions. After the installation following the instructions given at the help page, you need to copy one of the language files (links given at the end) to the DRIVE:\data\encyclopodia\library\ directory where DRIVE: refers to the drive letter of iPod shown on your Computer.

Here are some screen shots from the developer website :

The screen shots are arranged in the order the user navigates through the menu.

For now wikipedia for iPod is available in three language formats :

1 . http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/wikipedia-en-20070206.epodia – English Wikipedia
2 . http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/wikipedia-de-20070402.epodia – German Wikipedia
3 . http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/encyclopodia/wikipedia-it-20070330.epodiaItalian Wikipedia

With the Apple has also added iPod with touch just like the iPhone. It is available at both 8Gb and 16Gb versions costing $299 and @399 respectively. With iPod touch you can Download music directly from iTunes. It has got Safari web browser which allows you to surf Web using the built in Wi-Fi. The functionality of touch is same as that with iPhone.

The Box contains iPod, USB cable, Ear phones, Dock adapter, Polishing cloth, Stand and quick start guide. The display is 3.5 inch wide with a 480 x 320 resolution and the thickness is only 8mm. Play back times are 5Hrs for Video and 22 Hrs for Audio respectively.

The new releases from Apple© are much to be fascinated about. They have added video to the iPod® nano and also have brought out a new iPod, the iPod Classic®And the prices are still reasonable. Actually I now regret buying a Nano last month. It has got video capability now. The size has also increased.

But the new addition to the iPod family is the iPod classic. It has got all the features of the iPod classic plus the storage space of 80Gb and 160Gb which can store upto 20,000 and 40,000 songs according to Apple. It has got a 2.5 in dislayand the specs of 03.5 x 61.8 x 13.5mm. Youll get free shipping + free LASER engraving. the prices are $249 and $349 respectivwly.