There's a lot of Piano apps on the iTunes store but I've never had an experience like this! Within a couple uses of this app, I couldn't wait to perform for my friends and show them my new piano playing abilities. 

Its like a game like guitar hero, but you can control the pace and choose whether you want to follow the lit up buttons or the keys as you follow along in the settings before you start to play the song you've chosen. 

Most of the songs are classical piano songs, and you can choose well-known tunes from famous composers. Before you start your first lesson, you choose the song and composer, and the speed you want to play along at. In a song, you play the lead, so there's background music to help you sound better. 

After a couple of tries, your scores get better and you start to learn the songs. While I'm still quite a way from being a concert pianist, Piano Man from Yudo is definitely one of the coolest music apps because it is really fun to use and easy to learn!

-iPod Grrl

When you open the app, it scans your music library to get the cover art to build an artwork cloud. 

This may take a long time depending on how music you have on your device. 

Once its done, your screen is filled with a colorful cloud of album cover art.

There's no clear interface, but the natural impulse is to pan and zoom around, and you can get a closer look at the images.

If you want, you can tap on an image, and it will pull up a detail window with track information like length, and even lets you preview the track.

Navigating your library using the cover art is an interesting way to enjoy your music, so next time you're unsure of what you're in the mood for, try finding some tunes in an Artwork Cloud!

I have limited storage on my Macbook Pro, so I have my iTunes library set up on an external hard drive. The only problem is, I can't launch iTunes until I plug in that device.  

Before, iTunes just wouldn't launch if it could not find the iTunes library I had it pointing to. Now, it asked me to choose a library, or create a new one, giving the user an option to have multiple libraries. 

I can make separate libraries for my different audio devices, and save them whereever I want. iTunes 9 has  a lot of other new features like letting you convert to a higher bit rate, so if you have any lossless music, anything over a 128kbps is going to be converted. You can see the bit rate in the settings. 

I'm really excited about what's been added to iTunes 9.1, and its good to see an update with the release of the newest Apple device, so I'm interested to find out about the new features with the iPod and the now the new iPad too help you get all the entertainment you need out of these fun devices.

-iPod Grrl 

I found the PicEd app, and not only does it have an awesome interface, but it also allows me to do whatever I need to do to a photo on my iPod Touch, all without leaving the device.

You can easily select the area that you want to select to do an effect on, then do whatever effect you want to on the area you just selected. 

You also have the rotating your image, or just applying some kind of color filter to it. Save it to your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, or email it to yourself or a friend. 

Hit the little rose colored window for all sorts of options. Its always easy to access your photo and the whole process is pretty intuitive overall.

We all know about the mysterious things that happen to your photos when you save them to your iPod, but now you can find out the size of your photos too, so this is a sweet full functional photo editing app from Moobila is one you will love!

-iPod Grrl 

Once class started back up, daily blogging became much more of a challenge.

I also have my hands literally full with a new device from Apple. Add in a very intense weekend business trip, and you have a recipe for a sorely updated blog. 

I'm energized to blog more than ever, but my time is so limited! Fortunately, we have a ton of episodes recorded and ready to go. We/I are a week behind schedule but looking forward to releases shows that will amaze you with the potential of the iPod.

Did you know the iPad does many of these amazing thing also, and more?

Be back soon!

-IPad Grrl

I got an email with an mp3 in it, so I downloaded it, let it play, then about 30 seconds later, I remembered there was something else on my iPod Touch 3G that I wanted to do so I navigated out of mail and started doing something else. 

I opened another app, and strangely, the song kept playing! 

Of course, right away, I knew it would be kind of an interesting topic to mention, because I was able to go into other iPhone apps, and there was no problem with the music playing. A little bewildered, it made me take a second look at what was really going on.

Is this the music app playing? No, it can't be, because there would be a little triangle icon in the upper right hand corner. So, this music window must just be yet best way to enjoy music with your iPod that you've never heard of. If you think about it, this could be a pretty cool way to add music to your library without adding to the size of your iTunes library. Every time I went to open the mp3 file, I had to download it again to listen to it, which means that its not permanently stored in your iPod. Pretty rad. 

I suppose the moral of the story is, not all the coolest features are a "feature" so to speak, so you'll be amazed how much this device is capable of. Have you found something cool about the iPhone or iPod Touch? I'd love to hear about it! Email therealipodgrrl@gmail.com and tell me about it!

-iPod Grrl 

It's easy to feel frustrated and overwhelmed when you know there are tens of thousands of apps out there, so I consider myself especially lucky to have stumbled across an app that helps me solve this problem. 

Hottest apps gives you rankings so that you know what apps are popular right now. We all love the app store, but its nice to have another method for wading through the sheer number of apps out there. 

There are different categories, with both free and paid apps - so its no problem for me to browse the different categories just like I would in the app store. Too awesome!

I found some amazing apps thanks to this app, and I was really surprised to see something like the app store. I did, in fact, get redirected to the app store, so this is probably why Apple is ok with an application that is so similar to a function the iPhone software already possesses. 

I think its so cool that I will want to tell my friends about Hottest Apps, so I can even share the app without having to leave the application. There's no doubt that anyone who uses this will find some amazing new apps they've never heard of, so I just couldn't wait to tell you about it!

-iPod Grrl 

VNC and other cool apps that utilize on the most powerful features of the funnest iPod ever really get my attention because its only adds to the fun of a sleek, portable Apple device that is able to more than most people know!

I've definitely watched movies on my laptop before, and right away I saw a great use for the Logitec Mouse Server software. Almost everyone has a Logitech mouse, so I was excited to see a free app and download for my Mac to get this cool remote mouse going right from the Touchscreen of my iPod Touch 3. 

 It wasn't all the Logitech Mouse Server can do, because if you rotate your ipod, you get a keyboard, so you can sit there in your bedroom and college dorm while you search and watch YouTube videos. 

Just make sure you install the free Logitech Mouse Server software from the website. If my device is online, then the application will automatically see it. I can connect easily by either entering the ip address of my computer, or just select your device when after installing the Touch Mouse server software, it ssimple and fast, and will appear as long as you are connected to a wifi network. 

 Anything you want to do from your keyboard and mouse you can do with this app, from your iPod Touch. There's even a three button mouse! 

Play with it, try dragging with two fingers to see if it works like a trackpad! This is a fun app that I can use to impress my friends or just use as an excuse to not sit at a computer desk. What fun!

-iPod Grrl 

Well, if you're in a funk you should try Emotional Brain Training. First, it assesses your mood to figure out how best to treat you. This app refers to itself as the 

While the image of the brain doesn't make a lot of sense, the interface was really simple, and the game has lots of prompts to help you a long the way. You can't go wrong! 

The big "Get to 1" button in the center of the screen looks inviting, so you press it. Here is where you can "Select your Brain State". If I feel like I'm anywhere between 2 and 5, well, I just press the button for that feeling, and I enter that Brain State. 

In Emotional Brain Training, each Brain States is different, and activate different parts of the brain. Use the tool. When I first started I was busy and a little overwhelmed, so I chose level 3. There was a button to use the tool.

I pressed it, and I saw a prompt that said, " Take a minute to finish each of these sentences." Sure, why not? So I went through and answered them.

The app counts how many times you've used a tool and will add it to a running daily tally for you automatically when you complete a tool. In this case it can be a list of questions asking you what you strongest feeling is, or, if you tell the app that you're at a given level, you will get Emotional Brain Training that is appropriate for you.

Once you've completed a tool, the app records it, and you can do it again if you need a couple times to get the effect, and there's no time limit on how fast you go through each tool. The app doesn't fight with you or try to dictact how your training is going to be- you are totally the boss in your Emotional Brain Training. 

If you're in a level 4 State, you might be asked to do something else, like "Grind in" some positive affirmation! You get to choose what you want to "Grind In", control the pace, and go through the Emotional Brain Training however many times you want. There is no brainwashing going on here and the user is totally in control. On my second or third time using a tool, I found it very useful to say some of the sentences out loud.

I definitely started to feel better! It was interesting, fun, and I kinda felt better, so Emotional Brain Training is a spanking new app that's worth trying, for sure!

-iPod Grrl 

We actually filmed a Voice Control episode where I erred and said that the Genius function is in fact, not available, because I could not get it to work using voice control. I found a way to turn on Genius on my iPod, which I wrote about recently. 

I often finish something on a different day than I start it, so I often keep tabs open in Safari on my Macbook Pro for a few days. I went back and did a little more reading on the Genius. It seems like when I go to the Apple store I walk away with more questions than I have answered.

If Apple says that Genius is enabled and can be used with Voice Control, that means I should just use the Voice Control command and it should work, right? Not so fast.

I can use the Voice Control just fine, I just hold down the home button for two second and say, "Play Playlist - On the Go" and Voice Control will repeat the command back to me, close Voice Control automatically, and start playing my music. Pretty nice if you don't want to navigate all the way to your playlist! 

But my iPod would not recognize the Genius command "Play more like this" so I mistakenly assumed that this feature was not available on the iPod Touch, and I thought no more about it until I enabled the other Genius.

Part of the reason I found the whole Genius thing confusing was that Apple has differentiated between app store genius and the iTunes Genius. 

What is leading me to believe that they are in fact, two different things, is the different ways that you can enable the different Geniuses.

Confused yet?

 So to confirm - to use the Genius feature for app store, I need to enable it on my iPod using this method. Then to enable it for iTunes, I have to turn it on in using iTunes to have it working on my iPod.  

I'm still sorting out the confusion, there is documentation on the Apple website, but there is a totally separate  page if you are looking for information on the Voice Control on the iPod Touch.

The iPhone page doesn't say anything about Voice Control and Genius, so this will take some more unraveling. Once I figure it out, I'll wrap all the information into a neat little 1 minute package and record a video that will hopefully clear things up for everyone.