So You Got a New iPod Touch

I am dedicating this post to DN and all of the faithful BJU Wellness Program devotees who won iPod Touches and now—congratulations—have them in hand! May the Lord help you to use this helpful tool to His glory!

I got a free iPod Touch with my iMac. I had had my eye on it for a while because I needed a Palm replacement—after using a Palm IIIxe through seven years of grad school. Here are the applications I have installed right now (I’ve put especially useful ones in bold in the list below):

1. Air Sharing: Turns your iPod into a wireless flash drive.
2. AOL Radio: self-explanatory. Many stations available over a wireless connection.
3. CheckWord: Check words to see if they are in the Scrabble dictionary.
4. Dual Level: Use your iPod as a level (it works because of the internal sensors).
5. eReader: Read books in the eReader format. Eh…
6. Evernote: Good for sermon notes or any notes because it automatically syncs your notes or images on the web and your iPod.
7. Firemail: Type e-mails in landscape format. Handy if you don’t like portrait’s narrower keyboard.
8. Google Mobile: Search Google and your own iPod.
9. Holy Bible: Try to find the one with this exact icon. Others cost money. I still want to get the ESV and polytonic Greek, but this is the first one I’ve found with a free GNT of any sort. With a wireless connection, you can get nearly anything. But my church has (wisely!) blocked users from accessing the wireless signal during Pastor Minnick’s sermons.
10. Instapaper: Save articles while surfing the Net on your computer so you can read them later.
11. O-Marks: Synchronize your bookmarks in Safari with those in Mobile Safari.
12. Pandora Radio: Pretty cool and innovative music-streaming site.
13. PayPal: Haven’t used it, but I may and it’s worth keeping around.
14. Remote: Very cool! It’s a fully-featured iTunes remote. I can turn the music down in my house without ever moving more than a finger!
15. Simplify Media: Haven’t used it, but it promises to stream my iTunes library from my desktop to my iPod if I ever need that.
16. Text Guru: More features than Notepad.
17. Units: Convert different weights and measures.
18. WeatherBug: Not very pretty looking, but has more features than the included weather app.
19. WordPress: For my blog. I haven’t really found this useful in my situation.

A few tips:

1. I keep my iPod on the lowest brightness setting to save battery, since I mainly use it as a handheld computer.
2. Turn off wireless whenever you’re not using it so you don’t drain your battery.
3. Learn to type well and you can really get going fast. I’ve been surprised what a little practice has done for me. I take more notes on Pastor Minnick’s sermons now than I used to on my Palm (and that’s saying something), and I can switch over to the GNT quite quickly.

A few links for you to add to your home screen:

(Just go to these sites in Mobile Safari, then click the plus sign, then add them to home screen.)

• NPR Mobile. Great during pledge drives! =)
• Neat alternative ESV Bible site.
• Don’t Waste Your Life (free online eBook I recommend; formatted for iPhone / iPod Touch).
• The Weather Channel for my zipcode (just replace my zipcode with yours).
• Facebook for iPhone (I promise I do not waste time on this! But I do want to keep up a bit with old friends.)
• I also have links for Google Reader mobile (very cool), my Amazon Wishlist (in case I’m in a store and want to check Amazon’s prices), and various Bible sites.