One of the more popular posts written in 2008 was a set of step-by-step instructions to help you do what Apple doesn’t want you to do with iTunes for Windows (see Slimming down the bloated iTunes installer). Now that iTunes 10 has been released, it’s apparent that nothing has changed in Cupertino. Apple still gives its customers a monolithic iTunes setup program with absolutely no options to pick and choose based on your specific needs.

Why is that important? When you run the iTunes setup program, it unpacks six Windows Installer packages and a master setup program, which then installs nearly 300MB of program and support files, a kernel-mode CD/DVD-burning driver, multiple system services, and a bunch of browser plugins. It configures two “helper” programs to start automatically every time you start your PC, giving you no easy way to disable them. It installs a network service that many iTunes users don’t need and that has been associated with security and reliability issues.

And you wonder why I dislike iTunes with a passion that burns like the fire of a thousand suns?

That’s where this post comes in. It contains detailed, up-to-date instructions for cracking open that gigantic iTunes installer and installing just the pieces you want and need. I’ve also updated my advice for individual scenarios so that you can make intelligent choices instead of simply settling for Apple’s defaults.

To get started, you need a copy of the iTunes Windows installer, which comes in x86 and x64 versions and is available via this download page. You also need a third-party file extraction utility. WinZip and WinRAR work fine, but I recommend the free and extraordinarily versatile IZArc utility. Use the File, Open menu to extract files from iTunesSetup.exe (or, on x64 Windows machines, iTunes64Setup.exe). This screen shows the contents of the 64-bit iTunes 10 installer.

Extract those files to a local or network folder and you can run them individually, using command-line switches to control their behavior. On the next page, I describe what is in each of those installer packages.

When you run the master iTunes setup program, it extracts the following files to a temporary folder and then begins installing all of them in sequence. In Windows 7 and Windows Vista, it interrupts you for two UAC prompts.

Here’s an unvarnished description of each installer:

• QuickTime is Apple’s multimedia framework, a collection of codecs, plugins, DLLs, and several players designed to help you play back digital media files in most popular formats. The big selling point is support for the QuickTime movie (.mov) format, via the standalone player or an embedded ActiveX control. QuickTime is required if you want to use iTunes. If you don’t have an iPod or other Apple-branded device and all you want is the ability to play QuickTime files, go to Apple’s QuickTime download page and choose the QuickTime-only option (don’t select the QuickTime with iTunes option, which includes the full, bloated iTunes installer). If you’d prefer an even lighter option, try the unofficial QuickTime Alternative, which runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
• iTunes (iTunes64 on x64 systems) is Apple’s all-purpose media player/device sync application. It is the only officially supported way to sync music, videos, and other content with Apple-branded devices, although third-party alternatives are available. iTunes also provides access to the iTunes store. If you own an iPhone or a 3G iPad, you must use iTunes to activate your device. For an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you must use iTunes to update its firmware and sync its content with your PC.
• Apple Application Support was added in iTunes 9 as a framework for managing applications on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. It is a required component for both iTunes and QuickTime. If you remove it, or if you install iTunes without also installing this package, you’ll see the following error message.

That is, of course, a bogus error message. If you know where the individual installer package is located, you can install just that piece without having to go through the tedious full install.

• Bonjour (Bonjour64 on x64 systems) is Apple’s implementation of the open-source Zeroconf, a multicast DNS responder used to discover services on a local area network. It is installed by default with the iTunes download. I strongly recommend not installing Bonjour unless you need it. Bonjour has required patches for security issues in the past and has been known to cause a complete loss of network connectivity on Windows networks. (Yes, I’ve seen Bonjour disable local and Internet connections on Windows networks. It was not a fun troubleshooting exercise.) And a search of the Apple support forums finds dozens of recent complaints from Windows users struggling with iTunes 10 and Bonjour. Adding unauthorized peer-to-peer services on a corporate network is a distinct no-no, as a number of customers have told Apple on their support forums. (The response? Crickets.) If you want to share iTunes libraries over a network or use Apple TV, you need Bonjour. If you have a printer attached to an AirPort device, you should use Bonjour. It’s also required with AirPlay speakers and some remote control apps. However, if you simply want to play media files and sync your iTunes library with your iPod, you do not need Bonjour. iTunes will throw up an error message if Bonjour is missing. You can safely ignore that message, which will not reappear.
• Apple Mobile Device Support (AppleMobileDeviceSupport64 on x64 systems) is the synchronization framework for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad family of “mobile devices.” This package is not necessary if you use another member of the iPod family, including the Classic, Mini, Nano, or Shuffle, which sync just fine using just the basic iTunes app.
• Apple Software Update is a utility that checks for new versions of Apple software installed on your PC. It also pushes new Windows-compatible Apple software programs. Understanding how this utility works is crucial; it can and will install software you have explicitly rejected if you don’t monitor its actions carefully. Just today, for example, I updated iTunes on a Windows 7 system and Apple Software Update selected Safari and Mobile Me for installation, even though I had specifically hidden them previously. This is a behavior that Apple has been guilty of for years. It doesn’t happen on every system, but for some reason it’s an issue on this one.

The seventh file in the list is SetupAdmin.exe, the monolithic installer. You don’t need it, obviously. Oh, and thankfully, the MobileMe component, which was previously included with a full iTunes install, is now a separate option.

So how do you decide which programs to install, and how do you avoid inadvertently getting more than you wanted? Full details on the next page.

Performing a selective iTunes install involves three steps:

1. Extract the installer files you need to a local folder.

2. Run the installers with the proper command-line switches.

3. Prevent Apple Software Update from undoing your careful work later.

The exact steps vary, depending on what device you’re using.

If you want to use iTunes with an iPod Classic, Mini, Nano, or Shuffle…

Extract three files from the iTunesSetup installer and save them in a local folder. Open a command prompt window, navigate to that folder, and run the following commands:

• AppleApplicationSupport.msi /passive
• Quicktime.msi /passive
• iTunes.msi /passive (on a 64-bit Windows system, use iTunes64.msi /passive)

If you shudder at command lines, press the Windows logo key + R to open the Run box. Clear its contents, and then drag the extracted file into it. That will add the full filename, with path, to the Run box. Add a space and then type /passive after the closing quotation mark. Click OK to execute the command. Repeat for the other packages.

The /passive switch performs all installations in unattended mode. After you complete the installation, you can rip and burn CDs, play music from your collection, buy music tracks and TV shows from the iTunes store, and synchronize music and other media files with any Apple device except an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad. I tested this scenario with an older iPod Nano and it worked just fine. If your experience differs, please let me know in the Talkback section.

If you want to combine multiple iTunes libraries on a local network and/or connect to an Apple TV device…

Install the AppleApplicationSupport, QuickTime, and iTunes packages as described in the previous scenario, and also extract and install Bonjour.msi using the /passive switch. Note that Bonjour must be installed on any computer whose library you want to share. It’s not necessary if you have two iPhones, each with different accounts and connected to different PCs. In that scenario, Bonjour provides no benefit.

If you want to activate and manage an iPhone or iPad or synchronize with an iPod Touch…

In addition to installing the iTunes and QuickTime packages, you’ll need to extract and run AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi (on x64 installations, be sure to use AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi.)

And finally, decide whether you want to install Apple Software Update. Given the history of serious security flaws in QuickTime and iTunes, it’s crucial to remain up to date with patches for all Apple programs you choose to install. The trouble with Apple Software Update is that any attempt to “update” iTunes will install the other, unwanted packages as well. iTunes actually has its own update detector that doesn’t require Apple Software Update. You can check for a new version any time by clicking Help, Check for Updates. Regardless of how you check, when you see that a new update is available, be sure to download the iTunes installer manually and then extract and update only those components you want.

If you inadvertently install a component you don’t need, it’s relatively easy to undo the damage. All of the above components are available from the Programs option in the Windows Control Panel, where you can uninstall them individually. If you plan to uninstall Bonjour or Apple Mobile Support, be sure to stop the associated services first; if you don’t, you’ll need to restart to complete the uninstallation.

And finally, there are those two startup files, which slow down your boot time and add nothing to your iTunes experience. One is called iTunesHelper.exe; the other is QTTask.exe. You’ll find only a few lines of sparse documentation at apple.com. In my experience, neither is necessary for using any of the features in iTunes or QuickTime. Unfortunately, Apple does not offer a supported way to disable these start-up programs, so you’ll have to do it manually by using the System Configuration utility in Windows (Msconfig.exe), by editing the registry manually, or by using an external utility like AutoRuns from Sysinternals.

Ringtones — They are the darlings of the music industry and the bane of anyone subject to hearing a bad one. If you’re sick of your plain old telephone ringer but don’t want to download a canned tone, you don’t need to spend extra money to turn your favorite song into a ringtone for your iPhone. There’s a way to create ringtones in iTunes from your existing music.

Once you’ve done it, you’ll be making ringtones faster than you can download them. It is not, however, the most obvious process. Here’s a how-to guide to help you out for both Mac and Windows users.

Simply follow the steps outlined here to create your own tones right from your computer. Let us know how you got on — and what songs you ringtoned — in the comments below.

Choose Your Song and Edit It

The first part of the process is more or less the same for both Mac and Windows users. In iTunes, select the song you want to use, right-click on the track and hit “Get Info.”

Select “Options” from the menu along the top, then change the “Stop Time” of the song to 15 seconds (or how long you want it to be — reports vary, but apparently ringtones can’t be longer than 30 seconds).

Now, in the “Advanced” iTunes menu, select “Create AAC version.”

You will now see a second version of the song. Be sure to go back into the original song’s “Get Info” options and delete your “Stop Time” setting, or else the song won’t play past this point in the future.

Converting the File for Mac Users

Mac users should right-click on the new, 15-second version and hit “Show in Finder” in order to change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r. This can be done just by clicking on it and overtyping. You also want to make the file name as short as possible too, so rename this in the same way.

Now, still in Finder, drag the .m4r file to your desktop and delete the version that is in iTunes. When this is done, you want to import the file back into iTunes. To do this, open the iTunes “File” menu and select “Add to Library,” find the song on your desktop and add it back in.

Converting the File for PC Users

PC users will do this last part a little differently. Once you’ve got the AAC version of the song, you need to find it on your computer. Unless your default settings have been changed, it’s likely you can find it by clicking through the following folders: My Documents, My Music, iTunes, iTunes Media, Music and then the relevant artist’s folder.

You need to change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r by clicking on it and overtyping. If you can’t see the file extension type (just the name) then you need to enable that functionality first. Go to your control panel and click “Folder Options.” Then, untick the option that says “Hide extensions for known file types.” Going back into the iTunes folder and you will now be able to see the extension to change it.

Once it’s changed, you need to import the renamed file back into iTunes through the “Add to Library” option in the “File” menu.

Getting the File onto Your iPhone

Now, both Mac and PC users will see the file under the “Ringtones” category on the left of your iTunes display.

To get the ringtone where it needs to be — on your phone — sync your iPhone to iTunes. If this is the first time you’ve added a ringtone in this way, make sure that the “Ringtones” tab is set to sync.

To change the ringtone on your iPhone to your chosen song, go to “Settings,” then “Sounds,” then “Ringtone” and you should now have a “Custom” list above the pre-loaded “Standard” list. Just touch the song you want and you can be free of that pre-loaded “Marimba” forever!

Having your own iPhone app for your website or blog is becoming an increasingly common way to promote and extend your brand. However, actually creating that application and getting it into the App Store can be a lengthy and expensive process, especially if you have little development experience. Today PointAbout is launching a new product called AppMakr, which is designed to make creating your own iPhone app simple and inexpensive.

AppMakr is a streamlined system that creates a native iPhone application out of your existing RSS feeds. You can customize elements of the app and the artwork and then submit it directly to the App Store. You can even embed ads from places like AdMob directly into the app.

AppMakr made this demo video showing off how fast it was to create an app for Mac|Life.

By Adam Lashinsky

Yet for all his hanging out with copywriters and industrial designers and musicians -- and despite his anticorporate attire -- make no mistake: Jobs is all about business. He may not pay attention to customer research, but he works slavishly to make products customers will buy.

He's a visionary, but he's grounded in reality too, closely monitoring Apple's various operational and market metrics. He isn't motivated by money, says friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. Rather, Jobs is understandably driven by a visceral ardor for Apple, his first love (to which he returned after being spurned -- proof that you can go home again) and the vehicle through which he can be both an arbiter of cool and a force for changing the world.

The financial results have been nothing short of astounding -- for Apple and for Jobs. The company was worth about $5 billion in 2000, just before Jobs unleashed Apple's groundbreaking "digital lifestyle" strategy, understood at the time by few critics. Today, at about $170 billion, Apple is slightly more valuable than Google.

Its market share in personal computers was plummeting back then, and the cash drain was so severe that bankruptcy was a possibility. Now Apple has $34 billion in cash and marketable securities, surpassing the total market cap of rival Dell. Macintoshes make up 9% of the PC market in the U.S. today, but that share is increasingly beside the point.

With 275 retail stores in nine countries, a 73% share of the U.S. MP3 player market, and the undisputed leadership position in innovation when it comes to mobile phones, Apple and its CEO are no one's idea of underdogs anymore.

In 2006 Disney paid $7.5 billion to acquire Pixar, the computer animation film studio Jobs had nurtured and controlled. Jobs, in turn, became a Disney director and the blue-chip company's largest shareholder. His net worth, solely based on his stakes in Apple and Disney, is about $5 billion. Other executives have had stellar decades but none can compare with Steve's.

With Jobs back at the helm of his company, plenty of challenges lie ahead. Will the Goliath role suit him nearly as well as playing David clearly has? How will he respond to the competition he has awakened, particularly in smartphones, even as the personal computer fades in relative importance? Has he fashioned an organization that can succeed him? Can he possibly be as dominant in the decade to come as the one that is ending?

The "decade" of Steve actually began in 1997, when he returned to Apple after having been ousted a dozen years earlier. That was a year of triage, of a humbling investment from Microsoft, of paring Apple's product line to a bare minimum of four computers.

How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

Sound too far-fetched to be true? Perhaps. Yet it happens to be the real-life story of Steve Jobs and his outsize impact on everything he touches.

The past decade in business belongs to Jobs. What makes that simple statement even more remarkable is that barely a year ago it seemed likely that any review of his accomplishments would be valedictory. But by deeds and accounts, Jobs is back.

It's as if his signature "one more thing" line now applies to him as well. After a six-month leave of absence in the early part of this year, during which he received a liver transplant, he is once again commanding a 34,000-strong corporate army that is as powerful, awe-inspiring, creative, secretive, bullying, arrogant -- and yes, profitable -- as at any time since he and his chum Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976.

Superlatives have attached themselves to Jobs since he was a young man. Now that he's 54, merely listing his achievements is sufficient explanation of why he's Fortune's CEO of the Decade (though the superlatives continue). In the past 10 years alone he has radically and lucratively reordered three markets -- music, movies, and mobile telephones -- and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown.

Remaking any one business is a career-defining achievement; four is unheard-of. Think about that for a moment. Henry Ford altered the course of the nascent auto industry. PanAm's Juan Trippe invented the global airline. Conrad Hilton internationalized American hospitality.

In all instances, and many more like them, these entrepreneurs turned captains of industry defined a single market that had previously not been dominated by anyone. The industries that Jobs has turned topsy-turvy already existed when he focused on them.

He is the rare businessman with legitimate worldwide celebrity. (His quirks and predilections are such common knowledge that they were knowingly parodied on an episode of "The Simpsons.") He pals around with U2's Bono.

Consumers who have never picked up an annual report or even a business magazine gush about his design taste, his elegant retail stores, and his outside-the-box approach to advertising. ("Think different," indeed.)

It's often noted that he's a showman, a born salesman, a magician who creates a famed reality-distortion field, a tyrannical perfectionist. It's totally accurate, of course, and the descriptions contribute to his legend.

By the following year Steve's regime had kicked into gear. Jobs completed the hiring of a new management team, which included several executives from his previous company, Next. Those top players would form the nucleus of the Jobs brain trust for nearly 10 years.

Then came the first Macintosh after Jobs' return, the iMac, a breakthrough all-in-one computer and monitor that heralded Apple's return to health. The success of the pricey iMac, coupled with drastic cost cutting, allowed Jobs to build a cash cushion. By repairing Apple's balance sheet, he prepared the company for big investments to come, a shrewd business move if ever there was one.

Jobs laid the foundation for Apple's leap from stable to stratospheric when things looked darkest. In 2000, Apple missed its financial targets in a September earnings announcement, sending its stock price plummeting in subsequent months to the equivalent of $7 in today's prices. Yet Jobs by this time had set in motion the key elements of Apple's rejuvenation.

Over the course of 2001, as global markets fell and the world headed into recession, Apple launched the iTunes music software (in January), the Mac OS X operating system (March), the first Apple retail stores (May), and the first iPod (November), a 5GB model that Apple bragged would hold 1,000 songs.

The market didn't catch on quickly to the significance of those events. iTunes was just music-playing software embedded into Macs and lacked an online store that sold music. The new operating system, though impressive, powered a niche product. The iPod was a snazzy MP3 player in an established market.

As the company's stock languished, takeover rumors appeared from time to time. What was never reported was that Jobs seriously contemplated taking the company private with the help of newly formed buyout group Silver Lake Partners. An Apple buyout would have been the deal of the century, but according to people familiar with the talks, Jobs ultimately shut them down.

That was actually the second serious proposal to buy Apple. In 1997, Jobs' friend Ellison, later an Apple board member, lined up financing to take over the company on the assumption that Jobs would run it. In a recent interview Ellison said Jobs didn't like the idea of being "second-guessed" if it looked as if he'd returned simply to make money. "He explained to me that with the moral high ground, he thought he could make decisions more easily and more gracefully," says Ellison.

For those paying attention after Jobs' return, the CEO was telegraphing Apple's trajectory. "I would rather compete with Sony than compete in another product category with Microsoft," he told Time in early 2002. "We're the only company that owns the whole widget -- the hardware, the software, and the operating system. We can take full responsibility for the user experience. We can do things that the other guy can't do."

Jobs was convinced that the masses would turn to Apple, but only if he could speak directly to them -- and not just to faithful Macintosh users, a club that included mainly artists and students. The strategy of building company-owned retail stores, so integral to Apple today, was derided at the time as a risky cash drain.

"He did this with a nervous board," says Bill Campbell, a former Apple executive who went on to become chairman of Intuit and an Apple board member. "He knew that this is what customers wanted." What's striking looking back is how little there was to sell in the original Apple stores. Jobs knew how he'd fill them.

Jobs made it his business to know everything about Apple. "He's involved in details you wouldn't think a CEO would be involved in," says Ken Segall, a former Chiat/Day creative director who has worked with Apple on and off for years. Jobs commissioned the iconic "Think different" campaign, says Segall, well before any of Apple's new products were introduced -- or even described to the ad team. "He'd say, 'The third word in the fourth paragraph isn't right. You might want to think about that one.' "

The rare pairing of micromanagement with big-picture vision is a Jobs hallmark. Early in his return to Apple, he recognized that gorgeous design was a differentiator for Apple in a computer industry gripped by the successful blandness of Dell, Microsoft, and Intel.

"I cannot count the number of clients who have marched in and said, 'Give me the next iPod,' " writes Tim Brown, CEO of product-design consultant Ideo, in his new book "Change by Design." "But it's probably close to the number of designers I've heard respond -- under their breath -- 'Give me the next Steve Jobs.'"

Jobs also has a knack for pouncing at the right moment. The music industry had failed repeatedly to develop its own digital-music sales site before Apple came along with iTunes, which was by then prepared to become a store for buying music.

Jobs cleverly made his pact with the record labels when iTunes worked only on Macs, which in 2002 had a personal-computing market share in the low single digits. Apple's humble position -- before iTunes became compatible with Windows, expanding its potential market share to nearly all PCs -- was a virtue. This made iTunes an experiment rather than a destructive paradigm shift.

"I don't understand how Apple could ruin the record business in one year on Mac," said Doug Morris, the head of Universal Music, according to "Appetite for Self-Destruction," a new book about the record industry's ills by Rolling Stone writer Steve Knopper. "Why shouldn't we try this?" Writes Knopper: "By the time Steve Jobs came around, he was the last resort. He was merely smart enough to know it. He played tough, but not any tougher than any lawyer for a major label who had negotiated an artist contract in recent decades."

A key Jobs business tool is his mastery of the message. He rehearses over and over every line he and others utter in public about Apple, which authorizes only a small number of executives to speak publicly on a given topic.

Key to the Jobs approach is careful consideration of what he and Apple say -- and don't say. Harvard professor David Yoffie estimated that in the months between announcing and selling the first iPhone in 2007, Apple received $400 million in free advertising by not making any public statements, thereby whipping the media into a frenzy.

Jobs himself is careful to avoid overexposure, preferring to speak only when he has products to promote. He didn't disclose his 2004 cancer surgery until after it occurred, and then only in an employee e-mail that was strategically released to news outlets. Similarly, he told the world of his recent leave in another employee missive, with no additional comment from him or anyone else at Apple.

Nobody in Jobs' sphere speaks without the permission of the company's media relations team, which reports directly to Jobs. Apple declined to make Jobs available for an interview for this article. It did bless the participation of some people in Apple's orbit to speak about him, while nixing requests for others.

The secrecy has rankled corporate governance experts, who insist the health of such an indispensable CEO warrants greater disclosure.

Jobs was initially mum as well about a stock options backdating scandal that embroiled the company's former finance chief and general counsel. In an eventual SEC filing, Apple said Jobs was aware that the company had adjusted option grant dates so that the grants were more profitable for employees. Jobs apologized for the backdating, calling the episode "completely out of character for Apple."

Jobs manages the money, the message, the deals, the design, and more. Consider the case fairly made that the long-ago enfant terrible of the computer industry has built up impressive business chops and that his company is peerless. But if nothing else, his recent illness is a reminder that Steve Jobs is mortal. When he's gone, how long will his company thrive without him?

Apple's future.

This past September, when Steve Jobs made his triumphant return to the public eye, he thanked precisely one Apple executive by name: Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer.

At an event to introduce a new line of iPods, Jobs first informed a crowd of journalists, analysts, and Apple developers that he now possessed the liver of a "twentysomething liver donor who had died in a car crash." Then he thanked Cook and the rest of the management team for "ably" running Apple in his absence. Cook, in turn, led a standing ovation for Jobs, his arms raised over his head from the front row of a San Francisco auditorium.

With Jobs back at work, the conversation has been postponed as to whether Cook, or anyone else, is prepared to fill Jobs' shoes. "At Apple the hierarchy is determined by who Steve calls," says a former Apple executive. "There's a lot of value in 'Steve said.'"

Larry Ellison, a CEO known to dislike the topic of succession, says of his friend, "He's irreplaceable. He's built a fabulous brand. He's got a wealth of products. Whenever he leaves, I hope he retires in good health and he's sailing off in his yacht in the Mediterranean. But they're going to miss him terribly, because it's a consumer products company. The product cycle is so fast."

There are signs that Jobs has inculcated the troops enough to last awhile without him. "The organization has been thoroughly trained to think like Steve," says someone with contacts among the Apple executive team. "That's why the six months went so smoothly. People could envision, 'This is what Steve would do.'"

Jobs, in fact, inspires far beyond Apple. Larry Pag

The Lady Gaga track is a little odd, but still a pretty cool promotion if you're into holiday music. :)

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The evolution of music is, in essence, a study of how human culture, tastes and technology have evolved over the course of thousands of years. From ancient Indian music to Beethoven to Lady GaGa, music has embraced new instruments and scientific advances in the search for the perfect harmony and melody.

While most of society thinks of music in terms of voices, pianos and woodwinds, perhaps the world should get ready for the rise of a new instrument: the iPhone. While composing computer-generated music is nothing new, the iPhone’s unique mobile capabilities, accelerometer, compass, GPS and hardware have already made it a musical instrument (e.g. the Smule Ocarina iPhone App). But that’s nothing compared to what’s in store for us in the future; a recent concert at Stanford University pushed the limits and our perception of what is possible with music.

On Thursday, December 3, a small group of students and faculty performed as the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Wearing gloves that act as speakers and only wielding iPhones as instruments, the orchestra put on a show before a packed room. i, MoPhO was an exploration of not only musical melodies, but of how far mobile technology has come.

The musical tones were unique, and while some harmonies didn’t match, others blew the audience away. They did things that no orchestra on Earth can do, such as “passing” musical sounds to one another and using the iPhone’s directional capabilities to provide a truly surround sound musical experience. While it was clear that iPhones won’t be replacing the London Philharmonic Orchestra anytime soon, it was also apparent that this small team from Stanford was just scratching the surface of the possibilities of mobile phone and musical technology.

I had the distinct honor of attending, and while I did not record all of the compositions, I did record HD video of five of the pieces. I have included each, along with the name of the compositions, below. Please let us know what you think of this concert and, more importantly, the convergence of music and technology in the comments.

1. IntraV: a tale in two parts

2. Vox Aeterna

3. Mo So(und) Bo(unce)

4. Dots + Lines

5. Touch Patterns

After trying dozens of programs to backup and transfer my ipod touch music,apps and photos to my computer i had almost given up finding the right software and to tell the truth i've been getting pretty tired of downloading and deleting software after finding out it only did part of what i wanted it to do or to find out that i can only transfer something like 100 songs then i have to upgrade and buy the full version to be able to transfer the rest, i can finally say to you that you can now throw away all those applications you've downloaded.

You only need one program and it truly is free with no catch whatsoever and what little nugget of software gold am i speaking of? Im talking about Sharepod, im completely in love with this tiny little app, it's gone above and veyond all the others i've tried and i really dont need itunes anymore except for my apps, watching videos and listening and buying music, the important stuff like backup, transfering all or part of my library to my computer, restoring and adding and editing playlists among other things.

Check it out and im positive you'll agree that it's the best freeware ipod and iphone software out there by far.

SharePod is easy to use and works! Heres some of the main features:

• Add & remove music and videos from your iPod
• Add, remove and edit playlists
• Add & remove album art
• View and backup photos
• Copy music, videos and playlists from your iPod to PC
• Import music/videos into your iTunes library, including playlists and ratings
• Tag editing
• Drag n' drop to and from Explorer
• Simple, clean interface
• Quick to load and use with no unnessary complicated features
• Support for iPhone and iTouch (Thanks to Nikias Bassen, Paul Sladen, Jonathan Beck, and Christophe Fergeau for making this possible)
• Nano 5G support

And whats more, SharePod is completely free! SharePod was designed from the start to be lightweight, quick and responsive, it has all (well hopefully most...!) of the features you need and none of the features you dont.

Download   Screenshots

Apple has agreed to purchase the innovative, streaming music service LaLa, according to multiple reports (updated). LaLa fills a big hole in Apple’s digital music strategy and could bring streaming down music from the cloud into iTunes-ready devices everywhere.

Integrating Lala’s ad-free music service — which stores music collections online and sells streaming songs at a deep discount — would mark the first major step forward for iTunes since its music download store launched in 2003.

Lala recently announced a deal to play free songs on Google, but Apple is reportedly particularly interested in the engineers who built Lala’s “payment and fulfillment system[, which] could save Apple millions of dollars a year,” according to a CNET source. Lala sells music fans pre-paid chunks of music credits, rather than individual songs — an approach could help  iTunes cut down on its  credit card transaction costs and sell songs as streams and as downloads.

The deal is pretty much done, according to the New York Times and All Things Digital. Lala did not respond for request for comment.

This Lala acquisition could also help iTunes increase its revenue-per-user. Steve Jobs admitted  in 2007 that the average iTunes user had only bought an average of 22 songs. By contrast, Lala CEO Bill Nguyen told us in October that its paying customers spend an average of $67 on Lala music, which is available both as 10-cent streams and normally-priced downloads (buying a stream is a down payment on the download).

Lala sells batches of credits for songs, saving it money on transaction fees.

LaLa also has technology that copies users’ iTunes music collections into the cloud servers, so that users  can play back the songs on internet-connected devices. This feature would ease an Apple transition from locally-stored to cloud-based music.

That’s attractive to Apple because the iPhone and iPod Touch use flash memory, which is limited in its capacity compared to the hard drives in earlier iPods. In addition, that scarce memory gets shared with video, photos, apps and data associated with apps, whereas the hard drives in iPods were used mostly or even exclusively for music.

And as a bonus, Lala can play the last few hundred songs from a cache when there’s no internet connection which lets it play cloud-based music in subways, highways and remote locations.

This wouldn’t be the first music start-up Apple has purchased. In 2000, it bought a music player application called SoundJam MP. It formed the core of the first version of iTunes, and its developers helped build subsequent versions of that software. Nor would it be the first time Nguyen has sold a company. In 1999, he sold his first company, OneBox, to Phone.com for $800 million — one reason he was able to experiment so much with Lala’s business model before arriving at its current iteration.

If this deal goes through, the next version of iTunes could introduce more music fans to the idea of buying cheap music streamed from the cloud and listening to a huge catalog on a device with limited memory.

Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard of all the iPhone by now, undoubtedly one of the most hyped tech products of the last year. Never have we seen so many applications, resources, hacks, and so much news coverage for one little device. This list is a valiant attempt at bringing together the best of the “iPhone web.”

iPhone Apps

Apple hasn’t yet released an iPhone SDK (software development kit) to developers, instead, they’ve opted to promote the use of the device’s full-featured Safari browser, and have encouraged web developers to develop web apps specifically for the iPhone.

iPhoneChat- iChat-like AIM chat application.

OneTrip- Simple shopping-list application.

FlickIM- Multi-featured AIM chat application.

Digg (iPhone edition)-Digg.com formatted for the iPhone.

Gcalc- Calculates the cost of tech according to power consumption.

Hahlo - iPhone-styled interface for Twitter.

iPhlickr- iPhone-styled Flickr interface.

iDelicious- Styled interface for del.icio.us.

iPicli- A nicely designed gallery of creative content, managed by users.

PocketTweets- Another twitter app, with a minimal interface.

eBuddy- Feature-packed iPhone chat client with support for AIM, Yahoo!, and MSN (Site works only if visited on your iPhone).

Cool Gorilla Talking Phrasebook- Foreign language phrase-book with audio.

Texterity- Innovative way to view magazines (specifically formatted for the iPhone).

Bejeweled- Version of the popular mobile-phone game, “Bejeweled” optimized for the iPhone.

Newsgator Mobile for iPhone- Full-featured, mobile version of Newsgator’s online offering. Great for users of the MacRSS client, NetNewsWire, which automatically syncs to the service.

Twitter for iPhone Yet another twitter app.

Dailymotion for iPhone- Youtube’s already built-in, what about the other video-sites? Another video-sharing site, Dailymotion, is offering an iPhone formatted version of their site.

iRovr- A social-network exclusive to the iPhone.

iPhoneiGTD- App for access of projects being tracked via the Mac client iGTD. The only catch is that your iGTD data needs to be synced with .Mac in the first place.

TeleMoose- A front-end for Amazon.com optimized for the iPhone.

Google Reader - An interface for popular web-based RSS reader, Google Reader, nicely optimized for the iPhone.

iZoho- An iPhone front-end for the web-based office suite Zoho. The iPhone version lets you do everything you might do on your computer, including viewing and editing docs, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Gas.app- Enter your zip code and this app will find you the cheapest gas in town (USA only).

MyMetar- A “weather bookmarking service” which allows you to bookmark your local METARs, TAFs, and radar images.

iPhoneTravel- Searches directory travel.ian.com just in case you need to book flights, hotels, and cruises from your iPhone.

iBookmark- Lets you manage and sync del.ico.us bookmarks with your iPhone.

Youtube - An iPhone-optimized Youtube browser, just in case the “desktop” version isn’t working for you.

GoMovies- An easy and quick way to search for movie showtimes and other movie-related info right from your iPhone.

iChess- Bored? Cure your chess craving with iChess, a simple, chess app for your iPhone.

Leaflets- A suite of iPhone apps: Search, Feeds, Newsvine, App-List, Upcoming, Flickr, del.icio.us, and Le Tour de France, organized in a desktop-like fashion.

Listingly- A list making application with a great UI. Integrated word recognition and the ability to print lists make this an indispensable resource, especially for making shopping lists on the go.

iPling- A “social expansion engine” allows you to findothers with similar interests. The app even provides a way for users to meet up in real-life after the anonymous exchange of text-messages.

NYTimes River- Cuts out the clutter on the NYTimes website, just delivering the news in an easily readable format.

CheapMF- Out shopping? Not sure about prices? CheapMF can help. It’s a utility that searches Amazon.com for prices on specified products in order to help you make educated shopping decisions.

iTouch- A simple, addictive game which tests your reflexes, just touch some dots on the screen.

Avalanche- An addictive puzzle game in which the goal is to clear the screen of blocks by picking three or more inter-connected blocks of the same color.

Expense View- Allows you to import your spending data into your iPhone on-the-go.You can then access your data at home and see exactly how you’ve been spending your money. It’s even equipped with graphs and categories for the organized spender.

iPhone recipes- Cooking resource 101 Cookbooks has assembled an iPhone interface for searching through recipes.

iActu- Newsstand like interface for reading news headlines from various Newspapers.

iTweet- The third twitter app on this list, with an intuitive, streamlined interface.

Ta-da List 37signals, simple, intuitive to-do list app.

Movies Another app for looking up movie showtimes and other related info on your iPhone.

iTipr- Excellent application for calculating appropriate tip amounts.

Seeqpod- Search for playable music on the internet and then play it back on your iPhone.
Beejive- Another chat application, Beejive, is a solid contender in the iPhone chat app market. The app supports several chat protocols including, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Gtalk, ICQ, and Jabber. While everything seems to be in working order for me, please note the app’s still in it’s early alpha development stage.

TestiPhone- Web-based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone applications.

JiWire- A utility to find free Wi-Fi hotspots by location, worldwide.

FastApp- An iPhone “dashboard” that displays the latest additions to iPhoneApplicationList.com

WordBreaker- A word-game in which you you attempt to guess your computer’s secret word before it guesses yours, in a hangman-like logic format.

Airport Delay Tracker- Track live air traffic information.

iBloglines- Another iPhone-optimized RSS reader, this one, with the Bloglines service.

Belfry SciCalc- A nicely implemented scientific calculator for the iPhone.

Your Vids- Another iPhone optimized video service with several features.

TV Forecast- A personalized TV-guide optimized for the iPhone.

iPhone Resources

Collections (App Lists, Wallpapers, Forums etc)

iPhone Application List- An ever-updating list of iPhone apps.

iPhone Widget List- Like iPhone Application List, but with even more apps.

sciphone.net- A constantly updated collection of the best iPhone wallpapers, including weekly themepack releases.

ThemeMyPhone- A community-centric resource for iPhone wallpapers.

ModMyiPhone.com- iPhone forum and community.

iPhone Application Gallery ~ AppSafari ~- An iPhone application gallery with ratings, reviews, and comments.

Blogs

iPhone Central- The guys from Macworld have put together a blog solely dedicated to the iPhone, with all the authority that goes with the Macworld name. They even have an iPhone version.

The iPhone Blog- A nicely put together iPhone blog.

ZDNet- iPhone- ZDNet’s iPhone coverage.

The Cult of Mac- The Cult of Mac blog covers the iPhone plenty.

CNet- iPhone- CNet’s coverage of the iPhone.

iPhone- Gizmodo Gizmodo’s iPhone coverage.

TUAW- iPhone TUAW’s iPhone coverage.

Ars Technica- Apple Ars Technica’s Apple coverage, plenty of iPhone coverage to be found.

Podcasts

iCali- Cali Lewis’ (from GeekBrief.tv) in her iPhone-centric podcast.

ApplePhone Show- A weekly audio podcast covering the iPhone, hosted by industry leaders Scott Bourne, Chris Breen and Andy Ihnatko.

MacBreak Weekly- The popular weekly Mac podcast with hosts Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Scott Bourne and Alex Lindsay is bound to cover the iPhone more than enough.

TWiT Another one of Leo Laporte’s successful tech podcasts, again, bound to even further inform you of the latest iPhone developments.

Hacks

Hack the iPhone- A comprehensive site containing all the info you need to hack your iPhone.

iPhone Hacks- An assembly of the latest iPhone hacks in blog form.

Applehound- Consistently updated listing of iPhone bugs, ready for hacking.