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The "Get Productive" Guide For New iPod Owners - (GUIDE TO THE MAXIMUM IPOD EXPERIENCE)

So you have got an iPod as a Christmas or birthday present. It looks good and holds true with its claim of a thousand songs in your pocket, huh? But do you know that iPod could do much more for you aside from entertaining you? To all new iPod owners, here is a guide on how to be productive with your iPod.

New iPod owners could find a sleek, sexy personal data assistant with their iPod. Read on below to learn how to sync contacts and calendars from your iPod to your computer, or use it to transfer soft files, of any format, to your computer, and read sticky notes.

* Add VIPs

All the stored information in your computer about the important people in your life that you know such as phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, company name, birthdays, and other personal information, you can transfer it your new iPod.

If you're a Mac user, it is quite easy to sync your Address Book with your new iPod. If you're a Windows user, you can use Outlook Express or Microsoft outlook to sync your contact details in your new iPod.

* Sync Schedule

Scheduled for a meeting with the top bosses tomorrow? Or have a date with the lady of your dreams on Saturday? You can sync your alarms and schedules from Mac's iCal with your new iPod. For Microsoft Windows users, your new iPod can work with Microsoft Outlook to sync schedules.

* Take and Read Sticky Notes

You do not need those yellow sticky notes to write anything that pops up in your head (since they always get lost, anyway) like, what are your deadlines for the day and the coming week, your grocery lists, driving directions, etc. You can take all your sticky notes inside your new iPod and carry it with you all the time. 

Your new iPod can hold a total of 4096 characters or (4kb in total) for each note. So, keep in mind to keep your notes briefly so won't run out of character lines if you sync it with your new iPod.

How can you sync sticky notes from your computer to your new iPod?

Here's how.

1. Open your notepad or any word-processing application that can save the file into .txt. Type a new note to create your grocery lists or those bulleted to-do's that you have been laying aside for a few weeks already. Or if you want to keep an important email message or want to put in your new iPod lyrics of the songs from your new iPod's playlist, just copy the text and then paste it in a notepad.

2. Save document in .txt file.

3. Connect your new iPod to your Mac or Microsoft Windows computer.

4. Since you're a new iPod user, you might have not set your iPod for disk use. But if you are a techie new iPod user and already did this, skip this step.

To new iPod users who have not set their new iPod for disk use, enable this feature by doing these:

1. Open your iTunes program from your computer and then open iTunes preferences. Mac users should click 'Preferences' from the iTunes menu, while Microsoft Windows users should choose the 'Edit' menu first before clicking  'Preferences').
2. Find the iPod tab, click it, and then a new pane will open. Click in the iPod pane the Music tab.
3. A Select the "Enable disk use" checkbox, then click OK.

5. Open your iPod volume that appears on your desktop (Mac) or in My Computer (Windows) to display three folders: Calendars, Contacts, and Notes.

6. Drag your text file to the Notes folder on your iPod to add it.

* Use the iPod as File Carrier

If you haven't already figured it out by now, you can use any iPod model as an external hard drive, allowing you to copy files onto it and shuttle items from one computer to another. This comes in handy if you need to work on projects at the office or school and at home, or you want to transfer your digital music collection from your old computer to a new one. Here's how to enable this feature. 

Show me how:

1. Connect your iPod to your computer.
2. Open iTunes (if it isn't open already), then open iTunes preferences (Mac users, choose Preferences from the iTunes menu; Windows users, on the Edit menu, click Preferences).
3. Click the iPod tab, then click the Music tab in the iPod pane.
4. Select the "Enable disk use" checkbox, then click OK.

Your iPod should now appear as a mounted volume on your desktop (Mac) or in My Computer (Windows). To copy files for transport, simply drag any file onto the iPod volume icon, or double-click the volume, create a new folder (or folders), and copy items to it.