The iPod is one the most popular gadgets on the market today. When new, the iPod has really good battery life, but as you go on (years later), the battery life starts to diminish. So the question is: How do you fix it?

Mac enthusiast and MacWorld writer Chris Breen recently wrote an article for Playlist Magazine about how to Prolong iPod battery life.

With an iPod in hand, you’re ready to jump aboard a cross-country flight. Yet you’re stuck in the cheap seats, so you don’t have a power outlet, as the passengers at the front of the plane do. How can you keep your iPod continuously pumping out tunes, or help it last through enough video that you can avoid the in-flight movie? Charge ahead with these power-saving and battery-enhancement tips.

Some of these helpful tips include putting the iPod on Hold, turning Off Non-essentials, Avoiding Large Audio Files, getting and Add-on battery pack to as extreme as having the battery replaced. If you’ve bought your iPod within the last year and half or so, chances are you don’t have a battery problem. But if your iPod is older than that you probably have poor battery life. But whether old or new, this is an article that is a must read for all iPod users.

Prolong iPod battery life [Playlist Mag]

Have you been eyeing a MacBook Pro, but want it in a different color besides silver? Perhaps ColorWare can help.

I first heard of ColorWare in December 2003 on The Screen Savers. At the time, they were showing off their business of custom painted X-Boxes, Game cubes, iPods, iBooks and PowerBooks.

ColorWare has now started offering the Intel based MacBook Pro, as well and the Intel iMac and Mac Mini, in one of over 20 different color shades. Through their website, you can order any of those macs, and even iPods in these fun colors. They’ll order it, and then give it a custom paint job.
Colored MacBooks start at $2649, iMacs for $1949 and the Mac Mini for $699.

Not a Mac fan? ColorWare also offers Dell Laptops with a custom finish. They start at $1549.

ColorWare Products [ColorWare via Gizmodo]

I doubt many of you visitors listen to opera (I mean the theater kind, not the browser). But if you do, then you know that listening to an opera works the best if it’s all on one track. Though it may not be well known, there’s an easy way to do it in iTunes.

The songs you want to join together must be adjacent to each other on the disc, which should not be a problem if you are ripping an entire opera. To select all the tracks, click on a song title and choose Select All from the Edit menu to highlight each one.

Go back to the Advanced menu and choose “Join CD Tracks.” A black bracket appears next to the song titles indicating that iTunes will combine the selected tracks. Click the “Import CD” button in the top right corner of the iTunes window to convert the songs into one big file, which you can copy over to your iPod.

Like something else that flows on to each other? This works great for these kinds of CD’s, like Musicals, that one Eminem CD, or my personal favorite, stand-up comedies. For whatever your need, you can listen to whatever you want without the split-up high note.

Opera on MP3, Without Gaps [NYT via Lifehacker]

Time for the “lighter” post of the week, this time on hacking elevators.

I’ve mentioned several times this week that last weekend I was in the Minneapolis area for a school trip (hence the lack of posting last week). We stayed at a hotel with many floors (okay, so there were six), and a lot of the time you’d have to stop on the way up to get someone on another floor. This was stressful since we were on the top floor. Wouldn’t be nice it there was a way you could skip all of the other floors and go straight to yours? Where there’s a will, there’s a way and someone found a way.

1.) Get in the elevator.
2.) Decide which floor you want to go to.
3.) Extend both index fingers.
4.) Press the button for the floor that you want to go to, and the door close button at the same time, and hold them down for five seconds.
5.) Laugh at all of the people that are waiting on an elevator while you go right past them.

And there you have it. This has been proven to work in Otis Elevators, Dover Elevators and Most Desert Elevators, but there could be more. Granted, it makes me sound lazy for wanting a quick way to the 6th floor, but if you’re in a taller building, say one with 10 floors or more, this could be very useful.

How To Force an Elevator to Go Straight to Your Floor Without Picking Anyone Else Up [How to do Stuff via Digg]
Elevator Hacking [I-Hacked also via Digg]

Like MSN’s Live Mail, Yahoo has done the same with their mail service, offering both a standard version and a beta version that is invite only. Now there’s a nice little hack to get the beta version of Yahoo mail without an Invite.

To get Yahoo Mail Beta, just switch your content preference to Germany, France or UK. Then you will be asked if you want to join the beta when you log into your Yahoo Mail. Say yes, and join the beta. Then from the options menu, change your content preference what it was before. Then go to Yahoo Mail again. You should see Yahoo Beta. If you don’t see it, go to options and click “Try Beta” button. That’s all.

You can get to that preference pane by going to Options >> Account information from the left panel >> Member Information, General Preferences, Preferred Content. Also keep in mind if you run on a machine with a screen resolution of less that 1024×768, you’ll get a nice little warning telling you this. You can ignore it.

Get Yahoo Mail Beta [Google Operating System via Digg]

It has been speculated for awhile that Apple would come out with something new this week, and they’ve done just that.

Yesterday, Apple came out with a new 17″ MacBook Pro line. Features include (obviously) a 17-inch widescreen display with 1680 x 1050 resolution, 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo (which is higher than the other two 15″ MacBooks, mind you), 120GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, built-in iSight, and everything else you’d expect from Apple (iTunes, iCal, etc.). But get ready for a price tag of $2,799.

I got the opportunity to check out the 15-inch MacBooks at the Apple Store at Mall of America this past weekend and I thought they were darn sleek, so the 17-inchers are bound to be just as cool.

MacBook Pro [Apple]
The Apple Store [Apple]

One of the great advantages of Mac OS X, is that there is a great calendar application built right in. Windows does not have this, until now.

MonoCalendar is an open source program intended to be an iCal clone for Windows. I don’t have a Mac to tell you how close it does resemble iCal (if you do, please comment), but it looks nice and attractive, and appears to be very similar to iCal. If you’re looking for a calendar application that resembles iCal for Windows, MonoCalendar might just be the ticket. (MonoCalendar requires .NET 1.1.)

MonoCalendar [via Lifehacker]

Quick Note: I will out of town for school for the rest of the week – But be sure to come back on Monday, for I have some good content coming down the pipeline.

Flickr (as I hope you already know) is an excellent to upload photos – I use for this site all of the time. But after a while, It gets very tedious going Flickr, then to upload, then to browse, then tag it, and so on. But there’s an easier way to do it. Flickr offers many uploading tools to make things easier to upload photos to their free service. So today, I’m going to list what I think is the best way to upload for both Windows and OS X.

Upload to Flickr with FlickrExport for OS X
I currently don’t own a mac with OS X, but I figured for once I don’t leave you OS X in the dust. If you use OS X, then you have what I consider the best Photo application, iPhoto (you lucky people). So to upload, I’m going to tell you about FlickrExport, an iPhoto extension that allows to upload to Flickr directly from iPhoto. All you need is Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later – with iPhoto 4.x, 5.x or 6.x installed (this will work on Intel Macs as well).

Upload to Flickr within Windows Explorer
Since there is no really good photo application included with Windows, you can use Windows Explorer to upload photos to Flickr. For you Windows people, I recommend downloading “Send To Flickr” for Windows Explorer. All you need to do is download an executable that will allow you to send photos to Flickr within Windows. Once installed, click on “Publish to the web” on the left and follow the wizard.

And there you have it, and easy way for both OS X and Windows to upload your pics to Flickr without using a web browser.

Flickr
Uploading tools [Flickr]
FlickrExport for iPhoto [Connected Flow]
How to use the Windows XP “Send To Flickr” Tool [Flickr]

When it comes to any computer set-up, there is one common problem – messy cords. There are all sorts of cable management things on the market, but this one caught my attention. The Cable Yo-Yo is a device that designed to neatly roll up and tuck away computer and portable device cables.

Cableyoyo is a small, ultra-thin product with a big mission: to reduce cable clutter and bring order to your desktops or floors. Designed and produced by Bluelounge, Cableyoyo’s minimalist casing relieves the eyesore of unmanaged cords, and protects them from damage due to twisting and tangling.

The Cableyoyo also comes with an add-on suction cup so you can attach it to that back of a computer. The Cableyoyo is very inexpensive – One costs $5 and packages of 3 for $15. The Cableyoyo also comes in White, Black or Sliver.

Cableyoyo

So Google Calendar was released on Friday, and just days later you can now add it into you Gmail Account. Thanks to a new greasemonkey script with Firefox, you can add your Google Calendar agenda into Gmail.

The Tech Life Blogged has posted a tutorial for setting up this cool new Greasemonkey script for incorporating just that, your agenda into Gmail. After following the necessary instructions, you should have a neat little box on the left hand side, that fits in just like the contacts and labels, that lists your upcoming events in your Google Calendar in Gmail.

Just like how Google was slow to roll out the Delete button Gmail, I anticipate the same thing to happen with Calendar integration. But until then, this should do just the trick. The Greasemonkey extension on my PC is currently screwed up so I cannot test it, but when I fix it I’ll be sure to come back with my results.

Add Your Agenda To Your Gmail [Tech.Life.Blogged via Lifehacker]
Goolge Calendar
Gmail