What my iPod did on summer vacation

OK, it’s summer and perhaps you have a vacation planned. I was inspired to write this article after reading a National Geographic article about traveling with an iPod but wanted to tie in some ideas and products that would make traveling with an iPod even better.

The most obvious use of an iPod is to create the background music for your road trip. Not everyone has the same musical tastes but some road trip favorites usually mention some type of road or travel as it’s them such as: Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again, Aretha Franklin’s Freeway of Love and Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf. To play these items through your car stereo, you can use a cassette adapter or an FM transmitter

Audio books and podcasts make a great way to pass the time on long trips. Podcasts are usually free and there are two places to check for free audio books (Audiobooks.org and Project Gutenberg’s Free Audio Books ) as well as paid subsriptions at Audible.com

Audio walking tours are becoming the rage with several web sites selling walk-along tours to follow with your iPod. Here’s just a few:
iJourneys
SoundWalk
Rick Steves Free Audio Tours
Stingy Scholars’ list of free tours

Recording sounds and saving pictures to your iPod are two suggestions that National Geographic made in their article and I have to agree these are two great uses of your iPod when on vacation. You’ll need a voice recorder to record sounds to your iPod. Not all iPods allow voice recording. (More info here )
Putting images on your iPod will require a camera adapter and again is not compatible with all iPods.

Other things to load up on your iPod:
Maps – here’s a tutorial for saving Google Maps to your iPod
Foreign Language

So load your iPod up with music, books, information and perhaps even video and you will be set for traveling or just hanging out at the beach!