It appears that a number of users, myself included, were surprised to find that upgraded to iTunes 8.0 and then their iPod Touch to version 2.1 resulted in an unknown error (13213) and the delightful information that your ipod cannot be synced.

This message seems to continue to pop up randomly while your iPod Touch is connected even when no syncing of data was being conducted.

Luckily enough on the Apple Forums, a kind individual seems to provide the unique combination of steps to get iPod Touch 2.1 and iTunes 8.0 to play nicely together.

To restore syncing capabilities to your iPod Touch after a 2.1 upgrade:

1. Unplug your iPod Touch and turn it off. Hold the power button at the top until the red slider appears and power it down completely.
2. Quit iTunes 8
3. Relaunch iTunes 8
4. Plug in Touch - DO NOT TURN IT ON FIRST. Make sure it’s still off completely from step 1.
5. Should sync normally

Following this steps worked for me, although I must admit that I tried the “Restore iPod” approach first and that failed to work on its own.

I imagine Apple will release a fix shortly, but in the mean time, follow the steps above to restore syncing capabilities to your iPod Touch and be done with the annoying 13213 error.

Apple enhanced their Finder navigation with OS X 10.5 Leopard. They added new icons, made network navigation easier, and added Cover flow. All these additions have made Finder much more easier to navigate and use but sometimes you still want to add that custom touch to finding and launching applications or files.

Luckily adding apps, folders, or files to Finder’s Sidebar is quick and easy. To Add an application, file, or folder to Finder’s Sidebar:

1. Find the Folder, Application or File you’d like to add to the Finder Side Bar
2. Select the Folder, Application or File and press command + t (Or select Add to Sidebar under File on the File menu)
3. Additionally, you can select the item in Finder and drag and drop it to the sidebar under Places in between or below the places already listed.

To remove an item from the Finder Sidebar, click and hold, then drag and drop out of finder.

Since the release of the iPhone 3G more and more people are browsing the web in the iPhone Ready version of Safari. It is true that Safari on the iPhone is capable of rendering full web pages but that doesn’t mean that you want your readers to have to wait for your content to load. Luckily, it is quick and easy to take your iWeb Blog and make it iPhone Ready allowing your readers to keep up on your articles while on the go.

To create an iPhone ready “site” of your iWeb blog you’ll need to download the latest version of Dashcode. This can be achieved by installing the free iPhone SDK. Once you’ve installed Dashcode via the free iPhone SDK you’ll be ready to start your iPhone ready iWeb blog creation.

To create an iWeb Blog site for the iPhone:

1. Open Dashcode and select a Web Application Template for RSS

2. Change the Title of the RSS Feed by clicking on the default entry and allow it to match your sites title
3. Select Application Attributes

4. Under Properties, enter the Feed URL of your iWeb RSS feed. You can find this by clicking the RSS feed link on your iWeb site.

5. Verify that the feed is being pulled correctly by clicking the Run button at the top of Dashcode - This will launch an iPhone Simulator and display your site as it would be viewed on an iPhone. If your feed is working correctly, you’ll see your latest posts displayed in the Simulator

6. Close the Simulator and return to Dashcode. You can Set your Home Screen Icon (the image that would display on an iPhone Home Screen) or save the site to your Hard Disk. Click Share and then Save to Disk, select the location you’d like to save your iWeb Blog that is now iPhone Ready
7. Upload the folder that you just created in Dashcode to your web server and save it to within your iWeb folder.

Your site should now be ready for iPhone users to view. Create a link to the folder you just created on your web server on your iWeb Page and let your readers know that they can follow you quickly and easily on their iPhones.

Here is a final product of our test iWeb Blog that is now iPhone Ready.

Simplify Media has been around for a while now. Recently, Simplify Media released their very own iPhone app on the App Store free to the first 100,000 downloads. The idea behind Simplify Media is that it expands on the built-in iTunes sharing by allowing you to share your library over the net, including your iPhone. Here’s how it works.

First, download the Simplify Media software that resides on the computer that contains your iTunes library. The software is available for OS X, Windows, and even Linux. Once you have installed the applicaiton, the software will walk you through the process of setting up a screen name and password.

Next, you can choose what you want to share. You can share nothing at all, your iTunes Library, your music folder. Also, you can customize the folders you want to share.

If you have Simplify Media installed on more than one computer (between work and home, my iTunes library is spread accross 3 macs), then Simplify Media automatically connects to those shared libraries.

 Any shared libraries show up in the ‘Shared’ menu on your iTunes sidebar. You can now have one iTunes library but listen to your tunes from anywhere.

Simplify Media for your iPhone

As luck would have it, we here at Maciverse were part of the first 100,000 to download Simplify Media’s iPhone application and we wanted to see if it was as easy and fun as its computer counterpart. For the most part, we weren’t disappointed.

Launching the iPhone app takes you to a screen where you enter your screen name and password.

Just like iTunes, Simplify Media then connects to all of your shared iTunes libraries.

 From there, you can listen to your music or podcasts just like your iPod. But what about when you’re on the go? To test this, we took our little family on a trip to the local Target store for some back to school shopping. While there, I was able to connect to my shared library over the iPhone 3G connection without any problems. The only problem I did have was that my iPhone’s battery was low and the streaming quickly drained it. Other than that, the music came in without a pause or choppiness.

An additional surprise was that you also have the option of viewing the lyrics from the iPhone app.

Drawbacks

You can’t watch your iTunes movies/TV shows, just your music and podcasts. Also, the app depends on being able to connect to Simplify Media’s servers in order to establish a connection. The next day, while trying to test out the application again, I got the following error:

I got the error when I was connected via WiFi instead of 3G. However, after a minute or two, things connected just fine and I was up and listening again. One last issue, isn’t really a drawback, but the application was working well enough that I clicked the iPhone earbuds button thinking it would pause the music. Unfortunately, my iPhone’s iPod library started playing instead. 

Conclusion

Simplify Media lives up to the hype with respect to centralizing your iTunes library and the iPhone application works like a charm at least over WiFI or a strong 3G connection. The iPhone application is priced at $3.99 after the first 100,000 downloads. So if you can snag this app for free, all the better.

If you’ve had trouble getting your USB sound device to automatically be enabled in OS X you’re not alone. Unlike other operating systems, OS X 10.5 Leopard does not automatically enable USB sound devices such as Head sets when they are installed into your Apple computer.

To be able to take advantage of USB head sets or other third party sound devices you’ll need to enable. To enable USB sound devices:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Select Sound
3. Click the output tab
4. Select the Headset or sound device of type USB
   
5. And/Or Click the the Input tab
6. Select the Headset or sound device of type USB.

After setting the sound system preferences to the USB device for both Output and/or Input, your USB sound device should be enabled and functioning on your Mac