Behind the Blog – 01/13/2005

Another mobile edition. Only took three times to get a recording. File size is better on this one. Sorry about yesterdays. There is an annoying intermittent sound in this podcast, and thats coming from my cell phone.

Notes to self: Mobile Edition Checklist
1) Turn off cell phone before recording
2) Make sure mic power is on.
3) Make sure iRiver is actually recording

I like my iRiver even more now.

The biggest gripe I had about my iRiver ifp-790 mp3 player was the fact that you had to use the software that came with it to put data on it and pull data off of it. I was really hoping, that I would be able to just plug it in and access it like a removable drive, but that was not the case.

So, today while listening to the Daily Source Code, Adam zips through an email someone sent him about possibly hacking the firmware of the iRiver, but he really seems to blows it off. I went to Adams show notes, where I get a link for MisticRiver, which seems to be an iRiver enthusiasts site. There, I find a link to beta firmware from iriver that supposedly adds the functionality I’m looking for.

So I download it and install it via the iRiver Manager software. Once the iRiver reboots, my computers finds a new device, and joy, it’s reporting a USB Mass Storage Device. Then bamm, sure enough I have a new drive.

What’s really cool now, is when you record to it, it saves it directly as an mp3. The old way it would have to convert it after the transfer to my computer.

So far it is working really good. There is only one gotcha. With the new firmware, there is a maximum recording quality of 96kbs where with the old firmware, I think it was 320kbs. That a pretty big difference. I was recording on it at 128kbs. But I’ll settle for 96 to have the added functionality I’ve been wanting.