While the majority of people will use their iPods for audio, and may get their news via podcasts, there are some of you who might be a little addicted to newsfeeds and may want to keep them on your iPod. If so, there is a pretty cool and simple application called iFeedPod which does this for you. To use it, simply add your favorite feeds to the application, then simply press the Sync button, and in a few seconds, iFeedPod will download the latest news items and store them on your iPod via the Notes function. iFeedPod is completely free, but requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later to work.

The iPod has a nice, large hard drive in it, so many people (myself included) like to store certain important data on them, just to keep a backup in case a computer’s hard drive fails. While this is a quick and easy way to back up documents, it’s not necessarily the safest way to store data, fortunately, I found a great guide on securing the sensitive data on your iPod. The process requires that you have a Mac, as you need to use the Disk Utility built into OSX, but this could certainly be adapted for other operating systems with the right tools. Using the Disk Utility, you’ll be able to create a password-protected disk image which you can then mount to retrieve your data. Get all the details over at NonStopMac.com.

The latest version of Mac OSX (Tiger) offers a new feature which hasn’t been available before: safe sleep. Safe sleep is the equivalent to Hibernate mode on Windows machines, which means you can put your computer to sleep, saving your current session, without turning it off. While in safe sleep mode, your Mac will use basically no power, but still keep whatever session you had open, readily available upon awakening the computer.

You can find all the details on how to do this over at AndrewEscobar.com. The process is fairly simple, but you will need to do a little work in the OSX Terminal.

Back in my early college days (maybe even before), Palm devices were all the rage (I had a couple which ended up just being used as universal remote controls). I’m not sure how many people still have one, but I found this pretty cool piece of software called The Missing Sync for Palm OS which lets you sync all kinds of information between your Palm and your Mac, including music. There are different conduits for contacts (which has been greatly improved with the latest version), events, photos, tasks and more. Some interesting ones including the aforementioned iTunes sync which will copy your music over to your Palm, but even better, backup and folder sync conduits so you can use your Palm device as a portable backup medium. The Missing Sync for Palm OS is available only for Macs, and will cost you about $40 USD for the electronic download.

While Apple has done a fantastic job making OS X incredibly user friendly and easy to use, its core is based on a UNIX variant so there are a lot powerful commands you can use if you do a little searching. Even from the boot screen, there are a lot of things you can do by using certain keyboard keys from booting from different mediums (CD, hard drive, or network), ejecting CDs, and more. Surf-Bits has a nice list of boot command keys which you can use to access all these options, some of which might help you troubleshoot your system at some point in the future, so be sure to check it out. While many of you might not care too much about what goes on behind the scenes on your computer as long as it works, having used Linux for many years, I can tell you it will definitely help you resolve problems were they to come up.

Textpander is a pretty cool utility for OSX which I heard about on the TWiT podcast the other day which makes typing on a Mac more accurate and efficient. Textpander “listens” to what you’re typing and inserts predefined text or images into a document based upon predefined abbreviations. Some of the things you can do with Textpander include Inserting greetings, text or signatures into an e-mail, inserting the current date and type in predefined formats, typing special characters a little more easily, and more. The utility will even correct typos for you. Textpander is free and requires Mac OSX 10.3.9 or higher.

If there is one thing I hate, it’s companies who lock their hardware and keep you from using your content however you’d like (though I somewhat understand why they’d want to do it). TiVo owners are increasingly getting less control of whatever shows they record, though I suppose it’s not entirely TiVo’s fault, but enough with the diatribe. There is an amazing new piece of software which lets you stream content off your TiVo and onto your Mac (sorry Windows folks, maybe next time) and it’s called TiVoTool. You do need to have a fairly new Mac since you must have Mac OS X Tiger and a G5 (not required but suggested), but this is an invaluable tool for those of you who’d like to have a little more control over your content and maybe burn it onto a DVD at some point. The latest release of the software even includes iTunes and iPod support so you can easily place your content on the latest video-enabled iPods and carry it with you wherever you go. TiVoTool is available for Macs and Linux. Be sure to check the download page for all the requirements. Best of all, it’s completely free.

Are you a Mac user still looking for a quick, easy, and free way to convert some of your movies into iPod format? I recently put up a guide to doing this using Handbrake, but it involved quite a few steps. If you don’t want to go through all that trouble- and who does, right?- then here are two great options, both of which are totally free.

Both Google and Yahoo! just rolled out new services to help you find flights and other trip planning services to their ever growing list of products. Google’s offering is found directly in their search engine and allows you to find airline flights by doing a search with airport codes. You will then be given 2 new boxes so you can input dates for your trip, and are then transported to Expedia, Hotwire, or Orbitz (Expedia is the default). Here’s a sample search from San Frascisco to New York.