ShuttleXpress

I recently purchased a ShuttleXpress. £29.95 delivered from EnhanceYours.com  and it arrived the next day.

The ShuttleXpress is a small “mouse sized” USB device. It features 5 buttons, a Jog wheel and a multi position shuttle wheel.  You can assign different functions to each control, and can even have different set-ups for every application.  

As a university student I frequently listen to recorded lectures which I need to take notes on.  As well as my own recorded lectures, I’m also working through the Stanford iPhone Application Programming course which is currently available via iTunes U.  

Whilst annotating my lecture notes, I became really frustrated trying to control the media recordings using the mouse and keyboard, but with the ShuttleXpress its now really easy to quickly stop, rewind and replay sections of the audio or video.    iTunes doesn’t have very good controls for fine movement, so I tend to download the lectures and then play them back with VLC.  I’ve set-up the ShuttleXpress with a set of controls for VLC which has made reviewing the lectures so much easier.

The ShuttleXpress and its big brother the Shuttle Pro v2  are probably aimed more at video and audio editors, but I’ve found it a really useful device so far.

Refreshing iTunes Podcast Listings

This is a tip to allow you to re-download a bad episode in a podcast.

First expand the podcasts episode listings and delete the bad episodes.

Collapsed the podcast by clicking the triangle, so only the heading is shown.

Whilst holding down the option (alt) key, expand the triangle.  

This will cause iTunes to totally update the podcast.

Any missing episodes will be back in the podcast list and you should also have the option to click ‘Get’ to re-download the podcast.