SharePOD and Floola for your iPOD

SharePOD and Floola enable easy iPOD file transfers

Looking for a solution to being able to transfer files from your iPod to a computer that does not already contain your iTunes library, consider SharePOD. SharePod 3 is a program for your iPod that allows you to copy music and videos between your iPod and computers, usually without having to install anything on the computer. What's interesting is that SharePOD installs and runs ON your iPOD. Once installed you can then copy tracks from your iPOD to a PC using Windows Explorer and the SharePOD interface. SharePOD also creates XML files that can be imported into iTunes. Additionally, you can use SharePOD to copy files from your PC to your iPOD, including MP3, M4a and M4v file types.

SharePOD also lets you create new playlists, edit file tags, and has a built-in media player as well. To protect against any future incompatibility with Apple's iTunes software, SharePOD creates backups of your iPOD and you can use the Restore iPOD feature to put it back to it's working state.

The downside - SharePOD requires Microsoft's .NET 2.0 framework to be installed on the computer you are attaching to. For XP users, this could mean a 22MB download just to get SharePOD to work; .NET 2.0 is included in Vista.

Another software option that offers similar functionality is Floola, which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. *note: links updated on 11/19/2011*