A short while ago, I discovered a project aiming to open up the Dock Connector interface on the iPod and make it possible for anyone to interact with it. The iPod Breakout Dock (found via MAKE, naturally) makes the Dock Connector signals easy to access, allowing for connections with microcontrollers and other devices. I’m in the process of building one myself, and I’m considering creating a custom board to remove the need for tedious soldering. The board would slide between the rows of pins on the JAE manufactured Dock Connector plug and provide a row of pins that would snap into a standard breadboard, ready for hacking. I have yet to choose a supplier, much less begun designing the relatively simple board, but I’m curious if anyone can recommend a low-run PCB manufacturing house. Also, I’d like to know if there’s any interest in such a board, as I’d certainly consider selling them at a reasonable price. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

I recently found this little utility, AtomicParsley, which has the ability to change data within iTunes M4A and M4V files and make iTunes believe they are of a different type. For example, if you rip your own TV shows to the iPod video format directly from the DVDs (instead of buying them through iTMS), the encoded files will be added to iTunes as Movies. Doing a Get Info on the file(s) within iTunes does not allow you to change the type of content you’re inspecting. AtomicParsley can edit the file, changing the very resource (called an Atom) that iTunes uses to differentiate the content type, thus making your DVD rips of TV shows into true iTunes TV Shows. Edited files will appear alongside any purchased TV shows, as well. For the time being, AtomicParsley is a command-line program and requires some basic Terminal knowledge. If you’re unsure of this, be sure to see the short Terminal primer bundled with the download. Changing the information is as simple as ./AtomicParsley /Users/collin/24_1×01. –genre “TV Show” –stik “TV Show” –TVNetwork FOX –TVShowName “24″ –TVEpisode “0101″ –TVEpisodeNum 01 –TVSeason 01. Fill in the details for the show name, TV network, season number, and episode number, and let AtomicParsley do the rest. Upon importing the newly edited file into iTunes, it will be moved to the appropriate category.

WordPress 2.0 is almost here and sports a long list of new features, including the Akismet antispam plugin I rave about, as well as a backup plugin to keep your site safe. I can’t wait to upgrade, and may do a bit of a redesign shortly after (my CSS is ridiculous in size, and is still broken here and there). Having messed with a number of blogging systems on my own machine, I can yet again highly recommend WordPress for its two-minute installation, nearly infinite customizability, and overall ease of use.

I recently learned of a cool hack at my new job, pertaining to recovering Dell laptops from a BIOS password protected state. While I don’t use a PC at home, I deal with various PC related hardware all day long, and it’s great to be able to do little tricks like this. Assuming you have a Dell laptop in which you can no longer access the BIOS setup, it may be possible to short out the chip responsible for storing the setting (as well as the Dell Service Tag) and grant access to the previously locked setup. Personally, I’ve done it on several Latitude models, although getting physical access to the chip required completely disassembling the laptop and removing the motherboard. On the bottom of the board, quite often near the RAM slots, is the target 24C02 serial EEPROM. By shorting pins 3 and 6 while powering up the machine, the chip is disabled and the Dell laptop goes into “manufacturer mode,” where the BIOS password no longer exists. I’ve read that the Service Tag data can be re-entered using the ASSET.COM utility, available from Dell’s FTP server. For more detail, you can check out a tutorial I found which no longer exists at the original location, but is thankfully saved at Archive.org. It’s a dangerous, but clever and impressive little hack that just might get you out of a tough spot with a machine that would otherwise be a simple paperweight. I hope to post more hacks like this as I discover them.