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For picture recovery try PodView (Version Tracker link). I haven't tried it myself, but it did help Mahinavai in this thread.

Hmm...if you have a physical problem in the drive (something like dropping the iPod on a hard surface while it was accessing its drive), then you might have to resort to a data-recovery service like Drive Savers, which is a rather expensive route to go. Most of these outfits charge something like US$200 up just to look at the drive to determine if anything is recoverable, then an additional fee to recover the data based on X dollars per MB (or something like that).

If you think that only the file table is corrupted, then you might try iLinkPod to see if your Mac can see it as a hard drive and try Apple's Disk Utility or other drive utilities such as Disk Warrior or Tech Tool Pro. I have no idea if this might at all work.

Perhaps only the iPod electronics are fried but the hard drive itself is OK? Then you might consider begging, borrowing or eBaying another same-generation iPod and use one of the battery replacement videos found at Other World Computing as your guide to swap the hard drives.