Here’s a little experiment for you: ask your pals if they’ve ever used their iPods to listen to the news. We’re willing to bet cash that most of them said no. We’re also betting a few of them weren’t aware that enterprising companies and plucky individuals around the world are working to pimp your iPod out with a few more abilities than playing more of the usual same-old tunes.

 

Some of these applications are going to be handy only for specific people or situations. But like everything else on your iPod, when you need it, you’ll be glad to have it on hand.  Especially when your friends are there to watch, wide-eyed and incredulous.

 

 

 

iPARROT

 

If you’ve ever needed a bathroom when traveling in a country where you don’t speak the language, you’ll know just how important it is to communicate. iParrot is a helpful guide for anyone who needs to use simple phrases in a foreign language.

 

iParrot installs 400 phrases in the Notes section of your iPod. After scrolling through the 20 categories, such as “greetings” and “asking for help,” select a phrase. It will then voice it in the language you purchased (choose from 12, such as Japanese or Russian). You can repeat it, allowing you the illusion of fluency—helpful when you don’t want to come across as some darned foreigner.

 

If you can’t get your mouth around some of the vowel tones common in languages like Vietnamese, the phrase appears on your iPod. Just point to the screen, and your best foreign friend can read what you’re trying to communicate.

 

Plus, it  gives you an excuse to keep your iPod on you when you travel.

 

 

 

 

 

PARTY PRO

 

Ask any introvert: some people just aren’t good at parties. But thanks to Party Pro, at least you’ll no longer be a party amateur.

 

This neat little application installs the recipes for over 800 drinks in your iPod’s Notes, sorting them by category, name, and ingredients; Many of them have photos, so you know what the final product should classically resemble. Bartending tips, like a list of proper drinking glasses, are also included.

 

If you’d rather be the designated drinker, Party Pro comes with a list of bars in over 130 party cities, like Cancun, Mexico; Killington, Vermont; and Tampa, Florida. It also includes the rules of drinking games that make us woozy just thinking about it (like the Family Guy version: take a shot whenever Stewie says, “What the deuce?”)

 

Party Pro also lists sample pick-up lines for both men and women. But who needs a pick-up line when you know how to make a perfect Appletini?

 

 

 

 

CHEMDUET

 

For when you absolutely, positively have to know the linear expansion coefficient of mercury, ChemDuet is the application for you. ChemDuet is a chemistry reference guide for your iPod, full of facts essential to chemists and the students who love them…or at least want passing grades.

 

The free version gives you 9 datasets to explore, such as atomic weight and melting points. If you want to know an element’s electronegativity, valences, and 26 other datasets, you’ll have to shell out for the $12 upgrade. It’s small price to pay to fully explore all the properties of matter.

 

How often do non-chemists need to know atomic masses? Not frequently—but when you do, ChemDuet sits in your iPod’s Notes, the temperature of the boiling point of neon waiting at the ready.

 

 

 

 

TOOBLE

 

You may want an iPod Touch just to get instant access to YouTube clips. But at a maximum of 32 gigabytes, you may be reluctant. However, thanks to Tooble, an absolutely brilliant application, you can transfer your favorite YouTube clips to your 160-gig iPod. It’s like having your cake and eating it too, and then uploading the video of you eating the cake on YouTube.

 

The Tooble application presents a window of categorized YouTube feeds, such as highest rated or recently featured—you can also enter your own search terms—from which you select the videos you want to transfer to your iPod. Hit download, and Tooble will convert them on-the-fly using the Perian plug-in, which grants Quicktime the ability to handle additional open video formats. One sync later and your clips are ready to go. It’s dead simple, lightening quick, and addictive as hell.

 

Your favorite clip? You, having your cake, eating it too, uploaded onto YouTube, then downloaded onto your iPod.

 

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INEWSCASTER

 

Here’s a sentence you wouldn’t get in the 20th century:

 

iNewsCaster is an application that “audioizes” RSS feeds and then converts them into MP3s for your iPod.

 

Although it sounds like a pitch made by dot-commers who drunk-dialed an angel investor, it really, truly, actually works. iNewsCaster does indeed translate text into voice, then exports the text to your iPod via iTunes. You can choose your news from a list of pre-selected feeds like BBC, the New York Times, and Digg.com, but you can add any RSS feeds you choose (like MacLife: http://www.maclife.com/maclife_com_rss_feeds). You can configure iNewsCaster to check for new feeds in increments of five minutes, up to an hour.

 

The speaker’s voice, “Heather,” is mostly natural, with some metallic-sounding notes, but it’s easy enough on the ears. It also takes a while to convert the feeds to MP3s, depending on the size of the file.

 

iNewsCaster. It’s not just an application. It’s the tip of the 21st century.

 

 

 

 

TIPKALK

 

In New York City, calculating a 15% tip is easy: just double the tax. But in other locales, doubling the tax could result in stiffing some poor server. Don’t be that guy. Be the one who tips well, or at least accurately.

 

But if you’re better at dim sums than adding sums, you can reach for TipKalk, which installs on the Photos section of your iPod. TipKalk is a series of static images of calculations, which you can scroll through at speed. You can get an accurate calculation of a 15% (on the left-hand side) or 20% tip (on the right) for a bill between $5 and $500.

 

If you’re dining with friends, TipKalk can divide the tip between up to five of you. Unfortunately, it divides evenly, so if your buddy ordered the prime rib while you got the salad, you have to do the math the hard way. Or just have more wine.

 

 

 

 

IPRESENT IT

 

Picture this: you’re at a party, when a venture capitalist walks in. You sell him on the one-sentence pitch, and he’d like to know more. But your presentation is at home, on your laptop. What’s a budding entrepreneur to do? You hand him your iPod, of course.

 

iPresent It converts your PowerPoint, PDF, or Keynote presentations into a format readable by your iPod by creating an album in iPhoto or as a project in Aperture. (Make sure your iPod is set to synch photos.) Your presentation appears in full color, using all of the screen real estate, as a miniaturized version of the one you have at home.

 

If you have the right equipment, iPresent It is also formatted for the AppleTV, so you can dazzle the whole party with your business acumen.

 

 

 

 

PZIZZ

 

You no longer have to slam down a mochaccino for a pick-me-up. Now you can reach for your iPod’s earbuds.

 

Pzizz is an application that downloads to your hard drive. When run, it generates a recording which you then export into iTunes. The recording plays at different wavelengths (a “binaural” recording) in the left and right side of your earbud/headphones. Your brainwave frequency adjusts to the tone frequency, the Web site tells it, making you either more relaxed or more alert.

 

The “soundtrack” of notes and tones comes with a voiceover of a guided meditation. After listening to it, we felt calmer, but we realize that the (male)  speaker’s voice may become repetitive over time. Fortunately, you can select the voice preferences to play during the intro or wakeup only or eliminate it altogether. You can even adjust the amount of time spent in your meditative trance.

 

In fact, every time you run Pzizz, you can generate a new soundtrack; Pzizz uses an algorithm to ensure you’ll never get bored, even subconsciously.

 

Pzizz doesn’t taste as good as a mochaccino, but it’s much easier on the waistline.