New software allows internet radio to be recorded on iPods

• One reason people love the iPod is that it allows you to carry around all your familiar songs.
• It doesn't have a radio receiver, and it doesn't work with the music-rental services, like Rhapsody, which lend out vast catalogs of music for a monthly fee.
• The $20 product, called iFill, allows you to fill your iPod with songs or other material recorded from Internet radio stations, free.
• IFill, which comes from iPod accessory maker Griffin Technology, runs on either a Windows or Macintosh computer.
• The software uses the computer to receive the Internet radio, and to send the radio output directly to an iPod, where it is stored as separate song files that can be played at any time.
• The music from the radio stations isn't playable on the computer, and doesn't show up in Apple's iTunes software, which normally manages your music, and controls the iPod-to-PC link.
• IFill worked great with various iPods on the two Macs, but we had lots of trouble using it on our three Windows machines.
• You can try iFill free for up to 28 days, by downloading a trial version from www.griffintechnology.com/products/....
• Katie first tried using iFill with her iPod mini prior to a weekend trip to Boston, so she'd have a collection of new radio songs to listen to while traveling.
• She plugged her iPod into her Windows laptop, following a simple set of iFill directions that first instructed her to adjust her iPod settings (using iTunes) in order to "enable disk use," and got started.
• Stations can be perused by opening a new window that lists each station's name, number of listeners, bit rate and genre.
• You can also preview the music that is currently playing on the station by selecting "preview" or double-clicking on the station's name.