one of the very first things I encountered after joining the “iPod fraternity” was that I could certainly upload any music to my liking, but there wasn’t a method of transfering my music back from iPod to computer. Of course, Apple didn’t want you taking your iPod to your friend’s house and have your buddy transfer all your tunes to their own iPod for free (depending indeed if you’d actually bought your music - DISCLAIMER: which we all should be doing).

Alas, what happens if through some disturbingly unfortunate event you lose all your music from your computer? The only storage of said tunes is laiden inside your iPod, and then by an equally disturbingly unfortunate event you lose your beloved “pod”, or you accidentally reformat it and lose everything?! you’re completely shafted.

My saving grace came in the form of i Lounge, where they cover “All things iPod.” They have a phenomenal selection of iPod utilities and tools for download (most of then free) and a superlative discussion forum which covers topics from iPods to accessories, and pretty much everything else you can possibly imagine. So, there I am a couple of weekends ago looking for a solution to my aforementioned dilemma. It didn’t take me long to find (in my opinion) THE best utility to render my fears, a mute point. They have a link to a site that has created a completely free utility called Senuti - “Everything in Reverse”. Senuti is of course “iTunes” spelled backwards… ingenius.

This amazing, and FREE (you can certainly donate to the author) utility does everything:

• it’s lightning fast
• allows a number of ways to search for songs
• transfers your exact playlists to your computer
• you can even have Senuti not only copy your music and playlists to your computer, but automatically tranfer them VERBATIM into iTunes
• it’s skinned to look like iTunes - so no ugly interface - it’s gorgeous

if you own an iPod (ANY model) go and download this potential lifesaver - always good to back up your iPod, should the hands of fate nudge you into oncoming traffic, resulting in certain sorrow and nights of sobbage.