Very few apps (applications) on the iPad run in the background, meaning that most of them simply stop when you hit the home button and exit the application. But with the iPod app on your iPad, you can have music in the background, and use any other application while listening to that iPod background music. And you can pop up a pop-up iPod controller (like a little iPod remote control) while you are using any other application, without ever leaving that app.!

If you’ve been trying to figure out how to shuffle your music on your iPad, well, you’re not alone. Apple could hardly have made it more confusing. First, you can’t shuffle your music on your iPad in iTunes, because iTunes isn’t even where your music is on the iPad! Your music is in the iPod app on your iPad, and you can shuffle your music on the iPod on the iPad, but you have to know the secret. So, here’s the secret.

Fix a wet cell phone? Not possible. Everyone knows that there is no wet cell phone fix. Or is there? A new product is claiming to help users to not only fix wet cell phones that have been dropped in water, but also to fix that wet iPod or other electronic device. Called the Bheestie Bag, it’s a zip bag filled with tiny beads that draw moisture out of whatever you put into it, leaving your previously water-logged mobile phone, iPod, or other electronic device bone dry and, at least as often as not, functioning again.

Clothier Thomas Pink has developed a new iPod accessory: the Commuter Tie. That’s right, a necktie that sports a hidden pocket in the back to carry your iPod Nano, along with a tab through which to thread the headphones.

From our “Now I’ve heard it all” department, Gregory McKenna (misreported in many articles as “George McKenna”) is suing, among others, the St. Louis County Police Department, the FBI, and Apple Computers for allegedly allowing the Mafia to bug his iPods (along with his house, his cars, and more) and allowing them to play sinister songs with hidden messages to him on his iPods.

It was a seemingly watershed moment in iTunes history. Earlier this year, Apple finally broke down and did away with their previously iron-clad pricing structure of .99 for any song in the iTunes catalog. Instead, they introduced their “iTunes Variable Pricing”, meaning that you might pay any of .66, .99, or $1.29 for a tune. But what makes this really interesting is that, in addition, now the entirety of Apple’s iTunes music catalog has lost the Apple-proprietary digital rights management (DRM) and is DRM-free, which is the + in “iTunes Plus”.

Microsoft has announced the new HD Zune (“Zune HD”), which features HD video (along the lines of high definition TV (HDTV)), as well as HD radio. In the portable MP3 player wars, this leapfrogs the Zune ahead of the iPod Touch, with the Microsoft Zune being the first to market with HD video and the first to market with one of the first portable HD radio receivers anywhere.

Apple has just publicly copped to the fact that you can get a “small and quick electrical (static) shock from your ear buds while listening to iPod or iPhone.” The problem is not specific to the Apple ear bud type of head phones (those headsets that fit into the opening of your ear canal), but rather is specific to iPod and iPhone, and other sorts of MP3 players, and can happen with any brand of earbud.

As if president elect Obama doesn’t have enough to worry about with all the buzz over his Blackberry – and will he or won’t he get to take it to the White House with him – now folks all across the Internet are screaming because Obama was seen with – gasp – a Microsoft Zune MP3 player, instead of an iPod. Welcome to Zunegate.

Alcohol breathalyzer self testing has been around for a while – in fact there are now tiny portable breathalyzers that fit on a keychain! But breathalyzers for your iPod? Yes! Now you too can have a breathalyzer for your iPod! No, we don’t mean a breathalyzer test to see if your iPod has had too much to drink. What we do mean is the iBreath – a new accessory for your iPod.

99 cent iTunes downloads will go the way of the dodo if California state lawmaker Charles Calderon gets his way. His proposal, AB1956, seeks to tax music downloads, adding 8.25-8.75% sales tax to music purchases made online, and increasing the purchase price to $1.08.

Despite our article clarifying that the RIAA has said that they are not interested in going after people for making copies of music for personal use, the myth abounds, and misinformation is ricocheting around the Internet faster than a speeding CD laser.

So, here, for your own ears, are snippets of the NPR interview, in which RIAA President Cary Sherman has clearly stated the RIAA’s position on making copies of legally purchased music, for personal use.

Much has been made in the media this week about the news that the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) has announced, through one of their lawsuits, that they now consider it illegal for you to copy music from a CD you have purchased to your own computer, for your own personal use. The one thing that everyone seems to be overlooking is that the RIAA has not said this at all. In fact, they have explicitly stated that they are not concerned with people copying music to their computer (or iPod, or other personal MP3 player) for their own personal use.

It’s not there in the Apple iPod instructions, and it’s rarely listed with other iPod info, but here is one of the most important iPod tips you’ll ever get: don’t use your iPod during lightning storms, because if lightning strikes, it can conduct the charge through the earphones, across your chest, and into your head! Put another way, when it comes to lightning safety, don’t use your iPod during lightning storms!

If you’re looking for free online music downloads – legal free music downloads and free music videos downloads – then have we got news for you! Spiral Frog is a new free legal music downloads service offering free music downloads! That’s right, absolutely free music downloads! Rather than charge for its music downloads it is instead advertising supported – so you get music downloads free while Spiral Frog gets to show you ads. The twist is that these totally free music downloads will not play on iPods or Zunes. It also won’t work with any Apple computer. So you can get all your music downloads free, but they won’t work with your Mac, iPod or Zune. That is because Spiral Frog relies on the Microsoft Digital Rights Management (DRM) system its free music downloads.