The iPad, whatever one may think of it based on the short presentation offered by Steve Jobs last week is destined to be a game-changer. Personally, I wasn’t so wowed by it – it seems a bit too wide, and it looks like it would be too easy to scratch – but Apple hasn’t come out with a dog for years (the last one was the Newton, depending on whom you ask), so you can be sure that if they’ve decided to release this now, it’s going to sell like hotcakes. It will be available in the U.S. in a matter of weeks, and, said Jobs, and available internationally by May or June.

The iPad’s charm is that it will combine all personal entertainment into one, easy to use device; instead of various iPods for music and video use, and a Kindle for book-reading, and a laptop or iPhone for surfing the web or playing with apps, you get it all in one super iPad package (I suspect that future editions will sport a cellphone as well, after Apple “milks” whatever it can out of the iPhone). Users of the iPad will have access to movies, books, TV shows, music, and any other downloadable content you can imagine, courtesy of Apple, and whatever deals they work out with the content suppliers.

But once again, Israel will be left behind. Months (years) later, absolutely no progress has been made on working out content deals with the people who hold the music and movie rights in this country; the “sole importers” are clearly holding out for a bigger cut, and are holding their contracts over the heads of the foreign content providers, threatening to sue, sue, and sue some more, if they dare to try and do a digital runaround with books, music, or video. It reminds me of the situation here years ago, when an “upstart” book chain started importing English books from wholesalers in the U.S., selling them at far lower costs than the official importer was selling them for. Some interested party put a stop to that quite quickly, I assure you.

Israel isn’t the only country left out of the i-party; China doesn’t have a true iTunes store, and Amazon isn’t shipping Kindles there. The reason, it appears, is the (quite justified) fear that whatever is sent over to China will be knocked off within minutes, thus destroying any opportunity the companies hope to have to sell legal content there (and you know they are just salivating at the thought of a billion Chinese buying books from the Apple Bookstore). But Israelis, who are not known for knocking things off and are more than happy to pay double for the same stuff others get at regular prices, won’t be able to access any of the i-content any time soon.

Of course, all this can be solved if you are the possessor of a U.S.-issued credit card, with a billing address in the United States. Then, Apple and Amazon trust you with their digital content. Actually, I’m being unfair to Amazon, which will gladly accept your Israeli credit card which allows international use (the various gold or business credit cards) for almost anything they sell, including physical music discs and books. But not for the digital stuff.

And we haven’t even mentioned the issue of the iPad’s 3G connection, which will also not be solved overnight, if the iPhone saga offers any solution – it took quite awhile for Israel’s Apple rep, iDigital, to work out a deal with the Israeli cellphone companies. The company doesn’t expect to get the iPad anytime soon, either – in an email iDigital sent out in the midst of the hoopla of the product announcement, the company said that “Regarding [the iPad's] reaching Israel, it is still too early to determine [when, how and if that will happen]. We are acting in accordance with Apple policy, but we are working with the world [Apple] organization in regards to localization.” As if localization were the only problem!

I know many of the people reading this in Israel do have access to an American credit card, as do the people who live in the U.S. who are reading this online, so it may not seem like such a big deal. But it is – not because of the content itself, which is available at a thousand and one torrent download sites, but because this is a clear example of how legal obfuscation by “old tech” companies is preventing progress of “new tech.” I know that sounds ironic coming from someone who writes for a newspaper – what with the internet cutting into newspaper profits and all – but as we have seen over and over in the past few decades, artificially damming up the flow of progress only makes things worse for the defenders of old technology – and the businesses that think quickly and adjust to the situation are the ones that survive, and thrive (talk radio, which is bigger than rock n’ roll ever was on AM, is a good example).

Now that there’s competition to the Kindle, the Amazon people may be looking to expand their base; the iPad promises to be a formidable foe. Perhaps that will be an incentive for Amazon to lean a little harder on the content suppliers to work out a deal with the local importers. I know Israel is a small market (but there have got to be more English readers in Israel than in Mongolia, where you can buy Amazon books!), but during times of trying competition, companies need all the business they can get – and Israel is a content consumer ripe for the plucking.

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• Is the iPad a big iPod or is it the new Newton? (cloudave.com)
• Who will buy the iPad? (news.cnet.com)

While not exactly old hat, iPods have been around long enough to have come down in price significantly. There are a host of cheaper imitators that may be easier to handle (see below), but let’s face it: Zunes, Sansas, and no-name made in China MP4 players just don’t have the afikomen oomph of an iPod. If they don’t already have one, you could do worse than spending $39 on a refurbished iPod (http://tinyurl.com/65qfhr), on sale at Apple USA. If you’ve got someone to bring them in for you, iPods at those prices qualify as gifts for the under $50 no import duty rule. You may have to pay VAT if you have them shipped, although the shipping costs would be minimal, because they’re so small.

Modern generation iPods can play music and video, as can many other modern portable player clones. The difference is that the iPod is a platform, with many extra applications written or produced especially for it. Because the iPod is so popular, many developers have come up with tweaks and programs to help you get more out of it.

Sometimes, it seems, it pays to go with the name brand.

For example, you can download and install CantoPod (for Mac OSx or Windows), which lets you see the lyrics to the songs on your iPod (all except the Shuffle). The program’s database has the words to over 200,000 songs, including many of those that your kids are listening to that you know are they shouldn’t be, but can’t figure out why, because you can’t understand what the performers are saying. There is also a version for cell phones with music players. Check out the free CantoPod at http://www.staylazy.net/canto/.

The miniscule iPod is perfect for running around with, whether in the gym or on an outdoor running track. Many people who already exercise buy one to keep them company, while many others buy one as an incentive to get them to exercise. That’s where the free iPodGym program comes in handy (http://somatotype.net/iPod-Gym/). This site has dozens of instructional videos you can download to your iPod (properly formatted, of course) and watch. Even more ambitious (but costing $19.95) is iWorkout (http://www.helmesinnovations.com/iWorkout/) with 101 videos, nutritional charts, nutrition & dieting essentials, etc.

The iPod is great for exercising not only your body – but your mind as well! Any iPod that can display video or song lyrics can also display text and with iPod Notes (http://www.ipod-notes.com/) you can turn a text file on your computer, or even a Web page, into an e-book that you can display and read on your iPod. Also available is iPod eBook Creator (http://ebookhood.com/ipod-ebook-creator), which, in association with http://ebookhood.com/, lets you download hundreds of already converted e-books (including many classics, science fiction, etc.) all ready to go. And, if you like the idea of a “walking encyclopedia,” you can download the entire Wikidpedia for storage and display on your device. Or, if you need instant access to a dictionary, you can download the 2006 edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary at http://tinyurl.com/qymfc/ (all programs are free except the dictionary, which is $9.95).

One of the most amazing programs for the iPod is Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/). If you’ve never tried this all around (and free!) video converter for iPods, get it now before Apple people sue it out of existence. Handbrake will take any DVD (Video-TS folder, DVD image or real DVD) and output it to MP4 (Mpeg4, suitable for iPod display), MKV, AVI or OGM, with all the DVD features including subtitles, chapters, etc. Handbrake can even “do” encrypted videos (using third party components) and the program has a very active user forum with lots of good advice on the site’s community page. If you prefer “pre-canned” video in the form of clips you can download from Youtube, check out Ares Tube (http://www.benjaminstrahs.com/, for PC only), which can handle video from not only Youtube, but dozens of other video sites as well.

Not all is hunky dory in the world of iPod. The bane of many device users is having to coordinate what’s on the player with iTunes, which has its own peculiar (some would say rigid) way of doing things. Fortunately, you can divorce an iPod from its dependence on iTunes; download Floola (http://www.floola.com/), a cross platform iPod manager that does everything iTunes does, and then some, adding support for lyrics, album artwork, converting video files to MP4 format, and downloading Youtube files. It also lets you copy files to and from the iPod without “synchronizing” the whole thing with the computer’s music library, as well as, allowing you to connect more than one iPod to a computer – both features that seem beyond the abilities of iTunes to perform in a user friendly manner.

In fact, if you try to do either of these things with a Mac, expect to spend several hours at your computer trying to work things out! If you insist on using iTunes and you want to copy songs or video or your device onto the computer independent of the music library, check out Expod (http://expod.joynt.net/). After being the nice dad who got his kids a bunch of iPods and who wanted to transfer songs from one device to another without having to erase them each time (because of iTunes’ limitations), and after trying a bunch of tools that claimed to allow such copying, I found Expod to be the only program that actually worked, letting you run such a basic operation on an iTunes equipped Mac. In the case of multiple accounts and copying songs, the iPod could learn a trick or two from its Chinese no-name clone cousin!