It’s never a nice thing when one of your hard drives die, but the mistake we see so often is folks will delay in re-backing up the data that they DO have.

As soon as one of your hard drives has a problem, you need to check all of the devices and backups that might have relied on the drive that died on you.

Below is an e-mail that came into our Baltimore office today, that is exactly what we’re talking about. Nobody ever expects to drop one of their iPods or iPhones in the toilet, but it happens more than you think.

Good rule of thumb: Keep iPods and iPhones out of the bathroom.

Names and locations redacted to protect the innocent:

My name is XXXXX XXXXXX. I dropped my iPod in the toilet accidentally days after my computer’s hard drive got fried. I dried the iPod off immediately as best I could and dried it in 1 pound of white rice for 10 days. It sort of turns on when I plug it into my computer. Basically, I don’t have a back-up for most of the 30+ GB of music on it and need some help salvaging the music and the iPod if possible. I live in XXXXXX XXXXX.

Don’t forget that iPod Videos and iPod Classics have 1.8″ hard drives inside of them. With an iPod (or a portable hard drive) you’re working with an elevated level of risk, as one drop of these delicate hard drives and you could be in a data loss situation. DO NOT store information on your iPod that is not also stored elsewhere.

When you are planning your backup, don’t forget about your iPhone and iPod. Also, with an iPhone you do need to plug it into a computer from time to time, as that also backs up the iPhone. If your iPhone were lost, stolen, or damaged, you could get a new iPhone and hook it up to iTunes and restore from your last back up.

Also, the “rice trick” does work, but not with a unit has liquid in the hard drive. If water gets inside the hard drive, it’s generally toast. In cases of using the rice as an agent to dry out your device, it should not be used blindly. This means that the unit should still be opened up and inspected. Rice won’t remove corrosion caused by whatever liquid got into your unit. With Apple products of all types, don’t forget that liquid can affect the various alloys and chemicals used to produce the Apple device in ways that you might not expect. This is a leading factor in folks that got liquid inside a unit, but did not open up the unit to check it after they got the unit “dried out” on their own.

iOS 4.3 Software Update Available

iOS 4.3 is now available for iPad, iPhone (GSM model), and iPod touch owners as a free software update from iTunes.

Visit Apple’s iOS 4.3 Software Update page for features and information.

To update your iOS device, just plug into iTunes to download the update.

Update: Apple to live stream it’s own media event tomorrow (9/1/10). Tune into www.apple.com at 10 AM PDT. It looks like non-Apple devices won’t be able to watch. See the press release from Apple here.

Apple is holding a media event on 9/1/10 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, CA

There are several well placed rumors that Apple with be announcing several new items.

Most widely speculated is the Apple TV. A next generation Apple TV based on the same OS as the iPhone, in order to provide support for Apps on your TV. Rumored to be priced at just $99.

This turned out to be true, however it does not run iOS. It appears to pretty much the same as the old Apple TV which has a Front Row type of interface. Apple TV is now available for pre-order from Apple and will ship in about a month. It’s 1/4th the size of the old Apple TV and is based on a streaming data model, as it has no internal hard drive. You can rent movies and TV shows on it from iTunes, or you can stream music, video, and photos from your home computer.

Another pretty hot rumor concerns a redesign of the iPod nano that appears to have some backing from both some photographic and released protective case design evidence. It would appear that the new Nano will be smaller, square shaped designed device with a 3cm x 3cm touch screen.

This also turned out to be true. The new nano has a touch screen that is large enough to show four app style icons at one. It will be shipping from Apple in about a week.

Back to the rumor mill again after leaked photos showing a camera have popped up over the last year or so is the iPod touch. It’s new design looks to include both a back side camera and a front facing camera, microphone, updated footprint, possible 3G and even a Retina display as in the iPhone 4.

Again, also 100% true. The new iPod touch support Face Time and does have now include the Retina LCD, which is the same LCD that is in the iPhone 4. The iPod touch will also be shipping in about a week.

There also has been quite a bit of buzz concerning Apple’s desire to rent TV shows for 99 cents. I’m assuming that this will also include some tweaks to iTunes and the Apple iTunes store.

This also turned out to be true. TV shows can be rented from ABC and FOX for 99 cents and iTunes 10 was released as well to support this. Apple also announced Ping a new music based social networking site inside of iTunes where you can follow popular artists like Lady GaGa, U2, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry.

You can watch the full event video from Apple’s own website here.

Are You Behind In Your Podcast Subscriptions?

As I prepared to work outside today, I figured I’d grab a few Podcasts I was behind in, and sync them to my iPhone.

It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to a few of them so I had to tell iTunes to download the latest episodes. It took me a second to remember how to tell iTunes to start downloading them again.

In order to trigger iTunes to give you this option, you have to click on the little round “Exclamation Mark” in the “Status Column”.

And Is Your iPhone Playing Your Podcast Too Fast?

So a grabbed the episodes that I wanted to hear and prepared to head outside to work in the yard. I clicked on the first episode, and it was playing a double the speed. I figured there must be a setting for this, and there is. It’s a new feature in iPhone 3.0 and it’s displayed in the “Scrubber Bar” which allows you to skip to any point in your Podcast. The control for the playback speed is all the way to the right and in direct sunlight I could not see it outside.

I looked on the Internet to see if this was a common settings issue or not. I did a quick search and found Apple’s guide for the playback controls on the iPhone website.

Apple released iTunes 8.1 today. It was needed in order to have the new iPod shuffle work with iTunes. It also closed a security loophole that was a possible opening when subscribing to a malicious podcast that could lead to the disclosure of your iTunes username and password.

iTunes 8.1 is now faster and more responsive. Apple says you will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing.

In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides many other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).

• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.

• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.

• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.

• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.

• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.

• Includes many accessibility improvements.

• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit Apple’s website.

Apple has released iTunes 8.0.1

iTunes 8.0.1 improves stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including:

• Seamlessly plays the current song when creating a new Genius playlist.
• Improves syncing spoken menus to iPod nano.
• Addresses an issue of deleting HD TV episodes when downloading.
• Improves checking for updates from the App Store
• Improves accessibility with VoiceOver.
• Addresses problems syncing Genius results to iPod.