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My Samsung YP-MT6Z music player has been a fun little device to have around. It plays MP3's and Ogg Vorbis files, has an FM tuner, can record from that tuner on a timer, can record from line-in and a voice mic, and is powered by a single AA battery that makes up the majority of its size and weight. It also likes to corrupt its firmware fairly often, typically whenever the battery needs to be changed.

The firmware writer is a Windows application that has its own critical quirks. Even under XP it was very difficult to get it to see the plugged-in device and I haven't been able to get it to work once under Vista. As a result, right now the Samsung player -- ordinarily a great multifunction device -- is useless to me. I needed something to take to the gym -- hauling the PSP around in its protective Logitech PlayGear Street is just too much -- so I reluctantly decided to give my wife's idle iPod Shuffle a look.

This particular Shuffle has been lonely since she received a Nano for Christmas, but I'm not a fan of iTunes or its proprietary music formats. I tried copying mp3 files directly to the shuffle to no avail and lamented that someone, somewhere should have created something to manage an iPod without using iTunes. Lucky for me I found the Floola project.

It's not so much that the Shuffle needs new firmware as it needs software that mimics the way iTunes manipulates the memory on the device. The Floola software does this for a variety of iPod models on the three major platforms of Windows, MacOS, and Linux, all without needing iTunes installed. Not only that, but at least on Windows it's available as a standalone EXE that doesn't need to be installed to run. This is perfect for quick setups of the device on a work computer to avoid upsetting the IT authorities. Theoretically speaking, of course.

The software works rather well. Running it first, then plugging in the iPod it noticed a device and, after it made a suggestion as to what it felt it was, I confirmed it manually by selecting iPod Shuffle from the menu. After that, clicking Add on the menu opens up a small window where you drop files into to queue up items for transfer, and push a button to move things over to the device.

While being able to copy files on and off directly would be preferable the way I could on my Samsung player, having Floola available lets me know that no matter what platform I'm running I'll be able to continue putting music on and off the device happily without dragging iTunes into the mix. The software, however, does not appear to be open source, just freeware. This could mean that at some point the author could take it commercial and turn it into yet another useful Windows app to buy and then be orphaned into incompatibility.

Check it out at floola.com if you need to use an iPod and can't or don't want to mess with iTunes.