DoubleTwist lets you manage all your media from one place -- UPDATED

Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen sez,

We just went live with the public Windows beta of doubleTwist. The Mac version went out a little more than a month ago and generated headlines like "doubleTwist may be the coolest universal media manager ever"
We feel that just like you don't have to use a different browser for every web site you visit (Firefox to read the NY Times, IE to stream Hulu, Chrome to browse YouTube, etc) you shouldn't have to use iTunes for Apple products, Nokia software for Nokia phones, Sony software for Sony products, etc. The typical household today has many such devices and we are building a simple and powerful software that connects them.
The new doubleTwist supports most major devices, from the BlackBerry and Android phones to the iPod/iPhone and Sony PSP.

doubleTwist - Play, Sync & Send photos, videos and music for Blackberry, iPod, Android, iPhone, PSP, LG. Free download for Mac, PC. (Thanks, Jon!)

Update: Jon sez, "One small correction: this version of doubleTwist does not have DRM support (it's finally gone from music anyway!) Our main aim is to provide a unified device management experience, including support for proprietary devices such as the iPod and the iPhone."

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Jonathan Badger

Weird choice of names. DoubleTwist was a Bay-area genomics company that went under a few years back.
Jonathan Badger

Weird choice of names. DoubleTwist was a Bay-area genomics company that went under a few years back.
Rodney

This is the exact sort of thing that Linux users would pay money for, yet will never be offered.
Xenu

The burning question — how will they make money off this?
Jonathan Badger

Weird choice of names. DoubleTwist was a Bay-area genomics company that went under a few years back. Are names of defunct companies
Anonymous

Will this offer a way to crack an ipod? I hate that they leech themselves onto one computer like little bloodsuckers.
nutbastard

ive been looking for a decent way to manually manage my ipod touch. years of being a sansa guy have led me to believe that yes, drag and drop file management just makes f’ing sense, and i can’t be expected to house my entire library on my laptop (my only computer) and its anorexic 30gb HDD. everything big lives on an external 1TB, and it’s not always connected, which sends itunes into conniptions when it can’t locate my files.
Anonymous

@Rodney, agreed, I was hoping a Linux build was being announced when I saw this post. I’d gladly pay to use this at home.
13tales

I really don’t get this software. The mac version DOESN’T support the iphone yet (WTF!?), it no longer frees your media by penetrating any kind of DRM, and a “social media” app should have some discernible way to add friends (am I just stupid? I can’t see it anywhere in the mac client). The transcoding functionality is kind of neat, but otherwise this seems a poor second cousin to itunes.
Galactor963

@ANONYMOUS:

If you set it to “Manual Sync”, doesn’t that do it?

(Disclaimer: I’m not an iPod owner, correct me if I’m wrong.)
mellon

This is sort of vaguely cool, I guess, but when I went looking for wins, they seemed sparse at best. Yes, it supports a lot of video formats, but actually none that my existing apps don’t already support, and it’s missing several that I need. They do sharing, but it looks like they do sharing by piping everything through their servers, which means that they have to limit what you can do in kind of stupid ways.

And of course it’s not open source.

I want to like this, really I do, but where’s the pony?
HotPepperMan

Hmmm. For me it is YAMP. Yet another media player.

Additionally, it is one more program that is going to market without seeming to have a level of completeness. Checking their forums shows this.

It would be nice to have software that did not have band aids and duct tape holding it together.
Anonymous

I want to like this, really I do, but where’s the pony?< <<

Drag and drop Youtube video URL to your media library and have them downloaded and ready to play or share with your pals almost immediately. That's a pretty fair sized pony right there.

set up multiple accts across different boxes on your network and one click send/back up for your media. one click = send/receive/download all in one biscuit. Another pony.

>>>>>
I really don’t get this software. The mac version DOESN’T support the iphone yet (WTF!?), it no longer frees your media by penetrating any kind of DRM, and a “social media” app should have some discernible way to add friends (am I just stupid)
<<<<

not stupid, just looking at the Mac version. this article is about the Windows build which DOES support iPhone, DOES have add or invite friends.
skullivan

@Nutbastard#11: Just set your iPod to manual updating in iTunes. I don’t have an iPod Touch but I can’t imagine it should be any different (if it is, mea culpa:)

Windows:

-Connect your iPod to your computer.

-When the iPod icon appears in the iTunes window (below Devices), select it.

-Click the Summary tab to choose between automatic syncing and manually managing your music and video:

I just drag songs from the file explorer into iTunes as I can’t stand using iTunes as a media organizer. All my music is on an external drive as well.