There's all kind of content out there that's available for cell phones: games, ringtones, wallpapers, some of it cool and some of it just plain annoying. Now that iPods are capable of just about everything short of dialing up the local pizzeria (no, this is not a post about "iPhone" rumors) it's about time that third-party Web sites started offering loads of multimedia to fill up your little Apple device. (Can't you see it's hungry?) Enter Mogopop, which is a way for iPod owners to download a wide range of media to their iPods as well as upload their own to share with others.
But it's not just a repository for gimmicky games and podcasts that weren't good enough to make it to the iTunes Store. The central concept of Mogopop is the creation of "mini web sites," small packages of media that you can create with the service's drag-and-drop interface and even preview on a picture of an iPod. You can work all kinds of content into them, like podcasts, audio clips, videos, and images--the concept reminds me a little bit of Imeem. Then you can publish your mini-site to Mogopop and others can download it. As for putting the mini-sites onto your iPod, it requires the downloadable Mogopop Manager software. Then, the content will appear in the "Notes" section of your iPod. Being a Mogopop member is free, and you can download as much as you want, although you are limited to sharing up to 50 MB of your own content.
So what exactly can you do with these "mini-sites" for iPods? Some of Mogopop's suggestions include promotional materials for bands, multimedia resumes, or "walking tour" content. Browsing around the still-small site directory, I found a few things of interest, like an unofficial directory of all In-N-Out Burger locations in California, a museum guide, and a set of videos from a comedy troupe. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of wacky iPod content: I prefer to fill the hard drive with music, thankyouverymuch. But even if Mogopop doesn't catch on, I would expect that we'll soon be seeing plenty more distributors of media packages and mini-apps for iPods. And who knows? Maybe future editions of the iPod will be designed to incorporate more third-party "software" like this.