Like us, you may want to hear the music stored on your computer in your living room, or any other room outside your home office. We solved that problem a few years ago by drilling a hole in a wall and running a cable through it. You may not want to do that. An easier solution would be Creative’s new Sound Blaster. It will wirelessly transmit iTunes, MP3s, and online radio stations through speakers up to 100 feet away.

Setup is simple. The Sound Blaster Wireless is about the size of a thumb or flash drive and you plug it into the USB connection on a PC or Mac. Then connect a Creative Wireless Receiver to speakers or use the Creative GigaWorks T20W speakers which contain built-in wireless receivers.

The Sound Blaster Wireless avoids dropouts and static, which commonly plague Bluetooth and Wi-Fi systems. It doesn’t require a wireless network, so it’s easier to use and set up than Wi-Fi systems. Unfortunately, the whole setup costs $150 from Creative.com. (On second thought, maybe we’ll just drill a hole in another wall.)

 For any transfer problem, the “Move it” screen shows a list of devices on the left, and a duplicate list on the right. There are two arrows between the lists, one pointing to the right, the other to the left. Click on a device name in either list and then on the appropriate arrow to move the content to a destination name you click on the other list. You can search for particular items you want transferred, and then use the directional arrows to transfer that to the destination device.

 Setup was easy enough. You install “Move it” and then plug the devices you want to use into the computer. The program creates a profile for the ones you have. You can initiate a transfer of music, video or photos even if these devices are not plugged in. The next time they are plugged in, the stuff will come over automatically. This also works for friends who want a copy of your movie, photo or music.

 You can also transfer stuff to MySpace, YouTube and the “My Nero” community. Though you can’t download anything from YouTube without an extra program, which is technically illegal, you can later download stuff you’ve uploaded to My Nero or to My Space. Then if your friend wants a copy of your movie, they can get it there, as long as there is no “digital rights management” protection associated with that file. 

MiShare  quickly solves the sometimes balky task of transferring tunes from one iPod to another. It connects them head to head, so to speak, or brain to brain or shoulder to shoulder, or socket to socket. The device is slightly smaller than an iPod and has plugs on each end. These match the input sockets on the iPods and you just plug them together, sort of like an electronic tinker toy.

A typical song takes about 10 seconds to transfer; a short video takes about half a minute. You can connect the Apple Mini, Nano, Video and classic iPods together with the MiShare but it doesn’t work with the very oldest iPods or the Shuffle, because they have different docking sockets. MiShare is $100 from mishare.com.

Our past encounters with equipment from Genius has left us with the impression that “right around average” would be a better name, but this radio combo is a step up. In addition to the CD and iPod dock, the iTempo 800 has an alarm clock and an S-Video connection, so you can display photos and videos from your iPod on a big TV screen. A wireless remote lets you control all this from the couch. Sound quality was good and plenty strong. For some reason it seems to be selling well in India, but we found it at a-power.com, for the odd price of $153.47.

• “iPod, the Missing Manual” by J.D. Biersdorfer; $20 from oreilly.com or missingmanuals.com.

This book told us an awful lot you can do with an iPod that neither we nor most other users know about. You can, for example, use it as a calendar, an address book and a world clock. You can add your own choice of artwork to songs, instead of just the album cover. If you have the new iPod Touch, you can even connect to the Web.

• “Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, a Video Training Book” by Chris Orwig and Lynda.com; $50 from Peachpit.com.

This is one of the most unusual books we’ve ever looked at — part book, part program and packaged that way: half book, half box. Lynda.com is a maker of training programs and operates a Web site where you can access any of those programs for a fee. Three hours of free training sessions for Photoshop CS3 are packaged with this book. The buyer also gets one month of free access to more training sessions on this or any other subject Lynda.com covers, and there are hundreds. We’ve looked at many of them over the years and they’re excellent.

The company also has a laptop case, though it’s quite heavy, so it’s not something you want to carry around — with or without a laptop computer inside. Another disadvantage for underwater use is you have to take the computer out of the case to use it, which kind of defeats the purpose of being watertight, we guess. But it seems just right for boats, where a laptop computer would likely be brought aboard but would always be subject to spray or simply sliding off onto a wet surface.

The same circumstances might apply to other cases Otter Box makes, for handheld PDAs, GPS locators and even headphones. It also makes a big watertight case for desktop computers, which we guess is for people working under leaky roofs or hyperactive sprinkler systems.

We’ve seen such cases before over the years, but what got our attention is the claim that some of these are completely watertight to a depth of 100 feet. Too bad the iPod case works to only 3 feet; we’ve always wanted to listen to our iPod while collecting sponges in the Keys. If you’re still wet behind the ears, you can take a look at more waterproof cases at the Web site: Otterbox.com.

This is our first iPod, even though it’s Apple’s fifth generation. We’ve been holdouts because of all the other great music players out there, but we were finally driven to get it. It was partly because creating accessories for the iPod has become a new industry and we were getting a product pitch a day about some gadget that you just had to have or the iPod police would ticket you for “mopery with intent to creep.” These accessories turn out to be mostly junk, but the gizmo itself is pretty cool.

Who knew that watching a movie on a screen half the size of a playing card could be enjoyable? We went to iTunes.com from our desktop computer and clicked on “movies.” We paid $1.99 to download an amusing Danish animated short and the next time we plugged our iPod into the computer, the movie moved right over. We also brought in a lot of free National Public Radio broadcasts and National Geographic videos by clicking “subscribe” from the “podcast” directory at iTunes.