Here's how democracy works in the digital age. Just before Apple unveiled the iPod last October, the Internet rumor mill was rife with speculation that the device would be some kind of personal organizer--Steve Jobs' answer to the Palm Pilot. The iPod turned out to be a palm-size music player with a five-gigabyte hard drive (a 10-GB version was released two weeks ago). But now, six months later, that original speculation doesn't seem too wrong. That's because Apple's hard-core users quickly figured out how to hack the device and write new software for it. It's as if they told Jobs, Very nice, Steve, but what we needed was an organizer, and we've decided to turn the iPod into one.

The upshot is that last week I used my iPod for half a dozen more things than it was intended for. I read my horoscope, skimmed the latest news and sports headlines, sent little memos to myself, checked my appointment calendar and uploaded my entire address book. I also cranked up the tunes, although not in the way Apple planned. The iPod's original restrictions--that you can share music with only one Mac and that you can't use it with a Windows PC--have been totally blown away.