According to the “National Defense” magazine, February issue civilian travellers with iPods have something to rejoice about. The military iPod software that allows soldiers to communicate with Arabic and Kurdish soldiers will soon become public.

The software running on the Soldiers iPods is VCommunicator. It plays phrases in Arabic or Kurdish as well as other things while hunting insurgents. While showing an Iraqi an insurgents photo, they would just play a line from the iPod which means “have you seen this person?”

There are many other such useful phrases that can be played on the iPod. There is a guy on the screen who gestures his hands to go with the words. The way this works is this. Depending on the mission - the soldiers have a combination of phrases to choose from.

The iPods can also be connected to a speaker or megaphone to communicate with big groups. iPod nanos which are cheap work well for this purpose. Now all this software is becoming available to tourists who can use it to communicate with locals around the world. Great news for iPod users!