for ipod owners who are not very smart the new version of itunes (4.2) will offer to automatically create a special ipod selection smart playlist if the number of tunes on your computer exceeds the number of tunes that can fit on the ipod - it is unclear on what basis this list is created but i personally like to have a bit more control over what songs are on my ipod thanks :1
so for what it is worth here is my solution : firstly the pod is set to sync only ticked songs (so if there is a song you don't want synced you can just untick it) then i created the following smart playlists :
rated
(rating>0)
rated=5
(for my absolute favourites)
rated>1
(for those i like more than just a bit)
new!
(added after 1.1.04 so i know i always have any songs i added to the computer this year)
played
(playcount>0 so i know that any song i have ever listened to on the computer is there and i only have to play a song on the computer to know that it will be on the pod the next time i sync)
and that's it!
(of course i have set the preferences for the pod to only sync to those nominated playlists duh...)