iPod managing...

Well, I prefer itunes for managing iPods. But, Songbird does a pretty good job.
http://www.songbirdnest.com/

Yes, Exaile can do some iPod management. At least it supports adding tracks; I'm not sure about deleting, renaming, or such things (I don't have an iPod so I can't test).

the main problem with all working implementations of ipod management software other than itunes is the handling of duplicates.
To explain this: under itunes, you can change:
- a song's id3 tag
- transcode it
- ...
if you had previously loaded this song onto the ipod, next time you connect it again, the song will get removed from the ipod and replaced by the new version, which will have the right tag.

Under other ipod software, the new song is not associated with the old one on the ipod, so it will get copied there again and a new entry added in the database. The old entry won't get removed, neither will the old file get deleted from the ipod (at least that's what I've seen). If you do this enough times, you could potentially fill your ipod with just one song repeated a great number of times.

It would be great if exaile were the first ipod management solution (other than itunes) to implement a proper way to handle updates in the library in between synchronizations. And I've had this ipod for a long time, but I certainly wouldn't make the mistake of buying one again. Although the hardware is quality, the software and overall functional design are so crippled it makes me sad.