Help me learn!

Hey guys,
I'm new here and quite honestly I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask in.
To put it frankly I want to learn about electronics, my main interests are to learn to retrofit and manipulate electronic devices. I am currently learning ther assembly language.
My first question is how would I go about getting signals from devices? for instance, if I wanted to create accessories for an iPod, I would first need to find out how to communicate with one of the iPod's ports and write up program to give the necessary data to the iPod. How could I find out what data to iPod asks for, because obviously you don't just plug in the iPod and they adjust to each others 'protocols'. So my question is How can I learn these 'Protocols'? I hope you understand...
Thanks loads,
CodeFreakC

You have to find technical reference's on the web. For apply products this can sometimes be a bit difficult, they're not exactly good at full disclosure. Just to give you a place to start, go to google and do a search for "IPOD pinout" I don't know what type of IPOD you use but adjust the search appropriately. Problem is the actual protocols involved require some pretty advanced hacking skills in order to figure out.