This isn’t your gran’s sideboard: a sleek, minimalist iBoard provides a dock for your iPod or iPhone, functioning as a de facto stereo with a sound range of up to 100 meters.
From Swiss company Schubinger Möbel, the iBoard (plexiglass case not included, though if you want to keep sticky mitts off the device, it’s not a horrible idea) sends 2.4 GHz radio signal to a loudspeaker system that can handle a full audio range including an 8-inch subwoofer and four loudspeakers, and a 100-watt digital amplifier for quality sound.
In a world wth iPod docking stations on offer from what seems like thousands of different companies, the stylish XIS100 iPod Docking Station from Xantech is the first such product designed for the high-resolution television revolution.
It features a unique component video output capability that will let owners of the new 480P video output iPods see their video in full native resolution on a plasma, LCD or other compatible TV screen with component video output. It also features the full iPod menu on its screen and offers full on-board browsing.
The XIS100 is compatible with all current iPods and comes with a 15 button remote with chrome finish. The dock station with touch panel also features an On-TV menu display for music and video navigation.
Support for English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German and Russian; no info yet on exact availability date or price.
Turn a humble juice box into an iPod case. These cheap and cheerful cases are the handiwork of Ross, who wanted to create a decoy case to disguise expensive electronics as well as protect them.
You’ll need spray glue, some sand paper, a little knack with a sewing machine and about an hour.
Since the boxes are typically made from six layers of paper plus polyethylene and aluminum foil, Ross reckons they should be sturdy as well as practical, especially with an added velvet lining to protect from scratches.
A city councilor in Dartmouth, England has sparked debate by wearing his iPod earbuds to drown out prayers traditionally said before town council meetings.
Brian Boughton, an atheist, put in his earbuds on during the short prayer in protest. His iPod wasn’t turned on but fellow councilors branded the move disrespectful.
Boughton told the BBC: ‘I accept that they want to continue with the tradition but that leaves the problem for those like myself who do not wish to participate.
“I was accused of being disrespectful which I never intended. Listening to the iPod was a way to get the debate going but I never had it switched on. I’ve asked the mayor to consider opening up the prayers to other people.”
You’ve seen this guy. Maybe, in an unguarded moment of early-adopter smugness, you’ve even seen a friend who acted like this guy, trying to impress with a cool playlist or two.
Enter the Hipster Pod, a new “device that tricks people into thinking you’re hip.”
How does it work? If your bad taste in music prevents you from getting dates, the Hipster Pod projects cool music outwards (Velvet Underground, Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth are mentioned), while you get to listen to guilty pleasures, including bubble gum pop and Kenny Loggins.
The two-minute parody stars an everyguy named Mark who tries to impress but gets caught out listening to Celine Dion on the subway and then use the Hipster pod to rather surprising results…
It’s the first jab at tech from a team called Barely Digital, the same folks responsible for the viralicious bikini-clad “Obama girl.” Now that a Mac President is in the White House, they’ve turned to tech satire to give themselves something to do.
Funny? Yes. If there were a female version, it’d be a little too cringeworthy to laugh at, though.
Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke started out on the wrong foot at the Women’s Superpipe Finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado.
The tricks weren’t working, her rhythm was just a little bit off.
Then, according to the AP, the freestyle skier suddenly discovered her flaw – she wasn’t pumping Dr. Dre on her iPod. Burke cranked the hip-hop artist on her final run, dropped into the pipe and flawlessly hit all her stunts to win her third straight Winter X skiing superpipe title Friday night.
“Dr. Dre always pulls me through,” the 25-year-old told journalists.
With her alley-oop maneuvre slightly off, Burke decided to bag it, going with a nice, easy run on her final attempt. It was her third straight superpipe gold.
What do you put on the iPod to get you through?
White noise is getting me through the daily slalom of late…
Travelers in economy class flying Singapore Airlines can hook up their own iPods or iPhones to the inflight entertainment system.
Starting in March, A330-300 aircraft with these new hookups will replace older planes flying medium haul routes to Australian and Japanese cities.
The re-designed Economy seats sport adjustable leather headrests and larger monitors.
In addition to iPod and iPhone connectivity (plus a plug if you to power your device) the multi-port panel has a USB port, enabling passengers to listen to their own music, view photos or read PDFs.
United Airlines was the first US carrier to offer a similar service back in June 2008, but it is only available in business and first classes.
Love the idea of being able to catch up on 30 Rock instead of being reduced almost to tears because the only thing left to watch on a long-haul flight was “Legally Blonde 2.”
Crime is ugly. But it’s hard not to crack a smile at an enterprising thief who bought iPods, then returned the packages weighted down with rocks.
The thief took the empty Apple boxes back and exchanged them for four Zunes at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Nebraska.
Police believe the culprit used heat to reseal the plastic packaging. The iPods were put back on shelves, a customer who bought the iPod box without the MP3 device alerted the store.
Authorities warned that other stores in the area may have been hit by the same bait-and-switch scam.
Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Dan Taylor on Flickr
Say you lose your iPod or iPhone and some good Samaritan finds it, but there’s no way for them to get it back to you because there’s no contact info on it.
If you’ve got an iPod Touch or iPhone, enter an $0.99 USD app called DogTag, which adds an ID icon and allows you to put the contact info of your choice.
Even If you’ve got a passcode, the info is still accessible as a DogTag wallpaper. The brainchild of Ian Cinnamon, who has been programming since age seven, the app was released a few days ago, and so far the handful of reviews are mostly positive.
For older iPods, one quick way is to name your device with an email address (my iPod nano and older pods support the “@”). This way, if the iPod is plugged in, your contact info pops up on the desktop and in iTunes.
You can also add your info to “contacts” or “notes” on iPods, too so they don’t have to plug it in to go looking for you. (Although if they really dig, the name information you assign will come up, too, in the settings>about screen).
I hit on naming mine with an email address after spending a frustrating 20 minutes at the gym trying to convince the guy at lost and found that yes, the iPod containing, among other things, just the contralto part of “Lacrimosa” and three cover versions of “Mah Na Ma Na” was, in fact, mine.
Have you devised a good way to ID your iPod or iPhone? Any luck with getting it back?
Sharing is caring, let us know in the comments.
You could add this hand sewn iPod Shuffle in felt to your iPhone, a key chain, or otherwise adorn yourself with it, making the cuddly gadget just a bit more useful than the felt version of Apple’s phone that can’t be used even as a dog toy.
Cuter than cute, the 1″ x 1.5″ plush iPods are the handiwork of a woman in the Philippines with, as you might imagine, a declared love of kawaii stuffed toys.
iPod Shuffle charms come in blue, gray, pink, orange, red and green (specify your color pick in advance) at just $4 a pop on Etsy.
In 2007, British student Meredith Kercher was murdered in Italy, during a study abroad program in hill town Perugia.
About a year later, Rudy Guede was sentenced to 30 years for his part in the killing, for which Kercher’s roommate, American student Amanda “Foxy Knoxy” Knox and her boyfriend, Italian IT grad, Raffaele Sollecito, are still awaiting trial.
Guede’s appeal now before the Italian court hinges on an iPod.
During what has been hypothesized was some sort of late-night Halloween sex game where the 21-year-old Kercher was an unwilling participant, Guede maintains he was in the bathroom of the young women’s apartment.
While she was being killed with a knife, he was listening to music on iCarta, a toilet paper holder roll that doubles as an iPod dock.
Guede’s lawyers tried to head off what they thought might be viewed as a sort of Twinkie defense for the digital age in a statement to Italian media (below translation mine):
“It is nothing more than a confirmation of how some abnormal behaviors are apparently normal among young people today,” said laywers Valter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile. “Just as Facebook is their virtual world, they now listen to music everywhere, even in the bathroom. The marketing of such products implies a certain routine use.”
The statement was published today in Italian papers, without information on how the legal team might use or prove the bathroom listening alibi.
Props to Jordan Horwich who re-engineered a pair of old iPods into speakers.
He’s managed to take out the innards of what look like first gen iPods and replace them with a 2.25-inch speaker cone, volume control, Altoids Tin Speaker and a battery holder.
Bulky by today’s standards, getting a speaker into an old iPod still requires a good deal of fiddling. If you’re feeling up to the task, check out Horwich’s DIY detailed guide.
Horwich had to buy the old iPods to make his speakers (spending about $100 on the iPods and the equipment) but if you’re like me you might have one or two barely working ones in Mac limbo, though it may not look as good without a matching pair.
Apparently distraught over their utter lack of market-share, all of the approximately eighteen 30-gig Zunes in the wild have apparently committed mass suicide (is their number large enough to be considered a “mass suicide” or is it simply “suicide together”? –ed).
No word on the fate of fat-harry-zune tattoo guy.
You can read more on this breaking story as it develops at Wired or Ars.
Update: I don’t know why the picture of the dude with the Zune tattoo shows up on the RSS feed, next to the title making folks believe that he might be an ‘iPod killer’ or that he might have killed himself. Sorry zune tattoo guy…
Prolific Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach has made it into the digital age with a dedicated iPod.
The Bach Pod from Passionato packs 175 hours pre-loaded on an Apple 80 GB iPod classic. Recordings are from the opus collection Hnssler Edition Bachakademier released in 2000 on 172 CDs that was favorably reviewed but was later discontinued as a set. The Bach Pod costs about $700.
There’s still enough memory left over, 63GB, to add a few things and it also comes with three back-up DVDs as insurance against hiccups.
While some hardcore classic music fans will want to pick and choose who interprets the maestro — you can check out download samples here — it would make a great gift.
Dimensions is a virtual toolbox offering a bakers’ dozen of functional tools animated with gorgeous 3D graphics that turn your Apple mobile device into something far more useful than any other cameraphone/musicplayer/gamestation-computer could hope to be.
Among the things you can do are:
* Use the caliper to measure to a precision of 0.156mm or 0.006 of an inch.
* A flexible tape measure lets you measure interior furniture, fabric and more up to 2.5 meters or 8 feet.
* Another tape measure handles interior and exterior distances up to 5 meters or 16 feet.
* A third measuring tool uses the iPhone’s camera to measure distances up to 25 meters, or 82 feet.
* Distances over 80 feet, up to a mile, can be calculated with the measuring wheel.
* The podometer uses GPS location services to measure thousands of miles or kilometers.
All calculations can be rendered in metric or Imperial scales. Dimensions was 2008’s best selling app in AppStores France and Italy, the #2 seller in Japan, Belgium and Switzerland, according to advertising placed by its developer, pocketDEMO.
And here we are in the US spending all our money on Sim City and Pull My Finger – it’s no wonder we’re a laughingstock in Europe.
These Danish-designed iPod Nano and iPod mini cases do double duty, covering your pod and giving you a notebook.
Called the iPod Pad, the leather case secures your iPod in foam and offers a 72-page note pad opposite. (It looks like the notepad might be refillable but unfortunately, google translate didn’t get me far enough to be 100% sure — though a kind Danish CoM reader had a better look and says the site doesn’t specify).
It comes in 10 different color combinations and looks like a Moleskine notebook, which might make it less attractive to thieves. Currently for third generation nanos, a 4G version will be ready by late January 2009.
They cost about $26 dollars (139DKK) from Scripta.
Philippe Starck, one of the most famous and prolific designers alive, has made these monumental iPod speakers.
Called Zikmu and designed for Parrot, these sleek, wireless “couture” speakers stand 2.5 feet tall with a docking station for an iPod or iPhone on top. Audio can also be streamed from a PC or Mac via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and the speakers emit sound from both sides.
They’ll be in available in spring 2009 and cost $1,500.
If British tab The Sun is to be believed, 18-year-old Gavin Brooke stayed awake listening to an iPod as surgeons removed a brain tumor.
The teen had a tumor in a tricky place that surgeons didn’t want to damage, so the boy had to stay awake during surgery.
Brooke was given an anesthetic to numb the pain, but the head surgeon let him hook up his iPod Touch to give him something to do.
What was on the playlist?
The first tune Brook played on his iPod was “Apologize” by Timbaland Featuring One Republic, the rest were garage and R’n’B tracks that kept him occupied during the six-hour surgery. The iPod was plugged into the operating theater’s sound system and the volume was low enough so that Brooke could carry on conversation with the surgeons.
The tumor was removed and Brooke has since recovered.
This playful polka dot chair comes wired for sound with an audio jack for your iPod, two built-in 10-watt speakers and a 15-watt subwoofer.
The cotton canvas chair slightly rocks (to keep up with your head bobbing) and comes in brown and white dots or light blue and white dots.
Aimed at the teen market (unsurprisingly, the pink version was a sell-out) if it came in a more grown-up print or solids it’d be a great piece for the den.
For the discerning Apple fan on your list, or for yourself, GelaSkins may be just the thing to personalize and protect precious laptops, iPhones and iPods this holiday season. Made with a patented 3M adhesive, GelaSkins are easy to apply and leave no residue behind when you change or remove them. The adhesive allows you to reposition the skin easily for a perfect fit.
They feature richly colored, photo-quality graphics ranging from fine art prints to contemporary urban images designed by artists from around the world and certainly make any mobile device stand out in a crowd.
GelaSkins can be purchased online or at retail outlets world wide and range in price from $12.95 for iPod skins to $29.95 for laptop skins. The Gelaskin website has a convenient store locator with good contact information, and offers a web-only deal of a 4th skin free when you buy 3.
Check out the gallery of just a small sample of the arresting designs available below and head to the GelaSkin website for more. Definitely a “Think Different” gift idea.
Just like your iPod earbuds, but supersized 500 times.
These 500XL giant earbud portable speakers have a built-in amp, run on three AAA batteries and come with a USB cord.
No specs on how much they pump though the makers assure you’ll be able to annoy your co-workers, which is important.
A pair of electronics Phd candidates at Ottawa, Ontario’s Carleton University may have invented a process for wirelessly connecting the circuits of a mobile device to its antenna, allowing it to consume 12 times less power than traditional, wired-transmitter modules and lowering the overall cost of any hand-held device, according to a report at OttawaCitizen.com.
Atif Shamim and Muhammad Arsalan, together with their adviser Langis Roy of Carleton’s department of electronics, co-authored a paper describing a packaging technique to connect the antenna with the circuits via a wireless connection between a micro-antenna embedded within the circuits on the chip.
Their work was named the best paper at the European Wireless Technology Conference in November, whose judges praised the invention for “excellent integration of system design, material sciences and electromagnetic antenna design.” They also said the innovation is “highly relevant, with large potential for commercialization.”
Shamim has filed patent applications in the U.S. and in Canada, with the knowledge consumers continue to gripe about the short lifespan of the iPhone battery.
“It’s a common problem. There are so many applications in the iPhone, it’s like a power-sucking machine,” said Shamim.
Research on the invention is due to be published in the upcoming edition of Microwave Journal.
