It’s hard to believe, but there’s a graffiti artist in San Francisco who objects to the iPod.
This giant billboard on the southbound 101 freeway was recently scrawled with the message: “Unplug!”
It didn’t last long. Apple had the billboard replaced within a couple of days. It’s now been swapped for an entirely new iPod ad. (The picture is a couple of months old. I’ve been meaning to post it for a while.)
Gratis Internet, the company behind FreeiPods.com, was sued by New York’s attorney general on Thursday for selling e-mail addresses in what’s been described as “the biggest deliberate breach of Internet privacy ever.”
The AP reports:
“Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Gratis Internet of selling personal information obtained from millions of consumers despite a promise of confidentiality.
The consumers thought they were simply registering to see a Web site offering free iPod music players or DVD movies and video games, Spitzer spokesman Brad Maione said. On sign-up pages, Gratis promised it “does not … sell/rent e-mails.”
Instead of confidentiality, Spitzer said, Gratis sold access to their e-mail information to three independent e-mail marketers, and hundreds of millions of e-mail solicitations followed.
Designer Derek Yee won a prestigious honor for his fantastic work on my Cult of iPod book.
Derek’s work was selected as one of the best design pieces last year by Step Inside Design magazine, a leading journal that every year runs a competition to find the 100 top designs.
Derek, who runs Octopod Studios, was honored in the Editorial category. Derek also designed my Cult of Mac book.
Step Inside says:
The front cover, which met initial opposition from Yee’s colleagues, successfully avoids generic iPod imagery, while referencing its predecessor, The Cult of Mac. Yee, founder of Octopod Studios, reflects, “I really wanted to stay away from anything that showed an actual iPod, that was silhouetted, or had white ear buds and wires. I didn’t want to sell the iPod. I wanted to sell the people that love their iPods. And I wanted to do it in a way that was pure.”
An experiment by CNet to see whether copy-protected music files sucked the life out of player’s batteries is interesting but flawed.
According to CNet, DRM copy-protected music can decrease battery life by up to 25 percent thanks to the processing overhead necessary to play them.
But as one commentator on the story points out, the test compared protected WMA files with unprotected MP3 files. It should have compared protected-WMA to unprotected WMA, or Apple’s FairPlay AAC versus unprotected AAC.
FreeiPods.com, the wildly popular marketing scheme that offers free iPods for trying out various subscription offers, sold the data it gathered on 7.2 million Americans to an email advertising firm, according to a story at Wired News by my colleague Ryan Singel.
(New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer) announced Monday that e-mail marketing giant Datran Media had agreed to a $1.1 million fine for knowingly buying marketing lists from companies with privacy policies that promised not to sell or transfer the lists to a third party.
… Datran’s biggest purchase, according to the text of the settlement (.pdf), was a list of 7.2 million Americans’ names, e-mail addresses, home phone numbers and street addresses from Gratis Internet, a company best known for promising free iPods, televisions and DVDs to users willing to sign up for promotions offered by partners such as Citibank, Blockbuster and BMG’s music club.
The sites inspired dozens of “Is there really such a thing as a free iPod?” stories in the press (including one by Wired News), and internet forums were packed with pleas for information on how to acquire a free version of Apple Computer’s signature fetish item. The freebie required a registrant to sign up five others into the program, and eventually the legalized pyramid scheme reached its inevitable saturation point.
While many did indeed get a free iPod, all ended up with inboxes full of marketing pitches, which began showing up within hours of registering.
Gratis lied to me for the story I wrote originally about the company (also linked above), which did wonders for their early credibility, and then lied again for a follow-up story I wrote about it’s privacy practices that was prompted by the avalanche of spam its customers mysteriously received.
In addition, Gratis Internet was a member of Truste, which provides a “privacy seal” to companies it says have a trusted privacy policy.
When asked by Wired News in 2004 how third-party spammers got hold of Gratis members’ e-mail addresses, Truste said it could not find a problem with Gratis’ practices.
“The results of our investigation indicate that Gratis Internet did not violate their privacy policy,” Truste investigator Alexander Yap wrote in an October 2004 e-mail. “Truste did, however, work with them to strengthen and clarify their privacy statement.”
Several months later, Truste revoked Gratis’ seal of approval, then quickly reinstated it, then pulled it again, but declined to state publicly its reasons.
In the wake of this week’s settlement, Truste’s spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls, and executive director Fran Maier did not respond to e-mailed questions about why Truste never discovered the alleged sale or informed the public that Gratis was not adhering to its privacy policy.
As a million posts of New York Craiglist attest, there’s a lot of people on public transit wondering about the hottie across the way with the iPod on. What are they listening to? Will they go out with me?
The latter question is what “Missed Connections” is for, while the former may one day be answered by a device like the iPod Status.
Created by designer David Lu, the iPod Status is a “wearable information display” — a small screen attached to a shoulder strap that displays the song and artist information for a currently-playing tune.
“Many of us have taken rides on public transportation and wondered what the interesting-looking person beside us is listening to,” says a description. “IPod Status is intended to encourage social connectedness by making this hidden information visible.”
The device — presumably a prototype — was shown at the Seamless Fashion Show in Boston last month. More photos from the show on Flickr.
Take a craft knife, an iPod nano, some iPod Linux and a copy of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and what do you get?
Pacman on an iPod in its own 6-inch tall arcade cabinet!
It is possible to get audiophile quality sound out of an iPod, but probably not from Apple’s iPod Hi-Fi boombox, says technologist Tim Bray.
“I gather that on stage today, Mr. Jobs freely flung about the word ‘audiophile’ while pitching the new iPod Hi-Fi. Well, I’m one of those: wrote for the mags, have gear from obscure British manufacturers, turn off a fridge thirty feet away to listen. I’ll look forward to giving the Hi-Fi a listen. It seems fantastically dubious that something 43 cm wide, with a listed bass floor of 53Hz (the bottom string on a bass is 42Hz), weighing 6.6kg, and costing $349, could actually produce ‘audiophile’ sound.”
Bray, Sun’s Director of Web Technologies, suggests instead plugging in a good pair of in-ear canalphones. Bray recommends Etymotics or Shure. I have a pair of Xtrememac FS1, which have heartier bass than the Shure or Etymotic. But Bray says most important of all…
… get your music off CDs and use lossless compression. The D/A in an iPod is really not bad at all; if you send all of the music through it and play it through first-class transducers, you’ll be happy.
Anna of iPorn Directory (definitely not safe for work) writes via email:
“I wanted to let you know that I’ve started a new site (totally free) that indexes all of the web’s free iPod porn — https://www.iporndirectory.com.
There are videos and links to podcasts, etc. as well as reviews and ratings of each site.
I started this site for fun, after getting my video iPod and finding out how difficult it was to find porn in mp4 format!”
The skeptical commentators at MacShrine were right: the picture of a video iPod posted to every website on the Net last week is as phony as a three-pound note.
Proof? This video at YouTube, which shows how the image was constructed step-by-step.
Also in the comments to the MacShrine post below is a link to a news story about this obviously phony iPod/Newton hybrid, which purports to sport a 260GB hard drive, runs “OS X for Handhelds,” is loaded with a bunch of lite iLife aps, and has WiFi and Bluetooth.
Wasn’t this posted a couple of years ago to the iLounge mockup galleries or The Apple Collection? I don’t have time to go look, but I’m sure I’ve seen this before.
Anyway, from the MacShrine comments comes the following translation:
G5 (imagine display? I guess it’s a new apple product line)
260GB 128MB FLASH EPROM
capacity:260GB, stores 1202000songs; 128MB FLASH EPROM500MHz
CPU: Motorola Dragonball 500MHZMAC OS X for Handhelds 7.1
OS:MAC OS X for Handhelds 7.1Safari 1.1 Quicktime player Handheld Editon 7.1 iTunes 5 Address Book 1.3 iPhoto 4 Handheld Editon Salling Cliker 2.1 Apple Media Manager 2.1
Firmware software: Safari 1.1 Quicktime player Handheld Editon 7.1 iTunes 5 Address Book 1.3 iPhoto 4 Handheld Editon Salling Cliker 2.1 Apple Media Manager 2.1WiFi
Connectivity: Wifi, bluetooth, firewire[ ]
The dude’s name. Mr. Liu
An interview I did with the charming Dr. Moira Gunn of Tech Nation about iPod mania, iPod culture, and my Cult of iPod book is currently airing on various NPR stations. Dr. Gunn is such a skilled interviewer, she even makes a stuttering idiot like me sound reasonable.
The interview is also available as an MP3 download from the IT Conversations website.
The iPod nano is now shipping in a smaller, cheaper version. Available immediately is a 1 Gigabyte model for $150, Apple said in a release.
This is a great deal. The nano is a fully functional iPod and a gorgeous piece of electronic jewelery. With a fabulous little color screen, the 1 gigabyte nano holds up to 240 songs or 15,000 photographs.
Apple also cut the price of the screen-less iPod shuffle: the 512 megabyte version now costs $70 and the 1 gigabyte model costs $100.
Wow. What a knockout quarter Apple had — posting income of $5.75 billion, it’s best ever. Most of the cash came from 14 million iPod sales — three times what it sold this time last year. But the company also saw 20 percent growth in Mac sales, shifting 1.25 million Macs. What surprises me is these were lame duck machines — soon to be made obsolete by new Intel boxes.
Wall Street’s a little bit worried though about the current quarter, which Apple said will be lower than projections due to “a pause” in Mac sales as the product lineup switches to Intel, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There was also “a pause” in sales the previous quarter, Reuters reports. If that’s true, what will sales of Intel Macs be like when the lineup is filled out this year? A quick skim of the earnings call reports doesn’t mention any guidance about supplies — but my gut is it’ll go gangbusters, but supplies will be constrained and Apple won’t be able to keep up. I think Apple’s going to have an unbelievable year, and this is just the beginning.
I must admit, I’ve got the hots for first lady Laura Bush. And now I find she uses an iPod, just like her evil nincompoop husband. She’s got abysmal taste in music though.
Mrs. Bush also revealed that her IPod listening includes songs by Tina Turner and Dolly Parton. She said her musical tastes are somewhat different from those of her husband.
“He likes country music a little bit more than I do, although I actually really am very fond of country music, as well,” she said. “One of the songs on my IPod that I love is Dolly Parton singing ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ So that’s sort of a combination, country and pop.”
Image by Ben McLeod on Flickr.
(Via iLounge)
Accessories for the iPod seem to be getting more and more niche. There’s the iPod boxer shorts, of course, and now here’s a $35 pair of gloves with special electrically-conductive fiber in the thumb and index fingertips. The fibre allows control of the iPod clickwheel without taking the mitts off.
As retailer J&R explains:
“The clickwheel on iPods functions by detecting the minute electrical charge in fingers and tracking it as it moves from point-to-point. Gloves adds a layer of insulation between fingers and the clickwheel’s surface, blocking the electronic sensors. Tavo’s new gloves allows charge to pass through the gloves from fingers to iPod’s clickwheel.”
The gloves also feature a “Gripper palm” to stop you dropping your precious music player in a big puddle of slush.
The Associated Press has the most incredible story about Dick Cheney’s travels to Iraq and Afghanistan in a silver, cargo-plane mounted Winnebago, and the precedence the charging of his precious iPod took over all other matters.
The vice president is an iPod fan, and keeping it charged is a priority for his staff.
Normally that isn’t an issue, even when he’s flying around the world. Air Force II is equipped with outlets in each row of seats.
But when Dick Cheney was traveling home overnight Wednesday from his diplomatic mission, most of the outlets went on the fritz.
Working passengers began lining up their laptops to share the power from a couple of working outlets — particularly the reporters who urgently needed to prepare their articles to transmit during a quick refueling stop in England.
But when Cheney said his iPod needed to be recharged, it took precedent above all else and dominated one precious outlet for several hours. The vice president’s press staff intervened so a reporter could use the outlet for 15 minutes to charge a dead laptop, but then the digital music device was plugged back in.
That way, Cheney got his press coverage and his music, too.
Of all the iPod nuts I’ve met, and read and written about, this description of Cheney beats them all. In fact, the story is so preposterous, it beggars belief. But maybe it tells a lot about the man: his power, the self-absorbtion, a surprising obsession with music.
If previous reports are true, the iPod was a Christmas present from his daughters.
Google’s year-end Zeitgeist — a roundup of the year’s most popular search terms — is full of iPod action; at least, the “Froogle” section, which is devoted to online shopping, is. The iPod’s various flavors crop up in four of the top 10 Froogle searches, including the number one position.
1. ipod
2. digital camera
3. mp3 player
4. ipod mini
5. psp
6. laptop
7. xbox
8. ipod shuffle
9. computer desk
10. ipod nano
Public domain Torrents has links to more than 500 movies in the public domain available for download via BitTorrent. Most are compatible with the video iPod.
There’s a lot of silent-era stuff, but also a rich vein of kitsch trash, including clunkers from Ed Wood (Plan 9 from Outer Space), George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) and a Russian psychotronic/cult/camp sci-fi oddity called Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.
King of Kong Island seems typical. According to the IMDB review:
An Italian Spanish Co-production with America’s own Dick Randall involved in the ‘presenting’- King of Kong Island mixes horror movie, nudie-cutie and jungle adventure with toppings of National Geographic stock footage- all set to a jungle beat of exotica.
Eric Wolfe, a 17-year-old senior, met his girlfriend when he “jacked” into her iPod in a darkened cinema.
IPod jacking is when two strangers swap headphone jacks to sample each others’ music. It’s one way to discover new music, and can be used to break the ice. IPod jacking was a lot easier when iPods were rarer, and the white earbuds signified membership of an exclusive club.
Eric is from La Quinta, California, near Palm Springs. He met his girlfriend, Bailey Smith, at an outside mall called “The River,” which has a movie theater.
Here’s Eric’s story, as told via a recent IM-terview (which I’ve lightly edited to make it easier to read):
ERIC: so i was here at “the river” with a couple friends
i had my ipod on me, like i always do, (it’s as normal as taking my wallet)
and i saw a girl walk into the movie theatre with her friends….. i notice the famous white earbuds and knew she had an ipod.i convinced my friends to move down a couple rows closer to the screen
so when i was walking down i plugged in my earbuds and put on a cute song real quick i thought she might like….. i sat 2 seats to her side
i waited till she glanced over at me( i was kidna lucky she ever did)
so i looked back at her and put on a small smile and said hi
she seemed friendly
so i asked what she was listening to while taking out her headphone and plugging in mine
she was a little confused at first but then laughed when she realized what i was doing
ME: cheeky
haha yeah…. i was kinda nervous but i pulled it off
we only had a couple minutes to introduce introduce each other and talk about music before the movie started
but that’s pretty much it…. i got her screenname
before we left
ME: what was the song you chose for her to listen to?
hopeless love by daphne loves derby
ME: and what was she listening to?
dark blue by jack’s mannequin
ME: so you approved of each other’s taste in music?
she liked what i had, i wasn’t too fond of jack’s mannequin, but its grown on me since
ME: how long you been going out?
3 months
a little over
ME: you have any other ipod jacking stories?
just one other… i “kinda” knew the girl though
she was an old friend’s little sister
i just used it to “break the ice”… it seemed more interesting than saying “hey, are you josh’s little sister?”
ME: so — you’re a serial jacker?
haha
ME: what kind of music do u like? name a couple of bands.
a thorn for every heart, boys night out, the academy is, armor for sleep, bloc party, brand new, dashboard confessional, the early november, emery, the faint, halifax, hellogoodbye, mae, matchbook romance, motion city soundtrack, northstar, panic! at the disco, park, the plain white t’s, the postal service, silverstein
typical ’emo’ stuff
that was a bit more than a couple, but thats just off the top of my head
ME: so it’s a good way to approach girls?
most definitely
UK blogs Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny have named the iPod Shuffle as this year’s “Must Chav Gadget.”
A chav is slang for a member of Britain’s “peasant underclass” — a lowlife, in other words.
Says Tech digest:
The shuffle is perfect for chavs. It’s cheap. It’s by a cool brand, and you can let others know you have one as it is designed to be worn round your neck. As it is white it also accessorises well with those classy gold chains Chavs wear. The sad part is that the shuffle is the worst player in the Apple range — more like some dodgy back street knock-off than the excellent other iPods. The fact it has no screen so you can’t program it or choose a track — it chooses the music for you — also saves Chav brain cells for the much more important business of, ahem, pimping their rides.
Second prize went to the Motorla Razr — “standard fixture for every Tom Dick and Chav.”
The New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005.
Podcast will be added to the next online update of the dictionary in early 2006.
EIC Erin McKean said, “Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept. This year it’s a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon.”
The runners-up included:
bird flu
IED
lifehack
persistent vegetative state
reggaeton
rootkit
squick (“cause immediate and thorough revulsion”)
sudoku
trans fat
Unlike Sony, which is using fake graffiti to promote the PSP, this iPod graf from New Zealand appears genuine.
Skwat is a Belgian T-Shirt designer who sells a range of Apple-themed “Wear Different” t-shirts featuring Japanese anime-style characters.
The shirts depict chibi iPod users giving the thumbs up, and Steve Jobs holding an iMac. There’s even Jobs and Steve Wozniak holding an early Mac.
The site (Flash — eugh) allows you to send some of the images as e-cards.
(Thanks Michael Agustin)
This bed from New Zealand has a built-in iPod dock. It’s billed as “the world’s first iPod compatible bed.”
Of all the attributes of a bed, iPod compatibility is about the last thing you’d look for, I’d think. But it’s actually quite handy if you use the iPod’s sleep timer and alarm.
Most of all it illustrates the iPod’s incredible impact on audio — the bed is now another iPod accessory!
Says the website:
“Optional accessories include a minimalist side lamp and aluminium tray, but perhaps the most exciting feature is how the shelves can seamlessly accommodate an iPod and Bose speaker system.”
(Via MacFeber)