The FluffPod is now available for the iPod nano, its NYC manufacturer announced:
Slip into something more comfortable.
Fluffpod nano comes in two silky bright colors, a fabulous white and luscious pink. Both feature super silky soft satin lining and a poofy soft fur top.
If you don’t get an iPod this Christmas because they’re all sold out, download and print out this gorgeous paperPod.
This Japanese site also has a charming classic Mac.
Reports the Religion News Service:
A leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography.
Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, who co-chairs the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, said iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.
“Sadly, unwanted pornography often leads to wanted pornography,” Keeler told members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday.
(Via MyAppleMenu)
Wired News has a profile of one of podcasting’s first stars — an obscene, gay drag act from Chicago called Madge Weinstein.
A performance artist and one-time aspiring filmmaker who lives in Chicago, Bluestein appears to have successfully traded his former job in tech support at a local hospital for a life of spouting off on air.
He sees himself as one of those people for whom the new medium of podcasting has created opportunities where none existed. He had sporadically posted video blogs online and had performed as Madge around Chicago since 2000. Then, last November, stuck in a funk over President Bush’s 2004 re-election, Bluestein stumbled over (ex-MTV VJ Adam) Curry’s show and became obsessed with podcasting. Soon thereafter, Yeast Radio was born as an outlet for performing as Madge and for obscenity-laden political venting.
Curry, the ex-MTV VJ turned self-styled “podfather,” says he thinks Bluestein’s act is a scream and hired him in September as a member of Curry’s PodSquad stable of talent. Yeast Radio has been heavily promoted on Curry’s programs and Madge has subbed for Curry on his Sirius radio program from time to time.
…
“Richard is just the sweetest guy and he’s really spearheading this qPodder community with over 150 gay and lesbian podcasters (on the site), which is remarkable,” Curry said. “I mean, come on. Is this some big secret in advertising, that gays and lesbians are a good market? I don’t think so. If that’s not a market, let me go eat my shoe.”
Here’s one way to resolve the spat between Lugz footwear and Apple over the copycat Eminem iPod ad — combine them.
iPodz is a seamless mashup that advertises two products in one ad – the iPod and urban streetwear. It’s actually not a bad idea. The products and target audience are complementary.
(Via Fscklog)
There’s a lot of criticism of Apple’s copy-protection scheme, Fairplay, in the news today.
Tidbits Adam Engst describes the headaches he encountered trying to make an audio book, which had been split into four chunks, into one easy-to-use file — a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to do.
Newsweek columnist Steven Levy chastises Apple for refusing to license Fairplay and allow consumers to play iTunes songs on other devices.
Ex-Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg, now writing for Slate, wraps it up with a cogent explanantion of why we, the consumers, have to put up with limiting copy-protection schemes. It has little to do with protecting content, and everything to do with protecting business models:
While Apple stands alone and Sony self-destructs, Microsoft is practically giving away its digital-rights-management tool in an effort to pick up market share against Apple (so far with little success). We may even see a replay of the Apple-Microsoft battle over the desktop, which ended with Apple holding on to a tiny sliver of the computer market. There is, however, a big difference between then and now. Steve Jobs has a hefty market share and a massive content library made up of millions of songs at a price that people like. As long as the record companies license their content to Apple and consumers flock to the iPod, Apple is in a powerful — some might say Gatesian — position.
What’s hardest for the consumer to swallow, then, is that anti-piracy schemes like DRM look like the subtle tactic of the monopolist. Neither Apple nor Microsoft is hurt by music piracy. Instead, they use it as a marketing ploy to force people to use their products. It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies could agree on one standard that allows people to play the music they lawfully purchase on whichever player they choose. The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?
The iPod “Mega Helmet” was made by duct-taping a loud Radio Shack megaphone to an old motorcycle helmet, allowing its wearer to broadcast their taste in music to everyone in earshot. It also includes a microphone in the chin strap.
Its makers advise: “Go play softball wearing the helmet. It is very good for antagonizing the pitcher, and trash-talking in general. The helmet allows both for amplification of your voice, and playback of mp3s from the iPod.”
In the comments, someone else notes: “I’m Loving it! At the movie theater, not only can you block the view of the person sitting behind you but you can also make clever comments about the actors on the screen. Perhaps you could duct tape an egg timer to the side of the helmet to see how long it takes before you’re kicked out of the theater. I give it the maximum five star rating.”
(Via TUAW)
Love Labs, a UK sex-toy manufacturer, has devloped an iPod vibrator that buzzes in time to the music.
The 2-inch, $30 iBuzz plugs into the iPod’s headphone jack and vibrates in sync with the rhythms of the iPod.
The only online retailer that seems to be selling it — Lovehoney — describes it thus:
A super-fun sex toy that plugs into your iPod! The music-activated vibrating bullet stimulates you in time with your favourite music. And you can listen to your songs while you’re enjoying the vibrations…
Use the his-and-hers attachments to add extra excitement. Turn him into a vibrator with the stretchy ring and use the soft sleeve for sensitive stimulation.
Coming soon: the iLoad, a gizmo for loading CDs right onto the iPod. There’s no details except the promise it’s “coming soon” and this:
iLoad copies your CDs onto and iPod or other Digital Music Player, along with all album and track data at a high rate of speed.
The site says the “iLoad” trademark is owned by Wingspan Partners of Campbell, CA, which claims to be also working on a MagLev train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas!
I wonder why anyone would want a CD loader when the computer already does a pretty good job ripping CDs. And where will the track data come from? ITunes goes online to fetch them; will this?
(Via MacFeber)
Behold the i-Stones, a pair of stone iPod docking stations.
Sold by Brand Incubator of Japan, the i-Stones come in two models: Wabi and Sabi. They feature USB 2; audio and S-Video out.
Wabi-sabi, according to Wikipedia, “represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic.”
It is difficult to explain wabi-sabi in Western terms, but the aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete. A concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth – Dukkha.
… Many Japanese arts over the past thousand years have been influenced by Zen philosophy, particularly acceptance and contemplation of the imperfection, constant flux, and impermanence of all things. Such arts can exemplify a wabi-sabi aesthetic.
(Thanks Nobi!)
Recognizing the diversity of new distribution channels, the Daytime Emmys are about to announce a new award for video aired on computers, cellphones and video iPods, reports the New York Times.
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, best known for handing out the Daytime Emmy Awards, is expected to announce on Tuesday that it has created an award category to recognize original video content for computers, cellphones and other hand-held devices, like the video iPod and PlayStation Portable.
The category is to have its debut at the academy’s next Sports Emmys presentation, and ultimately be added as a category for other Emmy presentations as well, including those for news and documentary, business and financial reporting and daytime television. The category will not be included in the prime-time Emmy Awards, which are overseen by a sister organization.
Doom now runs on the iPod nano, the iDoom project has announced.
Check the video of Doom on the Nano.
Note: the game requires installation of iPodLinux first, which likely voids the warranty.
The iPod nano now ships with a little plastic sheath to protect it, notes a poster on the iLounge forums.
This is clearly a quick fix in the run-up to Christmas.
Says another iLounge poster:
I love Apple and I love my nano… But it seems this is sort of a lame attempt to admit guilt, well… maybe not guilt, but neglect on their part for not including a case with nanos to begin with. At the same time, no press release / news has been made about now including cases… Sneaky.
Let’s at least five them the benefit of the doubt that they’ll handle this properly and offer something to those who bought nanos already.
What ever happened with that lawsuit?
The Nimzy Vibro Blaster is an unfortunately named “vibrator” that turns any flat object into a speaker.
Developed by Digital Infotech of Singapore, the Nimzy Vibro Blaster transforms audio from an iPod or other gizmo into mechanical vibrations. Placed on a flat surface — wood, stone, glass or plastic — the company claims its “advanced electro acoustic technology” sounds “loud and clear!”
A wonderfully cheery e-mail from the company’s new US marketing operation in Plantation, Florida, proclaimed:
Believe it or not, no more bulky speakers, any flat object can become one…
Owners of IPODs or any other MP3 players can use Vibro Blaster to share their favorite music anytime, anywhere; Business executives can travel with this compact toy to do presentations with audio from laptop. Hence they become more convincing to the audience; bored in hotel room, travelers can enjoy their own music while conducting multiple tasks, most importantly, hear the phone ring!
Once again, Digital Infotech Inc brings more fun to life and work with innovative technology.
Here’s a link to the only product page I could find. Warning: the page makes a horrible racket.
Two more TV networks will begin offering primetime shows on demand for a buck a pop, but not through iTunes online store, reports Reuters, because of fears of digital piracy.
“NBC and CBS unveiled separate plans on Monday to make some of their hottest prime-time shows available for viewers to watch at their leisure — without commercials — for 99 cents an episode, throwing open the door to “on-demand” television,” the Reuters report says.
NBC will offer “Law & Order SVU” and “Criminal Intent,” “The Office,” and the cable show “Battlestar Galactica” to viewers with a DirecTV Plus DVR.
Likewise, CBS will offers four hit shows on demand — “CSI,” “NCIS,” “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” — to Comcast digital cable customers in various cities.
Both platforms are pretty well locked down, with no easy way for owners to get video off the settop boxes and onto file-sharing networks.
In a seperate Reuters report, NBC said it will offer movies and hit shows online only when watertight copy-protection mechanisms are in place.
“We can’t provide them (Google, yahoo and presumably Apple) with content unless they can adequately protect it,” said NBC Universal Chairman Bob Wright.
MacAlly’s mTune is a sweet looking set of cans with a dock for the iPod nano. Only $50 — though no ship date has been set.
They’re cordless, naturally, and don’t even require any batteries. There’s a standard jack for use with a computer or other music player.
Update: There’s also white headphones for the iPod shuffle!
A new BitTorrent tracker devoted to video, movies and music in iPod-friendly formats has just launched.
Called Podtropolis, the site says:
“Our streets are filled with loads of high quality content for your iPod including movies, television programs, music videos and of course music. All video is encoded in iPod compatible formats (H.264, MP4, M4V) so you do not need to bother with conversion.”
So far, the offerings are fairly thin: a dozen TV shows, half-a-dozen movies (including Pixar’s Finding Nemo — Steve Jobs isn’t going to like that), and a handful of music CDs.
However, there are dozens of music videos. It looks like people who’ve bought Apple’s $2 music videos through iTunes, which are pre-formatted for the iPod, are uploading them to BitTorrent.
Of course, BitTorrent is highly trackable. Use at your own risk, and karma.
Lugz footwear has sent Apple a legal cease-and-desist letter ordering it to pull the new Eminem iPod ad because of “disturbing” similarities to a 2002 Lugz spot called “Arrow,” according to AdWeek.
Larry Schwartz, evp and a principal of New York-based JSSI, which makes Lugz, said in a statement, “If you look at these spots, common sense would tell you that there’s a problem here. The Apple commercial uses the most powerful elements of our campaign, making the ads disturbingly similar. We are prepared to vigorously pursue all legal remedies in order to protect our rights.”
The Eminem ad was created by Apple’s longtime agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, which previously denied accusations of plaigarism.
BusinessWeek looks at the rapid commercialization of podcasting:
“In February, Volvo agreed to pay $60,000 for a six-month sponsorship of the monthly podcast of Weblog Inc.’s Autoblog, as well as advertising on the site itself. Over that period, the show was downloaded 150,000 times.
Because the number of listeners is changing fast, a flat-rate sponsorship can end up being a bargain or a bust. KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, cut a deal with Southern California Lexus Dealers for a sponsorship this summer, when the station was getting 20,000 downloads a week. Since then the number spiked to 100,000. When the Lexus deal ends, KCRW plans to charge $25 per thousand listeners. “Once we get out of this sweetheart deal, our goal is to cast our net as wide as possible,” says Jacki K. Weber, KCRW’s development director.
The rates podcasters are getting are attracting attention. Although there aren’t reliable figures for the whole field, the $25 per thousand listeners that KCRW plans to charge seems to be about average for popular podcasts. That’s pretty lofty, considering a New York City morning radio show charges between $12 and $15.
…Podcasters are experimenting with ways of pulling in money without advertising. This Week In Tech, an indie podcast with over 200,000 listeners, asks for $2 donations per month and rakes in around $10,000 a month.”
The iPod Halloween costumes are finally coming out of the woodwork in a big way, now that people are un-hungover enough to post them.
A search for “iPod” and “Halloween” tags at Flickr — the best place for this kind of thing — returns about 130 pix. There’s some pretty good ones, but this guy is my favorite.
The latest iPod experiment from Make’s Phillip Torrone is the iPod VR: a video iPod hooked to a pair of VR glasses.
Torrone says it works well, especially for long videos, and would be the thing to use on airplanes, if he weren’t more interested in seeing people’s reactions.
There’s more to come. He writes: “And as soon as I get time, controlling iTunes and iPods with a VR glove!”
I’ve gotten a few e-mails about this, so for reference:
HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod
Apple: Creating Video for iPod (with $30 QuickTime Pro).
See also:
Oregon Scientific’s iBall is a $300 wireless speaker that streams music from a dock up to 100 feet away.
The dock also charges the iPod and can sync it with your computer. On the other end, the speaker acts as a remote control for the iPod.
It’s a clever device with a clever name. Let’s hope it sounds good.
Tunewear’s BoomTune also caught my eye. It’s a $40 tripod speaker system that plugs directly into an iPod headphone jack. It’s also a clever design, and Tunewear says it “booms,” though I doubt that.
Two iPod-related websites went to war on Wednesday afternoon, with one trying to hijack the other’s visitors.
Buy Me an iPod .com briefly hijacked SmashMyiPod.com’s traffic — if you visited SmashMyiPod.com at about 4PM PST, you would have been redirected to Buy Me an iPod .com.
The hijacking was only possible because SmashMyiPod.com contained hidden code to Buy Me an iPod .com that was intended to overwhelm and crash the site, according to Travis LaMarr, Buy Me an iPod .com’s webmaster.
LaMarr, a 19-year-old student, said there was a link to his site hidden in an iframe on SmashMyiPod.com that was visible only when viewing the site’s source.
As a result, visitors to SmashMyiPod.com were served the contents of Buy Me an iPod .com, but never got to see the site. The tactic was intended to eat up Buy Me an iPod .com’s bandwidth and crash the site, LaMarr claimed.
Why would SmashMyiPod.com do this?
According to LaMarr, the site is unhappy with accusations he made calling the gadget-smashing project a “scam.”
“I call them a scam as everyone else is,” said LaMarr by IM. “I’m guessing (the iframe is) a way to sabotage me.”
So LaMarr added a script to his site that hijacked visitors to SmashMyiPod.com. The script worked only as long as SmashMyiPod.com contained the hidden iframe link.
The iframe has been removed, but can still be found in Google’s cache of the site. The redirect still works, and the hidden iframe can be seen if you view source and search for “buymeanipod.”
LaMarr said he found the hidden link when his visitors jumped overnight from 100 to 10,000 a day. He said he sent SmashMyiPod.com e-mail asking for the hidden link to be removed, but didn’t get a response.
“Yegor Simpson,” a 19-year-old student who runs SmashMyiPod.com, admitted inserting the link, but said he hasn’t received any e-mail asking for it to be removed.
“I got no e-mail from him,” said Simpson in an e-mail to me. “I did ask him to get rid of the scam comments about my site, he didn’t. So I’m doing it for him.”
LaMarr said he’s happy to get a link from SmashMyiPod.com, but he’d like one visitors can actually see.
“Hey, I’m all for the free publicity — 10,000 hits in a day (is) not bad. But no one can see it. I’d be fine with it if they posted a link to it, but they won’t.”
Engadget got its “sweaty paws” on the next version of Motorola’s iTunes phone — the SLVR L7 — and it looks like it’ll pipe music through wireless Bluetooth stereo headphones.
“… it has Bluetooth, a VGA digital camera, and a TransFlash memory card slot for storing up to 100 iTunes tracks, but there is one real surprise: the phone doesn’t have a headphone jack. Seems a bit odd for a phone with iTunes, but we’re hearing that Motorola will offer Bluetooth stereo headphones.”