With four overindulged kids ages nine through 13, it’s hard to find presents to keep them entertained for more than ten minutes.
UCreate Music, made by Mattel, is a battery-powered, music-making system that allows kids to mix their own music. The little plastic box rips samples from your iPod or Mac and was on several hot Holiday toy lists. Perfect for that left-over Christmas gift card, the Kahney kids have been testing it out.
The iPod is always a tricky thing to manipulate in this chapping, frostbiting weather. In the December wind, the hand freezes quickly in a contorted, blue-skinned claw around the iPod Classic; fingers pressed against the iPhone’s frigid touchscreen tend to break off like icicles at the tips.
For iPod manipulation in these hypothermic months, then, a solution, courtesy of alpine gear makers, The North Face. They’ve just introduced two new jackets — the Hustle Audio Jacket for guys, the Femphonic Audio Jacket for women — which builds an iPod remote right into the sleeves. You can change tracks, play, pause and wiggle the volume around without once exposing your fingers to the ice-fanged bite of the season.
North Face jackets tend to be expensive, so you can expect to pay $350 for both the Hustle and Femphonic audio jackets, but while that’s a couple hundred dollars more than what you can theoretically buy an off-brand winter coat for, it’s only a $50 premium over North Face’s usual coat prices.
Canadian researchers have developed an add-on that makes iPods easy to use for people with disabilities.
Called the CanPlay podWiz, it lets users control off-the-shelf Apple iPod Nanos by using knuckles, jaw muscles and voice prompts. It’s a black box with a microcomputer that acts as a switcher for external commands that are delivered through a range of means and can be wheelchair mounted. (Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any pics available).
It’s the brainchild of CanAssist, a research lab at the University of Victoria, which has also developed a host of cool ideas from the Polecam Power Chair and to a launcher that wheelchair users can throw balls to their dogs with.
125 CanPlay podWizzes will be given to young Canadians this Christmas, but director Neil Livingston says he’s in touch with Apple to make the product commercially available through its distribution network. No word on how much it might cost.
Via Globe and Mail
Although they’re certainly not head turners like the 3D head tracking patent Ed wrote about earlier today, Apple’s latest two patents describing improvements to the iPod interface are at least more likely to hit a device you own sometime soon.
The first patent suggests on how an iPod or iPhone might track an individual user’s preferences in order to improve the overall user experience. For example, if you skip the first 22 seconds of a particular song consistently, your iPod would automatically skip it for you next time you tried to play it. The same approach could be used for volume, equalizer settings, etc, as well as dimming songs in the track listings that are continuously skipped in favor of bolding ones that a user prefers.
Apple’s other patent application is pretty simple, but it’s a great, common sense idea: when a user tries to play a video on their iPod or iPhone, the operating system does a quick check against the battery life to determine if there’s enough juice left to play the whole thing, and, if not, warns the user.
Both patents seem like pretty useful additions to the iPod’s already robust user interface, and fairly easy to implement to boot. Don’t be surprised to see these features creep into an update sometime soon.
Every time Toshiba unveils a new NAND module, you should take note: that’s going to be a meaningful storage capacity when it’s time for Apple to refresh it’s line of iPhone OS devices.
Apple’s current line of flash-based devices, the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch, use Toshiba’s NAND flash memory modules to achieve their svelteness. The iPhone 3Gs uses a single 16GB or 32GB Toshiba NAND module, while the iPod Touch uses dual Toshiba NAND modules to double the storage.
Flash storage capacity roughly doubles every year, so it’s no surprise that Toshiba has just announced that they have now doubled the maximum capacity of its NAND modules from 32GB to 64GB. That means that next year’s refresh of the iPhone and iPod Touch should see the former packing 64GB of internal flash storage, while the latter will likely max out at 128GB.
128GB of storage is a magic number for the iPod Touch: 128GB means I can finally get rid of my 160GB iPod Classic and cram my iTunes library onto a Touch without worrying about juggling albums around like some sort of Walkman-wielding, early eighties troglodyte. For me, the whole point of living in music’s digital age is that there shouldn’t be a problem walking around with sixty two days worth of music crammed into my front pocket.
My guess is that once the iPod Touch gets to 128GB, you can say goodbye to the iPod Classic once and for all. It just no longer serves a point. Who thought your end-of-line would be written by Toshiba, though?
Vacuuming is one of those mundane chores that can’t be helped much by listening to your iPod.
The beast whirs and whines over whatever soundtrack you try to stuff into your ears while hoovering over stale cornflakes.
Recognizing this immense problem, Electrolux invented a concept vacuum called the UltraSilencer. It’s so quiet, that you can dock your iPod on the front and built-in speakers on the sides blast your fave whistle-while-you-work tunes. (Perhaps to avoid a lawyer king-of-the-hill match they’ve put some iPod-like MP3 player in the mock-up).
Harrods department store launched this limited edition 24 karat gold-plated iPod backed by a good cause they hope will induce Scroogy types to part with some extra cash this holiday season.
Laser engraved with the autograph of footie superstar Frank Lampard, the 8GB Midas iPod goes for £264.50 ($440 circa) or £433.81 (64GB) ($722 circa), that’s about £100 over the regular UK retail price for the 8G and £130 for the 64GB.
Lampart will donate all of his royalties from sales to the Teenage Cancer Trust.
This is hardly the first blingy benefit iPod — UK company Gold Genie which is behind this effort seems to be specialized in them — but it will be interesting to see how well they sell in these Bah Humbug! times.
Square-Enix’s cute little RPG, Song Summoner was an adorable little time waster back when it was released back in July of 2008 for the Apple iPod. It’s gameplay was a fusion between the tactical, turn-based stategy battles of Final Fantasy Tactics and the creature creation of Monster Rancher, an old PlayStation game in which you created unique Pokemon-like monsters to fight for you by plugging CDs into your console. Song Summoner worked similarly, allowing you to pick any MP3 on your iPod and create a unique soldier to fight for you, with stats and appearance plucked by algorithm from the data of the track.
It was a game I eagerly bought and desperately wanted to love. There was only one problem: even though it was released in 2008, and the iPhone and iPod Touch had been available for over a year, Song Summoner was a click-wheel game, only available on Apple’s non-touchscreen iPod line. Fast forward a year and a half, though, and Square-Enix is finally correcting that misstep: for $10, you can now pick up an updated version of Song Summoner subtitled “The Unsung Hereos” on the App Store. It contains the first Song Summoner came, as well as a sequel that is speculated to have gone unreleased thanks to Apple ending support for click-wheel games. There’s also a free lite version available for you to try.
If you’re looking to do some gaming this weekend, give Song Summoner a shot. The original was a blast despite the control scheme; for $10, I think the touchscreen version should probably be one of the better and more content rich games to hit the App Store this month.
Two guards in Washington, D.C. were arrested after allegedly smuggling in must-have items for prisoners — namely iPods, cell phones and chargers.
An inmate tipped off the FBI in October 2008 that corrections officers were getting contraband tech — along with the usual stuff like cigarettes — for a price to prisoners.
Two male corrections officers and a female security guard were arrested this week for federal bribery charges on suspicion of accepting cash to smuggle cellphones and iPods. The men are now on administrative leave, the woman was released on personal recognizance.
An undercover FBI agent posing as the brother of an inmate bribed one of the men $300 to smuggle an iPod and charger inside the big house.
Why are iPods verboten in prison?
According to an email sent to Washington Post’s Crime Scene blog , Apple devices are so sought after they constitute a security hazard:
“Inmates may use the components of devices such as iPods to compromise security equipment within the correctional facility. In addition, such items are in high demand and may be stolen or used by inmates to gamble with others…this has the potential to trigger conflict, assaults and other violent behavior.”
Wonder if the playlist on the decoy iPod had “I Fought the Law” on it or some irony-free offerings…
Via Crime Scene
The folks over at Instructables have a very timely winter tutorial on hacking your winter gloves so that you don’t have to freeze your digits off to use your iPhone or iPod as the temperature falls.
You’ll need conductive thread, a sturdy needle and enough sewing capability to execute a few stitches without stabbing your eye out.
While there are a bunch of ways to get the touch back into your warm woolies — like Freehands or Dots gloves — we’re talking about the cheap-o version again since this step-by-step tutorial also mentions where to get a small amount of conductive thread, instead of a $20 spool, to sew into the tips for $3.95.
At that price, you can afford to give it a go — before resorting to fingerless gloves to answer your iPhone in winter.
‘Tis the season: Italian magazines are chock full of ads for this sleek iPod dock and bedside lamp called “Diva.”
Designed by Dante Donegani and Giovanni Lauda for Italian firm Rotaliana, it’s an LED light and music system whose polycarbonate, anodized aluminum curves are all in the right places.
Clutter phobes will appreciate the retractable docking station and arm for the light. The docking station, suitable for iPods and iPhones, has four 6-watt speakers, plus an FM radio and USB socket if you’d rather play music from a flash drive. The whole shebang can be commanded via an infrared remote control. She comes in black, gray or white.
At €360 euro (circa $535) one would have to offer molto proof of saintly behavior to Santa for this one.
A man appealing his conviction for murdering a British student in Italy testified Wednesday that he heard the victim arguing with an American defendant in the case minutes before she was slain — while in the bathroom listening to his iPod.
In November 2007, British student Meredith Kercher was murdered in Italy, during a study abroad program in hill town Perugia.
In October 2008, 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 now on trial.
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 out of commission during the murder while in the bathroom of the young women’s apartment.
Are you looking for a way to keep you iPod or iPhone charged, but not happy with the bulky options out there? PhoneSuit introduces the Primo battery, a compact mini battery unit that attached to your dock connector port. The unit’s 800mAh battery claims to power your iPod for up to 45 hours of music playback, or three hours of talk time on your iPhone 3G. The lithium-ion battery is good for 500 charges, according to PhoneSuit.
To charge the Primo, simply use the included USB cable to plug into any USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 outlet. A LED meter displays the battery’s remaining charge – when the LED turns blue you are fully charged.
The Primo costs $35 per unit or $89.95 for a three-pack. The mini charger comes with a 1-year warranty.
BBC reporter Sharif Sakr took a top-of-the line Yamaha PDX50 dock (about $250 plus the iPod) and put it up against a secondhand stereo system (with CD player, amps and speakers) estimated cost, $80.
Then he wrangled about 10 passersby to get an earful of Pavarotti warbling. They told him which sounded better — though they couldn’t see which device was pumping out the opera.
Almost everyone — 8/10 — preferred the secondhand stereo, to the highly-rated Yamaha dock calling the sound warmer, fuller and more crisp.
Like a lot of people, I’ve got an iPod dock, but it’s not replacing my stereo. It lives in the kitchen, where sound (as in listening to the Car Talk podcast while flipping French toast) more than sound quality is important.
How many of you just use an iPod dock instead of a stereo system?
Via BBC
Virgin Atlantic Airways recently released an app for flying phobes. Called Flying Without Fear it’s modeled on the company’s brick and mortar course which they claim has a 98% success rate.
What do you get for $4.99? Well, a reassuring message from Mr. Hot Air Balloon
Sir Richard Branson himself, plus relaxation exercises, answers to fear-based questions, fear therapy and a handy inventory of on-board noises so you know everything’s ok.
Whoopie Goldberg recently got her wings back after an airplane hiatus of over 10 years thanks to the Virgin course:
“The program works, I was a skeptic. I hadn’t flown in 13 years but after doing their program, I understood that while my fear was real, there were many things I didn’t know or had misinformation about, which they were able to clear up. So what happened? I now fly. It’s that simple.”
While not everyone can attend Virgin’s £199 ($326) full day course, it’s worth wondering whether an iPod app can substitute the real thing.
I once had a co-worker for whom flying was a real drama — he ended up in such a state he regularly had to be taken off planes and usually booked multiple times before able to stay aloft in the friendly skies — and I don’t know if passengers more than a little discomfited by air travel would benefit by a few reassuring words and games.
Hearing his story, I also wonder if you’d be able to use the app during take off and landing, which seemed to be the critical moments.
Powered by good old valves, the Wall of Sound iPod Speaker claims to the most powerful iPod speaker available.
It’s for “people who believe that music should be listened to loudly,” the company’s website says. “It looks frightening, and it IS frightening.”
Handmade by a company called by Brothers of Stockholm, the first edition of this monster speaker is sold out, so the company is taking pre-orders for a second gen speaker. Only $4,495.00 — sign up here.
Has streaming songs to your car’s FM radio become passe? Looking to go beyond in-car GPS for your iPhone? Sirius XM Radio Monday introduced the XM SkyDock, a hardware and software combo delivering satellite radio to your auto’s iPhone or iPod touch (1st and 2nd generation).
Along with listening to XM programming, you’ll be able to charge your iPhone or iPod. Subscribers can also tag songs they enjoy, purchasing them via the iTunes Store.
There’s a dirty little secret lurking within the hearts of iPhone and the iPod touch: neither of them is a particularly great music player. A lot of iPhone owners actually keep a separate iPod nano or classic with them to listen to their music libraries. I’m not one of them, but I’m thinking about it.
Don’t get me wrong. Syncing media to modern Apple handheld is the best such experience money can buy, and the actual playback and browsing experiences are in the top tier of media phones and Internet tablets. That doesn’t mean they’re great, though. For the most part, the iPod app found on the iPhone and touch is a fairly literal translation of the original iPod interface ported over to a much higher-end device, plus an overly complex Cover Flow mode — which doesn’t even work well with Playlists. And that’s kind of pathetic, given Apple’s ordinarily high standards.
This is not the usual case where Apple is so far ahead of the competition that it’s not even clear how a media player app should change as it migrates to a modern multitouch platform. The video linked above is the proposed Rachael UI for the media player app in Sony Ericsson’s Android-based phones. It’s not amazing, but it does a few things really, really well. Notably, it provides a lot of rich information on artist pages that brings back some of the feel of listening to a physical album, and it also makes it easy to find your favorites, recently added albums, and tracks, and your most recently played music — all on one screen. That alone, in my opinion, annihilates the best of the current iPhone music experience. And I think we’d all agree it’s a refreshing departure from either a long list of artists listed in alphabetical order as a home screen.
The Zune HD, though its UI is an overly stylized collection of wank, also does some interesting things with tagged favorites that show the untapped possibilities available in next-generation handheld music playback.
I’ve had my iPhone 3GS for about four months now, and I love everything about it — except that it doesn’t do a great job of helping me rediscover diamonds in the rough of my music collection. The iPod app is good enough, but it isn’t great yet. Here’s hoping that the old competitive spirit will push Apple to truly push the edges of what’s possible. Shouldn’t we be able to view iTunes LPs on the iPhone, at the very least?
Sony Ericsson’s “Rachael” Android UI: Android + Zune HD > iPhone [Gizmodo]
‘Tis the season for folks to bust out their best Home Ec skills (or their credit cards) in search of costumery to frighten and delight the young and old alike out trick or treating, or just looking for a few good laughs on Halloween.
Back in 2007, when the iPhone had been out just a few months, we saw a raft of costumes related to Apple’s newest technological wonderment. But so far in the succeeding years, we’ve not seen a whole lot of new takes on the idea and frankly, what we have seen has been pretty lame.
Look at the guy in the picture above. He had to be purposely dressing it down at a party full of Windows aficionados, right? But in the gallery that follows, we’ve had to reach back in time for things better than this. Apple fans seem to have fallen creatively short in recent years.
Is it possible nowadays to dress like a piece of technology known for its elegant design and not look like a complete (and uncomfortable) buffoon?
Let us know what you’ve found out there in comments below, or submit pics of your own awesome Apple-related costume designs and we’ll feature another gallery of the best down the road.
Today is the 8th birthday of the iPod and yes, though it hasn’t reached even a decade of life, it’s already the object of several museum exhibits.
Back in 2007, London’s Science Museum put out a national search for a first-gen iPod — CoM reader Joe Weiss answered the call.
Last year, his donated first gen iPod, together with all the original packaging plus unopened earbuds and software to the museum for posterity.
See it in the museum, find out what firewire had to do with it and whether he regrets giving over his iPod after the jump.
The first iPod launched on Oct. 23, 2001. It had a scroll wheel, cost $399, could store 1,000 songs and looks like a yoga block compared to later models.
This promo for the first-gen iPod is charmingly dated (only 6.5 ounces, over 10 hours of battery life! ) — though there must be a portrait of Jonathan Ive in an attic somewhere, he looks the same as he talks about it as one of his “most personal designs” at Apple.
Also stumping for the product, among others, are Moby (“I’m having a hard time getting my head around the fact that you can transfer a whole album on this in 10 seconds.”) and Steve Harwell from Smash Mouth (“You’ve got your own record store on this damn thing.”)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e84SER_IkP4
Unlike an 8-year-old human, an iPod that age doesn’t enjoy an increase in stamina or conversation at an almost adult level.
Mine (the best Christmas present I got the year it came out) is still in the graveyard drawer of iPods I Have Loved, however.
What do you remember most about your first iPod?
Anyone got a first gen that still works?
Two days after the US Consumer Product Safety Commission said it would launch an investigation into iPod battery issues, Apple updated its support document on battery overheating.
Here’s the main update:
iPod nano (1st generation): Rare cases of battery overheating
Apple has determined that in very rare cases, batteries in the iPod nano (1st generation) sold between September 2005 and December 2006, may overheat and prevent the iPod nano from working and deform it.Apple has received very few reports of such incidents, and the issue has been traced to a single battery supplier. Additionally, there have been no reports of such incidents with any other iPod nano model. If your battery shows signs of overheating, such as discoloration or deformity, stop using the iPod nano immediately and contact AppleCare as soon as possible for further assistance.
It’s an acknowledgment, but just, that comes two months after the EU announced it was going to investigate exploding iPods — and iPhones.
And what about the advice? Easy enough to spot an overheating device (as it melts and changes color) in hand, but if you’re jogging or have it in your back back, good luck.
Now that Apple has updated the iPod shuffle, giving it a new look (sort of like a Bic lighter), as well as more colors, what’s one to do with the tiny tie-clasp-like older MP3 players? One option: swap out the music for a mini MP3 DV camera.
Xiangyun Industries Co., Ltd. turns the old shuffles into a 1.3 megapixel 20 fps video camera capable of 640×480 or 1,280×960 pixel JPG photos.
The price is between $15-$30 but only order of 1,000 video shuffles, please. The little gadget sounds like a perfect stocking-stuffer or maybe even a spy cam.
[Via Engadget]
We’ve written a lot about the iPod Touch becoming a near-requirement at US universities, but iPod use may be on the uptick in North American grade schools, too.
One Florida elementary school has 80 iPods that some kids use to listen to audio books (instead of reading them, it seems) others do comprehension exercises and the wee ones watch videos teaching them about the five senses and then answer questions.
“It’s cool,” 11-year-old Devyn Cabral said, taking a break from Science Fair by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. “When you’re sitting at your desk and reading a book, it’s harder. It’s easier for me to comprehend by listening to it.”
Julianne Audino, 8, said she liked the iPods “better than reading, because we actually get to listen.”
Seven-year-old Dejah Staton wasn’t so thrilled.
“I’d rather read the book,” she said. “You can imagine it on your own. This is telling you.”
With Apple’s recent ridiculous app store refusals, now is the perfect time to free your phone. Jailbreaking your device might seem too difficult to take on, but by following the steps below you can easily add a video camera to your 3G, or tether your Macbook to your 3GS. This How-To will guide you through jailbreaking your specific device using either Pwnage Tool or Redsn0w. Also included are simple instructions to unlock your device, letting you use it with different carriers.
Note: 3GS, 2nd gen and 3rd-gen iPod Touch owners who have recently updated to firmware 3.1 cannot jailbreak their phones unless they revert back to 3.0.1.
