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)
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.
