iPod - page 27

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 Put Porn On Your iPod

HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod

Apple: Creating Video for iPod (with $30 QuickTime Pro).

See also:

iSquint: convert video to iPod friendly formats

Compressing iPod Video: Finding the Perfect Fit

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.”

Quick update concerning porn on the iPod. Last week, Suicide Girls launched a weekly porny-podcast, SGTV. I wrote cofounder Lauren Suicide asking how it was going. She replied:

“everything is going great with the new SGTV stuff! In 24 hours after the launch we had 500,000 downloads of the new featurettes, and then the three days after that we had one million downloads, which is huge.

It’s been pretty consistent since then, I think we’ll do a million downloads/week average. The other cool thing is that after we launched SGTV we suddenly shot to #24 on all of itunes podcasts for the radio show we do on Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles.”

IPodMyBaby.com is running a contest to find the World’s Cutest Baby —
and the top prize is a family of iPods: a video iPod, a Nano, a Shuffle, “and much more,” according to the site.

IPodMyBaby is the baby-clothing operation of iPodMyPhoto.

The rules are:

“In order to participate, the baby must be photographed wearing the iPodMyBaby Click Wheel Outfit or the (newly added) Click Wheel Long Sleeve T-shirt. Submissions must be sent to ipodmybaby@gmail.com by 11:59 PM Pacific Time on December 15th, 2005. The winner will be determined by our celebrity panel of Judges. Their decision will be final.”

The contest opens today, and I’m one of the judges — bribe details to leander -AT- cultofmac.com ;-).

Apparently Yegor Simpson of SmashMyiPod.com didn’t get a note I sent him a few days ago asking why he smashed an older, cheaper iPod and what he did with the extra money he raised.

(I know e-mail isn’t reliable but there’s no other contact details in the Whois database or on the web that I could find).

Simpson sent a note earlier today in response to yesterday’s post, accusing me of fabricating “lies” about his project. He wrote:

“Everything I need to say has been posted on my site. I didn’t receive any emails from you other than the initial interview questions which I answered.

Where is the base for your hypothesis that we scammed everyone? We bought a 4g ipod, since video (5g) wasn’t available at the time, and smashed it. I agree video sucked, but we didn’t scam anyone.”

I wrote back saying I didn’t make anything up, and that I noted widespread suspicion about why he bought and smashed an older iPod. I also asked what he did with the extra money that was raised.

Simpson replied:

“So your sources for the story were comments posted by ipod fans on engadget? Talk abou solid, unbiased info….. I hear ipod video screens cause impotence and hair loss.

Anyhow…..

Ipod cost us $365 cnd. That’s due to the unexpected “student discount” of $50. We planned for $415 cnd, which was the price on their site (including 15% sales tax). We raised $550 usd “on paper” but you forget that paypal takes a large % of especially when you have a lot of small payments. In the end we got about $120 cnd of usable surplus, which I used to pay the hosting bills.

The only “pocket money” I’m making from this is coming from the ads.”

Instead of dressing up as an iPod for Halloween, this iPod was dressed up for Halloween — as the Grim Reaper.

It must have been hacked for the screen to display the reaper’s face. He’s quite a friendly little fellow, for a reaper.

Update: Reader Trevin Ward in the comments suggests something that never occurred to me: that the iPod is an iPod photo. No hacking required!

Even dogs dress up as iPods on Halloween.

This group of Halloween revelers coordinated their costumes: it’s the entire iPod lineup!

Apple has sold more than 1 million videos in three weeks through the iTunes music store.

“Selling 1 million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads,” said CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods.”

The ITunes store offers about 2,000 music videos, popular TV shows and shorts from Pixar.

In 2003, when the iTunes store launched, it sold one million songs in its first week.

Yegor Simpson, the 19-year-old student behind SmashMyiPod.com, has finally posted video of his iPod smashing — but it’s not worth watching.

About 10 minutes long, the first nine minutes is the deadly-dull documentation of Yegor buying the iPod at an Apple store.

The last minute or two concerns the actual smashing, but there’s not much joy in it. Simpson and a friend first try to smash the iPod inside the Apple store, underfoot, but are escorted out. They finish the job on the sidewalk with a hammer. It’s pretty joyless.

To refresh: Simpson raised more than $500 in donations to buy and smash an iPod. He promised to post video for the jollies of everyone concerned.

The actual smashing happened last week but until now was no video. Simpson did post pictures — but of an older $300 iPod, not a brand new $500 one. This raised a lot of suspicion he was pulling an elaborate scam.

“They collected $400 (+$151 extra) and spent it on an iPod 20GB???” noted one skeptic among many at the Engadget blog. “How stupid. They probably already owned the 20GB, smashed it, and bought a brand new 5th gen for themselves. Anyone that donated is officially a sucker.”

Over at TUAW, there was a similar note of suspicion: “The guy had a destroyed 4G, got the $400, and got a new 5G,” wrote one commentator. “He smashed up the 4G good and is laughing all the way to the Apple store with a new iPod.”

Scam.com says it was an “obvious scam.”

Simpson didn’t respond to a request for comment. But in the video, you can see him buying a new iPod for yourself.

Meanwhile, Simpson is full steam ahead with his other smashing projects: SmashMyXBox, SmashMyPS3, and SmashMyRevolution.