Hey, what's this iPod thing everyone's fussing over?
Everyone knows by now that Apple released two new iPods today. One is the 20GB black U2 Special Edition iPod with the red clickwheel:
The U2 designation is for the engraved signatures of the 4 band members on the back of the iPod, a $50 gift certificate off the The Complete U2, a digital box set collecting over 400 U2 songs, and a U2 poster. Personally, I'd rather just have the option to customize the color of my iPod and its clickwheel. And what's a digital box set?! That term should be reserved for music that comes in a really cool physical package.
The other new iPod is the iPod Photo. Here is a photo of a photo on the iPod, umm, Photo:
The main problem? The only way to get my photos from my digital camera onto the iPod Photo is to first transfer the pics to my Mac laptop or desktop and then push them across via iTunes/iPhoto. I'm sure some third parties will introduce some media card readers, but I already have a gazillion media card readers and cables. I want less of those, not more. I would have preferred either a USB port for direct photo transfer or a media card slot (or both; I'm leaving wireless out at this point b/c it's probably too much to ask for). Then I could leave my laptop at home while traveling and simply xfer photos from my digital camera onto my iPod, using it as both portable music player and portable photo hard drive. While traveling, I could share photos in slide show format on the iPod or on a television without having to bust out a massive laptop.
The iPod Photo is cool, but only in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary sense. I'd love one, but with those price and feature set coordinates, I'm not in heat. I do need to put my 1st generation antique brick of an iPod on life support, though. During my twenty mile long run, the fully charged iPod went dead at mile 20, and so did my legs. My iPod can barely reach 3 hours on a full charge now; it needs some iPod viagra.
Delicious Library, on the other hand, sounds awesome, especially since it supports iSight scanning. Arrives in 13 days. Can't wait.
Mary Meeker's report titled Update on the Digital World is available as a PDF. I'm a Meeker fan and happy to see her research available for free online instead of available only to wealthy Morgan Stanley clients.
Finally, something to listen to on that iPod of yours, whatever its generation. My Nov. issue of Wired arrived yesterday with a Creative Commons CD inside. Cool track list. Those who don't have a subscription and are too cheap to buy a copy of the newstand can download the tracks online at a variety of sites. For example, here's the CD in 320 kbps MP3 form as a BitTorrent, or as 192kbps MP3s from Nixlog.
The U2 designation is for the engraved signatures of the 4 band members on the back of the iPod, a $50 gift certificate off the The Complete U2, a digital box set collecting over 400 U2 songs, and a U2 poster. Personally, I'd rather just have the option to customize the color of my iPod and its clickwheel. And what's a digital box set?! That term should be reserved for music that comes in a really cool physical package.
The other new iPod is the iPod Photo. Here is a photo of a photo on the iPod, umm, Photo:
The main problem? The only way to get my photos from my digital camera onto the iPod Photo is to first transfer the pics to my Mac laptop or desktop and then push them across via iTunes/iPhoto. I'm sure some third parties will introduce some media card readers, but I already have a gazillion media card readers and cables. I want less of those, not more. I would have preferred either a USB port for direct photo transfer or a media card slot (or both; I'm leaving wireless out at this point b/c it's probably too much to ask for). Then I could leave my laptop at home while traveling and simply xfer photos from my digital camera onto my iPod, using it as both portable music player and portable photo hard drive. While traveling, I could share photos in slide show format on the iPod or on a television without having to bust out a massive laptop.
The iPod Photo is cool, but only in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary sense. I'd love one, but with those price and feature set coordinates, I'm not in heat. I do need to put my 1st generation antique brick of an iPod on life support, though. During my twenty mile long run, the fully charged iPod went dead at mile 20, and so did my legs. My iPod can barely reach 3 hours on a full charge now; it needs some iPod viagra.
Delicious Library, on the other hand, sounds awesome, especially since it supports iSight scanning. Arrives in 13 days. Can't wait.
Mary Meeker's report titled Update on the Digital World is available as a PDF. I'm a Meeker fan and happy to see her research available for free online instead of available only to wealthy Morgan Stanley clients.
Finally, something to listen to on that iPod of yours, whatever its generation. My Nov. issue of Wired arrived yesterday with a Creative Commons CD inside. Cool track list. Those who don't have a subscription and are too cheap to buy a copy of the newstand can download the tracks online at a variety of sites. For example, here's the CD in 320 kbps MP3 form as a BitTorrent, or as 192kbps MP3s from Nixlog.