iPod and the contenders

[sybil]

I've looked at the iPods and noticed recently that Toshiba is with a new entry to be available soon. Called the Gigabeat S.



It is billed as some of the best in the new Tech offerings for 2006.

[sybil]

Much innovation is underway with iPods and the early imitators in the market. Creative has entered with some formidable entries. Consider the Creative Zen Vision:M. It's a wonderfully small and sleek package that delivers nice quality audio and video with a lot of additional features. It's not perfect, but comes close.

The Creative Zen Vision: M may be quite a contender.

Portable media players (PMPs) are still coming of age, and it isn't yet clear where the sweet spot is in terms of size and video quality. But Creative is definitely covering its bases, between its Zen Vision—a full-fledged PMP with a gorgeous 3.7-inch screen—and now the new Zen Vision:M ($329 direct), an iPod-size (yeah, we said it, so what?) 30GB player that plays music, photos, and video. Is this the iPod-killer the world has (or hasn't) been waiting for? Not quite. Apple still wins out hands-down for hardware/software integration. Still, in terms of just the hardware, the Zen Vision:M comes closer to taking a bite out of Apple than anything else out there. Creative is making some inroads on the software side as well, with its new ZenCast.com site and ZenCast Organizer, which make a wealth of podcasts (audio and video) available to Zen Vision and Zen Vision:M users.

Still there are items in the galley for Apple. The iPod G5 Video flip cases may be a newcomer soon.

The cases feature Pacific Design's always dependable protection and flip case design with their signature stripe motif using fashion focused bold colors, along with cut outs for headphone and dock connectors, and a clear vinyl window for screen protection. In addition there is s low profile rear strap that can clip to a belt, shoulder strap, armband or backpack, and "SlimStitch" case construction to fit your iPod like a glove.

Available colors are carbon black with red and white detail; precious pink with white and dove gray detail; and big sky blue with cobalt blue and white detail, and rally red with tan and white detail.

The collection of colorful cases, designed with Pacific Design's award-winning design and attention to usability, are now available at Circuit City, RadioShack, ebags.com, Ultimate Electronics as well as Best Buy in Canada. The nano cases have been available since October '05 and the 5G/Video from November '05. 5G/Video cases fits both 30GB and 60GB 5G/Video iPod models. Nano cases fits iPod Nano.

Efforts to make iPods more usable in groups are underway as well. The iPod and it's imitators have been focused on one iPod to one user. Expanding the range may hold greater sales benefits as the PodFreq Mini attempts to do.

Patton Design has teamed up with Sonnet technologies to produce the Podfreq mini and change the way people are listening to their beloved ipods minis. The Podfreq mini is an FM transmitter and doc that can broadcast music in an ipod to any nearby FM radio or tuner.

People can now safely and comfortably listen to their playlists from the stereo of their car in crisp, clean quality. They can also listen to audiobooks and days of music in their home. But what's more original, is that now the music in an ipod no longer has to be kept to one person. The Podfreq mini allows several ipods to be tuned to the same station and broadcast in stereo sound.

Many people would like to have a device like a camera cell phone built into an iPod. Could a "flash memory card" bay for the camera be far behind so the owner could visit any of the photo kiosks to make prints of their images for friends and family? Perhaps someday we will have auxillary battery packs to snap on the iPod. To really dream one would only wish for an interface where a laptop could plug into the cell/iPod to connect to broadband anywhere. As Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Then Einstein also remarked, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." Smaller, less complex,
and more friendly sounds to me like a nice parameter in which to design.

Presently IDSA.org has a poll which ask, "Is good design in North America an afterthought?"

You can vote one of two choices:

"Yes, we're still price based in terms of value."

or

"No, we've moved beyond price as value."

[sybil]

To carry on with the iPod and contenders post one of the Mp3 players which seem to stay sold out at the stores which carried them is an interesting offering by
Creative.

Nomad MuVo is an inexpensive low end Mp3/WMA



You have the versitility of a jump drive and Mp3 player without cables, stores Mp3's or data, and 1 aaa battery plays it 12 hours and can be carried on a key ring. About $60. dollars.

More: www.nomadworld.com/products/MuVo/


Another unique item is MobiBlu DAH-1500i Cube.







Amazing little 1 inch cube with great sound, 1 Gig of storage, FM Radio receiver, and can make its own recordings. $130. dollars.

More: www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1849809,00.asp

Now presently there is a new company offering to resell
old iPods for those wanting to trade up. Not everyone eBay's and would like to quickly move to the next big thing in the land of iPods. In January, Apple unveiled a lower cost version of the iPod. It followed that up with news that it's selling a new 1-gigabyte version of its iPod Nano while dropping prices on the iPod Shuffle.

NextWorth.com of Boston is targeting the iPod resale market. www.nextworth.com/

If you are fortunate enough to live in some of the cities
where there are i-Soldit stores, you can drop it off and they can eBay it for you and handle all the details.

www.i-soldit.com/index.asp

With Apple planning to roll out new versions of it's now famous iPod line there will be many changes in both the
ipods and the markets/after markets for them.

www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3584236

As new iPods enter the market iTunes and other interfaces will be emerging too in order to offer expanded utility for the consumers. The iPod market
and Mp3 players may find themselves replicating a market which took place fifty years ago when the first
six transistor Japanese radios came to America to allow
kids to listen to the AM rockroll music which was just
emerging then.

[sybil]

An interesting product available at WalMart for around
$30 dollars is the VR3 FM Modulator. Hardly an iPod but as automotive utility and Mp3 accessability thru
the car's sound system goes this shouldn't be overlooked.



When the VR3 is plugged into the cigarette lighter port of the car and the radio set to any of the seven frequencies outlined, a jump drive loaded with Mp3's can be plugged in the USB port below the center of the three curved buttons and played thru the car's sound system. With jump drives now selling for around $40 for a 1 gig jump drive a list of nearly 240 Mp3 could travel with you. The modulator could be stored in the
unused ashtray when not in use as fewer people are smoking these days.

More than using just the jump drives, there is also a port provided on the right side of the modulator which provides for connecting almost any CD player, DVD player, MP3 player, laptop computer, etc. to import sound through your FM radio. The modulator's USB 1.0 port is also recognized by USB 2 jump drives so that any USB item will be recognized by the modulator.

The three control buttons allow one to start/stop, adjust volume, and advance thru songs.

For safety there is a fuse built into the modulator.

Even a simple 256MB jump drive will offer nearly 66 Mp3
songs for ones listening pleasure.

Some people are now recording the MX and Sirius radio
programming and running them thru audio editing software to convert their extensions to Mp3 in order to enjoy during their commute. Similar to video taping TV programs with ones VCR to enjoy later.

It is ironic that newer cars aren't being equiped with cigarette lighters and ash trays now days. Perhaps this is the only short coming of this neat little invention.

[sybil]

In Apples continuing saga to develop the iPod the new iPod/BoomBox has debuted.



The speaker has three drivers in it—two mids and a woofer plus ported bass—as well as an integrated power supply, so you don't have to lug around a huge power brick. It can run off of six D batteries, so you can take it with you. It also has an auxiliary input and S/PDIF optical audio input for plugging in an iPod shuffle or non-Apple players.

All this was garnished with a software update for the iPod that gives it a speaker menu with much-needed tone controls and display options geared toward viewing the tiny screen from several feet away.

A small appartment owner or student in a dorm could have one of these for their home stero, and still wear the iPod while on foot and then connect to the car stero system when driving, thus maximizing the usefulness
of the iPod's design.

[bbear]

I've received my 60gb g5 iPod with video. Looks great, works great, and sounds great.

The only thing I don't like is that you have to keep your files on your computer once they've loaded onto the iPod through iTunes, or iTunes will assume you no longer want them on your iPod. It's a minor inconvenience, but I hope they fix that in an upcoming update.

Other than that, I'm ready to start developing content for it - my primary reason for buying it.

I highly recomend the agent18 clear case. It's a great case. easy to put on, and protects the iPod with slim hard clear plastic.

Great Stuff.

[sybil]

I've been away house & dog sitting lately. I'm interested to see some of the content you develop, if
you could post a link to it. Most folks I talk with around the tri state just see the iPod as a device kids use to download their favorite tunes onto and play back at their leisure. I still think we are only turning the first page on them. Perhaps when kids start downloading
resources for school work will more parents begin to
see these devices as more than toys.

I've found some links I wanted to post here today too.

It seems PC magazine has a iPod buyers guide now
for $10 dollars. I'm going to request some public libraries make the purchase of it.



store2.esellerate.net/store/ProductInfo.aspx?StoreIDC=STR1947020265&SkuIDC=SKU83970223075&pc=url]

As for iTunes being as secure in the future as they have been this news story may turn things around for Apple
in the near future. The French Government would like to see iTunes open to other devices. Does Ogg Vorbis sound French ? The French have issues with Apple keeping iTunes tied to their iPod as propriety and will
condone software that will allow the conversion of Apple iTune downloads such that they could be converted to other formats and thus usable with other devices. This has already happened in other non iPod arenas such as secure DVD. "DVD Ripper" softwares are available for getting past the securety codes and dubing movies or extracting exerpts of them.

The article:

www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1937183,00.asp

I can't get it to link so you'll have to copy it and paste it into your browser. sigh.

[sybil]

It's been over a month since the iPod Boom Box story was posted here. You would know that someone in the PC community would
try to match it but this story is novel. With all the old BoomBoxes
laying around in basements and attics the geeks at PC Magazine
feature an article on how to build an old BoomBox into an iPod
platform....and call it an iBoom Lo-Fi !

If you want to get in on building an iBoom Lo-Fi of your own there is even a contest going on now. The prize is the prototype and an iPod. There were some lovely old BoomBoxes out there at one time and Apple's BoomBox is a bit "lacking with Wozniak's minimalist styling". So, check out the story.

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1951307,00.asp

Check the contest:

infohub.ziffdavis.com/survey/0,,surveyId=153,00.asp



The iPod sits in the old cassette bay and is shuffled by the controls for the cassettes operation. Some of the old BoomBoxes
had lovely styling by the design teams at Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp, and others in the seventies and eighties.
If a person had one of those fabulous old BoomBoxes it may transform into a lovely rehab project. I'd like to see someone take one of those old rechargable cam corder batteries and adapt it to the project as well so that when you plug into the cigarette lighter or the home AC so it could recharge. Those things did eat batteries !

[sybil]

New Rumors of a touch screen iPod abound now and evidence has been found at the US Patten Office detailing the op's of one.
A new iPod-formatted versions of movies included in upcoming Blu-ray discs is another rumor. Samsung is the new supplier of both the processor and the memory for Apple's future flash players.

Patten drawing:



Read more here:

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1954763,00.asp

[switcharoo]

I wanted to mention this new interface with Nike tennis shoes and the iPod. Nike announced a few days ago their new wireless Nike+iPod Sports Kit. The person who uses it with their iPod will be able to access distance, time, pace and calories burned on the screen of a nano version of the iPod via a sensor inside the shoes that communicates with the digital music player.

This is what it looks like.



It can also be downloaded to the computer at home too. No doubt training programs will be created in time to complement the interface. The time may come for bicyclist, aerobics workouts, and even so much as industrial guards who must download their walked distances to check points so that security IT techs to log as evidence their duties were carried out. Likewise businesses may offer incentives for employees who walk on their lunch breaks and download the data of their walks for verification in the program that they are enrolled, or even use this technology for time and motion studies.

So, this may mark the beginning for other programs using the little iPod in ones daily productivity.

Imagine downloading Mp3 work outs such as Stott Pilates for walking or jogging with your iPod. I could see a variety of physical training programs coming for the iPod and even language
training such as sleep learning courses to use with the iPod.