Black and silver is the theme. From left to right, my new iPod 60GB with video, Samsung i730 Pocket PC Phone, Plantronics Bluetooth headset, and Sony PSP.
Happy Halloween!
Monthly Archive for October, 2005
It looks like Griffin have updated their iFM remote control/FM tuner to work with the dock connector of the new iPods. This is the only inline remote control solution I’ve found so far for my new toy.
I was considering the iFM before, because it also had a built-in mic for recording voice notes/podcasts. However, the new updated version appears to have done away with the recording capability. At least, there’s no mention of it anywhere on the site or in the specs. Bummer. I wonder if it would let me plug in an external mic for recording (which I’d prefer to an integrated mic, anyway)? There’s no sign of a redesigned iTalk that uses the dock connector on the Griffin site. In fact, there are no announced accesories that take advantage of the un-crippled recording capabilities (22 and 44KHz) of the new iPod. Hope they’re coming…
For $49.99, I may just have to pre-order this new iFM. Anything to keep from pulling my iPod out of my pocket every time I want to do something with it.
Technorati tags: ipod
Apple: ITunes Video Sales Top 1 Million: Yahoo! Financial News
I wonder if that Jobs guy might know what he’s doing:
“Selling 1 million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads,” Steve Jobs, chief executive officer, 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.”
I’ve been saying for ages that I’d happily pay a reasonable amount for legal downloads of TV shows and other video that often gets trafficked via P2P networks or BitTorrent. I can do it now with “Lost”. Now, just get us some other good shows. How about Alias, The Amazing Race, The Simpsons, etc.
The Beaverton Mac Store had no idea when they were going to get the black 60GB units in (they had white ones), so I cancelled my deposit, and called the Washington Square Apple Store, who had “armloads” of the black ones. A quick trip down there on Saturday, and I had my precious in my hands.
I’ll be posting a lot more about it, and already have a lot of photos to upload, but here are some first impressions.
It’s thin. The screen is great – video looks wonderful. The elimination of the remote control port is KILLING me – I live by the inline remote. PLEASE, Apple, or someone, give us a way to control this thing without pulling it out of our pocket every time we want to pause, fast forward, or change tracks. PLEASE!
Just got word from Dave Ciccone of Dave’s iPAQ that there’s a new mobile tech podcast in town – the MoTR Podcast.
Seems that Dave has joined forces with James Kendrick and Kevin C. Tofel of the techAddiction podcast, and the three of them will be working together on this new show.
Nothing to listen to yet, but I’m subscribed, and looking forward to it. Dave, James, and Kevin are all great guys and true geeks, and I can’t wait to hear them together. Feel free to Skype me into the show anytime, guys! 
Justin is a friend of mine and Intel co-worker who was at PDC when we got our hands on the i-mate JasJar/HTC Universal Pocket PC Phones. Justin has decided to sell his, and currently has it listed on eBay.
The auction ends Saurday morning (Oct. 29), and as of now, the bidding is only at $416. These devices regularly go for $1000+ on eBay, or more if you buy new through an importer like Expansys. So far, this is a great deal on a killer device.
If you’re worried about the lack of eBay feedback on Justin, don’t. I’ll vouch for him as a geek and all around nice guy. And no, he’s not paying me anything to promote this auction.
If you want to get your hands on the King of current Windows Mobile devices at a great price, this just might be your chance. Head on over and have a bid!
A few days ago, I posted about configuring Bloglines to only show updated feeds, to streamline your reading when using Bloglines Mobile.
Well the official Bloglines blog has a post today that goes one step further – they’ve added the ability to choose what feeds show up in Bloglines Mobile:
To create your mobile feed list, click the Edit link while in the web version, check which subscriptions you want or don’t want displayed in your mobile view and then select your option in the dropdown menu. You can also change this setting by clicking on the Edit Subscription link while viewing any of your feeds.
Nice feature. They also mention that only showing updated feeds is useful for mobile browsing.
Oh, and check out the mobile device they use to demonstrate:
I get the distinct impression that someone over at Bloglines is reading TinyScreenfuls.com. Mark? Robyn? Is that you?
This question was posted in the comments of an earlier post, and I wanted to repost it, and my answer, here for more people to see:
Question for you. I know I could find this out somewhere, but I’m just too damned lazy to check. When you downloaded “Lost” from iTunes, what was the screen size on your laptop? Do you happen to know if the video resizes itself through iTunes down to 320X240?
The video file is 320×240. iTunes will start to play it in the little “artwork” window by default. If you click that, it pops out into its own resizeable window, which you can drag to be whatever size you want.
I was on my T42p, with 1600×1200 resolution, and didn’t want to stretch the video that much, so it was sized to be probably about 800×600. Still very watchable.
My wife participates in a blog I helped her create for her sisters and friends called FitSisters.com. She just posted her first ever geeky gadget review, of the iPod Shuffle.
*sniff*
I’m so proud!
Go read her review for a non-geeky perspective on how she likes the Shuffle, particularly for use during trips to the gym.
Someone needs to gently and kindly teach Liz Phair and all the other “celebrities” that throw up some audio and call it a podcast that it’s NOT a podcast if there’s no RSS feed and I can’t subscribe in my aggregator!
This is the era of RSS and the aggregator. I’m NEVER going to remember to come back to a website every Friday to manually download another episode. If you’ve discovered how much better and more efficient using an aggregator is, I bet you won’t either. These “podcasts” without feeds are nothing more than audio that will die on the vine. Or vain attempts to appear “hip” by using the latest cool thing that all the geeks are talking about.
Oh, and someone get Cringely to put up a feed so I can get NerdTV video (not just the audio) on my iPod video while you’re at it!
Technorati tags: podcasting
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
Guess I'll rearrange my iPhone apps again.