The Gadgets Page

Nicole Lee bought herself a brand new iPod Nano Product(RED). It’s the Nano I would buy if I already didn’t have one. She shares all the photos of opening it up with us so we can vicariously enjoy it as well. You can see all of her photos here:

• New iPod nano – a photoset on Flickr

She is planning on eventually getting an iPhone, so why did she spring for the Nano?

“The video is really a LOT better than I can show here. Why get this instead of the iPod Touch, you may ask? Because I do plan on getting an iPhone in the future, and having both an iPod Touch and an iPhone would be… overkill. Instead, I got this small nano for catching TV shows and podcasts while I’m on the train, and it’s good for the gym. As for its shape — hey, I think it’s cute! I call it my Little Red Tictac.”

Best of all, the new Nano iPods will work with the Nike+iPod system, so if you ARE taking it to the gym, it will track your runs for you. I was so worried that Apple wouldn’t support the Nike+, but now I have hope that they may someday include the Nike+ on the iPhone.

Thanks for sharing your new Nano with us, Nicole!

Okay, folks. Stop it. Just stop it. Stop trying to play catchup to what Apple is doing. Apple released the Shuffle that clips onto your clothing so long ago that it’s really not productive for Sandisk to release this cute little player.

• SanDisk | Products | Music & Video Players | SanDisk Sansa Clip

Sure, it clips to your clothing. Sure, it is small and technically it’s better than the Apple product because it has a screen where you can read the song titles.

Instead of trying to copy Apple products, please, make something new and unique. Apple isn’t perfect. They aren’t doing everything right, believe me. There is plenty of room for Sandisk to make products without trying to compete with Apple.

Bad form, Sandisk, bad form.

Here is a quick project you can do to wrap up your earbuds:

• Instructables Earbud cord wrapper in 5 minutes or less!

It’s so simple, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.

Via: Twitter / Wendy Yao: might be useful: Instructab…

Since the Nike+ has been so helpful to my running, I was planning on bringing it with me on my next race. Looks like I need to read the rules first. According to Wendy, there are many races that ban iPods and headphones.

• About.com – Races That Ban iPods by Wendy Bumgardner

They say that it’s for safety precautions:

“Last weekend, my walking team did the Rock ‘n Relay marathon. As we were going through the race info right before the start, we saw that they banned wearing headphones or earphones during the event, for safety purposes… The stats don’t bear out that pedestrian accidents happen more often to walkers distracted by being on the cell phone or wearing headphones. Instead, in 40% of pedestrian fatalities the victim was imbibing alcohol. It is of interest that we got a ticket for a free beer at the beer tent to have at any time during the event.”

Real healthy, Rock ‘n Relay. You can have beer, but you can’t listen to your tunes while you run. Technophobia strikes again.

Ted Rheingold has done a really good job of explaining why paying the extra 30 cents for iTunes Plus is worth it.

• Spidey Senses -> Tingling :: Ted Rheingold’s Web Journal » Blog Archive » DRM-Free Music: Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

He was where I was as far as buying music:

For the last two years I have gone back to buying CDs as they almost never have DRM controls on them and then I could burn it to my computer, Molly’s computer and then we could move it around to our music players, or play in the CD player in the car or house. This has been much more convenient then buying online and only being able to listen to it on devices approved by the seller or having to rip it and reinstall it over the purchased copy. I hated how iTunes would know I had bought DRM songs, but not allow me to re-download them after my harddrive crashed. Other sites offered DRM-free downloads, but had obscure libraries to chose from.

Now that there is iTunes Plus, I was able to buy that copy of Dark Side of the Moon. I can play it on my iPod and computer, of course, but now I can also play it on my car’s MP3 player without going through the rig-a-ma-roll of burning a “real” CD. I can just copy the tracks over and they play just fine.

Thanks, Steve Jobs, for pressuring the record companies to open up their music to me. I don’t think I would have ever purchased anything from you if you hadn’t. I had three iTunes gift cards that I refused to use until iTunes Plus came out.

I have been very happy with iTunes. As long as I don’t let it reorganize my music files, I’m pleased as punch with it. It takes some time to load, though, and I don’t feel comfortable just leaving it running in the background. If you aren’t quite as happy with iTunes as I am, you might be interested in some software to manage your iPod. That’s what Mike at iPod Managers did. You can see his full review here:

• iPod Managers: Manage my iPod without iTunes

Mike did an in-depth review of each of the programs, but here is a quick overview from his weblog:

vPod: Really cool and original but very limited: 8/10
Load Time: less than 1 second

PoddoX: Pretty limited at this stage, but certainly the tool that best corresponds to what I was looking for when I started this comparison test, 10/10.
Load Time: less than 1 second

CopyTrans Manager: Apparently released just some days ago, but extremely promissing according to its speed and look and feel, 5/10 for the moment but will definitely get 10 when more stable.
Load Time: 3.2 seconds

Winamp: Perfect for Winamp fans (like me). A bit old-fashioned for the others. Two thumbs up for me, but you would probably give 7-8/10.
Load Time: 6.5 seconds

Ephpod: Sucks, 4/10.
Load Time: 7.5 seconds

Floola: Excellent interface, really user-friendly, very pleasant way to add songs to the iPod. Unfortunately, much too unstable at this stage of development. To be watched carefully, as it would get 10/10 if working.
Load Time: 1.5 seconds

Yamipod: Impressive for a free tool, simple, light, smart, portable. Too many features for me but will rock for most users, 9/10.
Load Time: 4 seconds

iPod Copy Manager: The two panes interface is an excellent idea but this tool is so buggy at this point that it cannot be used to manage an iPod on a regular basis yet. 1/10 for the moment, would easily get 10/10 if more stable, (much) smaller and, most of all, when it will feature a decent iPod navigation.
Load Time: less than one second

Songbird: Except if you have a very small amount of songs (less than 100), the listing of iPod songs is so slow that this application cannot reasonably be called an iPod manager at this point. Let’s hope the Songbird team will improve this as soon as possible. In the meantime, 1/10.
Load Time: 4.4 seconds

I had no idea there were so many people trying to compete with a free program from Apple. Since they added Smart Playlists (which are very much like the AutoDJ that I loved so much on MusicMatch), I have been so happy with iTunes that I never even considered looking for different software, despite the long load time (9.2 seconds). I guess Adobe Photoshop has trained me to expect long load times over the years and iTunes isn’t enough to push me over the edge looking for buggy software.

Beloved British artist, David Hockney, has noticed a fallow period of painting and he has placed the blame on the iPod.

• iPods to blame for total eclipse of the art, says Hockney – Technology

Speaking on the eve of his 70th birthday, Britain’s best-loved living painter said the proliferation of iPods – Apple has sold more than 100 million worldwide – and other digital music players has combined with a decline in art education to create a “fallow period of painting”.

“We are not in a very visual age,” Hockney said. “I think it’s all about sound. People plug in their ears and don’t look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure.

“You notice that on buses. People don’t look out of the window; they are plugged in and listening to something.

“I think we are not in a very visual age and it’s producing badly dressed people. They have no interest in mass or line or things like that.”

I find it interesting that he blames a device whose design could be considered a work of visual art itself for the decline of art. Painting isn’t the only visual art there is and it seems myopic to blame an MP3 player on a medium that is messy, not portable, and could burn your house down.

What about what Pixar is doing? Thousands of paintings that move together and create a beautiful and witty story aren’t good enough for Hockney just because they aren’t in oil or acrylic?

It’s not the medium, it’s the message. Just because people are trading in their oils for pixels doesn’t mean it’s not art.

Bad form, Mr. Hockney, bad form.

Via: iPod blamed for stealing the thunder from contemporary art – Engadget

A couple of days ago, I noticed that YouTube got a new video interface. After the video plays, or even in the middle of a video, you can move the mouse over the screen and see other videos to watch. The old interface gave us a couple of choices after the video and then moved on to a couple more. I REALLY hated that interface, but I’m LOVIN’ this one. I think the reason that I love it is because the video choices stay in order.

Unfortunately, I can’t right click on them and open them in another window or tab. I would really like that choice because usually I’m pretty happy with the current video and want to email it to my friends. When I click on a new one, the old one is lost. With the new interface, however, the old one is still there at the beginning of the list if I want to go back to it, so I am pleased with that as well.

No one seems to be noticing the new YouTube interface, but I think their design team really deserves props. Good job guys! You’re making all the videobloggers jealous again!

MyVu is a strange pair of glasses that allow you watch your video iPod in a different way. Instead of trying to hold up your iPod to your face, you can see the show on the two tiny screens in the glasses. You can see a closeup of the screens here:

When we saw them at CES, the girls at the desk were pretty unwilling to talk to us. While they flirted with the guys who walked past their booth, we played with the demonstration model. It was great to see the video full screen, but it was even better that I could see Mike and the hallway around me. MyVu allows you to watch your video, but it also allows you to monitor what’s going on around you.

When Mike started clicking pictures of me wearing the My Vu and they noticed that we were press, the girls finally deigned to talk to us. Sadly, it was obvious that they couldn’t answer any technical questions.

What I want to know:

• Will they work with the iPhone?
• If they do work with the iPhone, can I read my email and browse the web with them or will they only work with videos?
• Right now, they cost 300 bucks. That pushes them over my peripheral price limit. Is there going to be a cheaper one?

I see so much at CES, that I can’t possibly report it all, especially products that aren’t available yet. I love it when they finally become available because then I can tell you what it was like to use them!

MyVu Website: myvu: Award-winning video eyewear for virtual big screen viewing

Update 08-03-07: The MyVu does not work with the iPhone because the iPhone doesn’t have a video output. Sadly, it doesn’t work with the videos or the web browsing. It does, however, work with the Video iPod and is great for working out at the gym. You don’t need a television in front of your treadmill or weight machine when it’s in front of your face.

I picked up Games ‘n Music up at Walmart for about $35. It was just inexpensive enough to try out for fun. It is a game card that allows you to play videos, music and homebrew games on your Nintendo DS. It came with a 128 MB Micro SD card loaded with 25 games. The included card was enough to hold two hours worth of video, but I bought a 2 GB card and now I can play almost 11 hours of video on Nintendo.

You can see a video demonstrating Games n’ Music here:

As you can see, the video looks really good. Their software to convert video is amazingly fast. I used the lowest quality conversion and it still looks really good on the screen. Sadly, the video player leaves something to be desired. You can’t fast forward or reverse the video. If you go out of the video you’re watching and then go back in, it will restart you at the beginning of the video instead of where you were last and there is no way to fast forward to where you were before.

The MP3 player is a little better because it allows you to scan through the song. It also allows you to skip to the next song. Unfortunately, there is no good organization for the music and it doesn’t read song title from the MP3 data.

The games that come with it are utter crap. Sorry, but there is no nice way to say it. They are not worth the small storage space that they take on your card. They don’t use any of the buttons on the DS, even if the game would be better played with the button controls than a touch screen. There is no way to get out of the games without turning off your Nintendo. You can’t reset or hold down the start button to escape them.

I have been able to run some homebrew software using this card, but honestly, I haven’t been able to find anything good out there. I don’t know if this card is making them crash or if they are just substandard and crash all the time. I guess when it comes to online software available for free, you get what you pay for.

I compared the video quality of the Nintendo DS running Games n’ Music with the Video iPod and the Samsung U-740. You can see how each of them handled this Galaticast video.

The Games n’ Music conversion “squishes” wide videos to make them fit on the DS screen instead of letterboxing them like the iPod and the Samsung U-740 did. I feel like that should bother me, but honestly it doesn’t. My standards for video go way down when I’m watching it on a tiny screen. The cool thing is I can load up my card, keep my DS in my purse and pull it out to watch a video whenever I want. I could do the same thing with my Treo, but it is SO difficult and time consuming to get video to work on my Treo. It’s as easy with Games n’ Music as it is with the iPod. I just wish they would let me download a fix for the video player.

Official Website: Datel Design & Development Ltd – Games N Music