Archive for the 'Apple' Category

Speedlinks

SpeedlinksA shopowner in Colorado, US, came up with an unusual way of thwarting shoplifters.  He’d give them two options - he could go to the police or the felon could give him one of their shoes!  He insisted it worked, but local police said it was an illegal practice and could actually stand as felony robbery, and his since been ordered to stop using his unorthodox method of crimefighting.

SpeedlinksAlton Towers, the theme park in the north of England, has banned PDAs.  I guess this is to encourage “fun” and to discourage long phone calls, extensive browsing sessions and spontaneous games of Solitaire (other single player card games are available).  Is this the start of a trend, banning gadgetry from public places?  Will there be iPod bins standing in the entrances to libraries?  Will ticket inspectors confiscate mobile phones that play tinny-sounding R&B on the London Undeground?  We can only hope!

SpeedlinksMicrosoft demonstrated the latest iteration of Windows, nattily titled Windows 7.  The feature they are pushing the most appears to be the touchscreen capability, with multitouch!!! Wow, a feature that Apple have been using in a product that has been on the market for almost 2 years is now being demoed in a preview of an OS that will come out sometime in the future!  What next?  “Flow Covers”?  Anyway, the really big news is that of Billy Gates’ exit from Microsoft - 1st July 2008.

Apple LogoThe latest iPhone rumour, now that the 3G dust has settled, is that the next gen of Apple’s wonder machines will come in three colours: red, white and black.  The dubious ad makes the new devices look a lot classier than the rainbow coloured iPods, with the colouring being much more subtle, but these are still rumours.  It doesn’t matter much anyway because you will still be able to buy bright pink covers for them no matter how good they look.

PS2Finally, in what has to be one of the biggest own goals ever, Sony’s last-gen console, the PS2, is outselling the PS3!  The 8-year-old console (yes, 8 years!) sold 13.7 million units for the 2007/08 fiscal year compared to 9.2 million PS3s.  Surely the continued success of the PS2 is hindering the sales of the newer console.  Will Sony withdraw the aging console from the market in an effort to boost the success of the PS3?

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Top 5 Tips for New iPod Owners

I’ve had my iPod for almost 18 months now and its probably the gadget I use the most, even more than my mobile phone. There’s no doubting its numerous features are great and its pretty easy to use out of the box, but there’s a few things a new iPod user might not know.

Continue reading ‘Top 5 Tips for New iPod Owners’

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Things I Wish iTunes Did

I love my iPod, and I use iTunes several times a day to manage my songs and podcasts, as well as my iPod. However, its far from a perfect product. Below is my list of ways iTunes could be improved…

  1. Video Filter - I wish iTunes had a filter to let me seperate video podcasts from audio podcasts. I only have a Nano, I can only sync audio podcasts and I have a playlist to select randomly 7 podcasts I can chuck on my iPod. It makes it a bit crappy if half of the random ‘casts are video because I end up with only 3 or 4 podcasts on my iPod!
  2. Profiles - I use my iPod in 3 or 4 scenarios: in my car, on the commuter coach, at home or general walking around. I wish iTunes would let me set up profiles for each of these scenarios, which contained my sync details such as playlists, podcasts, etc. so I can easily switch between them when I want rather than have to set them up each time. For example, in the car I listen mostly to music, especially rock and electronic type music. I have no need for contacts or calendar syncing, and I might want one or two podcasts just in case. However, on the coach I want more relaxing music and all my podcasts, plus calendar and contacts.
  3. Better Chapter View - I wish it provided a better view of podcast chapters, rather than from a menu. I want thumbnails, chapter lengths, the ability to play a podcast but eliminate certain chapters like a playlist.
  4. Auto Auto-Delete - When I subscribe to a podcast, I have to right-click on each feed to turn on Auto Delete, so it deletes episodes once I have listened to them. There should be an option to have new subscriptions set to auto delete automatically.
  5. Hidden Track Analysis - Some albums have “hidden” tracks. Usually this is on the end of the last track of an album, after several minutes of silence. I wish there was an option in iTunes to analyse these tracks and split them apart, removing the silence and spitting out two seperate tracks. I don’t want a 27 minute track with only 8 minutes of music!
  6. RSS Reader - Slightly unrelated, but I wish there was an easy way to send RSS (textual) feeds to my iPod via iTunes. I subscribe to a number of feeds and it would be great if I could catch up on these offline via my iPod.

If anyone can think of any others, please leave a comment!!!

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