Category: iPod
Are these the iPod Touch G3 and nano G5?
However CNET Australia's editors have since back tracked a little and wonders that they might be fake. Well we'll know soon enough. Whoever is responsible hasn't forgotten to add the cameras…
Top five Apple iPod/iPhone Rock and Roll event rumours
You can bet Apple's press announcement tonight is much more about technology, product evolution and branding than hairy blokes with guitars. Still nevertheless with a few hours to go the jury is out on whether tonight will be like The Smiths reforming and playing Wembley or a Chas and Dave reunion gig in your local pub.
IWOOT brings Ion's iProfile vinyl to iPod turntable to the UK
The turntable is basically a step on from the USB turntable of yore – the key differences is that it cuts out the PC. So users plonk their iPod/iPhone in the slot, start playing the record and the device converts the record's sounds into MP3 audio files.
Beatles on iTunes – are you really that bothered?
I am guessing that anyone who has an iPod probably likes music and viz a viz probably has at least a few of The Beatles albums in their collection on CD. Ok, so iTunes might be good for grabbing a few of the good tracks from the weaker albums like Beatles for Sale, but really is this big event – don't think so.
IKON digital radio with colour touch screen/iPod dock
Here's a gadget that claims to be the first multi-format digital radio with built in colour touch screen.
Dubbed the REVO Ikon it certainly seems to offer plenty of facilities including DAB, DAB+ and internet radio – as well as conventional FM radio with RDS. Where available, colour station logos, station descriptions, track and artist information, news headlines etc. are displayed on the device's 3.5inch colour screen.
Ocado launches the first supermarket iPhone app
Online supermarket Ocado has launched an iPhone app – allowing users to browse their virtual aisles and shop for over 18,000 products.
Ocado, which is partly owned by John Lewis and stocks Waitrose-branded products, say the app is just “the first step of a journey that will eventually see Ocado available on several digital platforms”.
The app stores all of the product info on the iPhone so browsing can be done offline. The order will be complete once a connection is made.
I can see this catching on and other supermarkets getting in on the act. Online grocery shopping is a massive business and free apps will surely help to grow the industry further.
(via Brand Republic & Ocado)
Radiopaq Sound Jacket to dress up your old MP3s
The “MP3s are a bit rubbish” spiel is almost getting as tired as the “megapixels do not a camera make” lecture but all the same it’s nice to see a gadget that’s doing its best to iron out the kinks in your crushed up music tracks. That’s the job of the Radiopaq Sound Jacket which is a rather swish, brushed metal looking add-on for the 4th gen iPod Nano.
It works as a dynamic graphics equalizer, reacting automatically to the music played from the mini-pod in order to bolster and enrich the sound in all the right places and with any luck should make them sound good. A lot of players – like the Philips GoGears – have these kind of features built-in, so you’d hope Radiopaq has got something really special going on here or I’m likely to pan the hell out of when I get to try one out for review.
There’s all sorts of graphs explaining how you get more frequencies through it and that it improves the quality of sound by 60% but it rather smells like nonsense to me. Not saying it doesn’t work, just that quantifying an audio sensory experience by numbers is utter tosh.
The jacket powers off the pod which is both good and bad. No annoying batteries or charge time but your Nano is going to go flat quicker; 12 hours listening time is what they say.
It’s yours for £69.99 as soon as they get it on the Amazon shelves and, with any luck, it’ll actually be worth it.
Radiopaq
Introducing the GameBone Pro – the oddest iPhone add on yet?
Bored of using the sophisticated touch screen input to play your iPhone or iPod Touch games? Want to use a more traditional D-pad and button setup?
Well, you can with the bizarrely shaped GameBone Pro. It’s basically a SNES control pad, but shaped like a bone. It has dual connectivity – Bluetooth or via the dock connection, a 2000mAh lithium-ion battery and also has built-in speakers, microphone and 3.5mm headphone jack.
These latter inclusions indicate that you should be able to use the GameBone Pro as a Bluetooth handset. If you wanted a bone shaped handset.
The thing that strikes me as the most odd about this device though is that you’ll need two hands to operate it, leaving you exactly zero hands to hold your iPhone. You could balance your very expensive iPhone on your knees I suppose.
Makers of the GameBone Pro, 22Moo, plans to ship the device with a horizontal and vertical stands for your iPhone but this would, in effect, make your iPhone a very small TV in a games based setup.
There is no price as of yet, as 22Moo are leaving pricing suggestions up to the public. It should be out mid September.
(via Kotaku)
Check out our video review of the slightly less weird, but still not entirely conventional Zeemote:
iPods save lives – it's official
A 14 year-old girl’s iPod could have been her saviour after the headphones attached to it diverted a lightning bolt away from her body during a storm.
Sophie Frost and her, quite brilliantly named, boyfriend Mason Billington were taking shelter under a tree when the incident occurred. Frost wasn’t listening to music at the time, instead the headphones were hanging around her school uniform. She received burns to her chest, stomach and legs and is currently recovering in hospital.
Sophie’s mother Julie told the Sun: “I just thank God my daughter is still alive. The doctors say her iPod saved her. Her nan only bought it a few days ago. Luckily, she wasn’t actually wearing the headphones. If she had been, she might not be here today. Mind you, the only thing Sophie seemed worried about was that her new iPod was frazzled.”
Great PR for Apple then. Surely not even Steve Jobs can conjure up lightning bolts though – can he?
(via The Press Association)
Zune HD to be released on 5th September?
The Zune HD will be launched in the US on 5th September according to Microsoft guru Paul Thurott.
But as the American launch edges palpably closer a UK launch is beginning to seem more like an impossibility than a improbability.
The Zune’s HD radio wouldn’t work in the UK where we use DAB and the ZunePass music subscription service used in the US is none-existent in Europe.
Pipe smoking, tech high-brow, Jack Schofield writes on Guardian.co.uk, “Sony is already offering much better sound quality than Apple, OLED screens, built in FM radio and better file support at reasonable prices. Admittedly it still has to re-educate a market that still thinks Sony supports ATRAC and requires horrible SonicStage software, but that’s probably an easier job than establishing the Zune brand from scratch.”
Which he’s right about. Well, the Zune thing, not the iPod thing: The sound quality on Sony Mp3 players is simply not any better than the iPod’s. That’s just not true. The thing that has made the iPod successful is how seamless it is. From it’s beautiful design, across every device and generation, to its amazingly simple and balanced UIs and a sound quality that’s as good as any personal media player out there.
That’s what has made the iPod ubiquitous, it’s simplicity. And that simplicity isn’t something Microsoft has ever been good at (ie… Vista). That being said, I’d be sad not to see the Zune HD launched here in some form, purely because it looks like a good product. I’m sick of these US only products. What have they done to deserve them? I want the Kindle and Zune HD on these shores by the end of the year – got it.
(Via SlashGear)
