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50 Fun Things to Do With Your iPod
Ant writes "Jason Kottke's Web site has compiled a list of 50 fun things to do with your iPod besides listening to music with those white earbuds: From the article 'In the four years since its introduction, the iPod has proven to be a versatile little device. Despite a relatively closed architecture, hackers have found their way in. Content creators and software makers put information at your fingertips when you're on the go. Would-be designers have added to the fashionable stylings of the now-ubiquitous white ear buds. Hardware makers and enthusiasts have augmented the iPod with new add-on gadgets. Here are a few dozen things you can do with your iPod besides listen to music.'"
I love my ipod, and listening to music on it is great, but it has definitely made me an audiobook junky - it somehow feels like I'm pulling one over on The Man at work when I'm listening to a book that is actually interesting and possibly sucking my atention away from the job at hand.
I realize that this isn't really specific to ipods, but getting one for some reason made me willing to check them out - kind of thought they seemd like a corny idea before.
installing linux on it and playing doom was definitely fun, but the audio on the nano in linux is still [retty glitchy, so it's just kind of novel to have.
what i'm really looking forward to, or hoping for at least, is the rumored video support for nano in a possible forthcoming firmware upgrade. the nano is just small enough to sneak by veging out on videos all day at work - the laptop is a bit sore-thumbish. hooray!
I've had five media players and none of them was an iPod. Like you I dislike the marketing hype arounf the iPod, especially the Shuffle or iChav. Only Steve Jobs could tell people that not having a screen on a player is an advantage.
But like it or not the iPod is by far the easiest music player to use and that's the key to its success.
I was at the gym this morning in what apparently was Sports Bra Sunday since a lot of women were wearing them without a shirt. One woman had an regular iPod sitting in the front middle of the sports bra while running on the treadmill. I'm not sure if that's the most practical place to put it or she was too cheap to get an arm-band or waist iPod holder.
...is a very interesting offbeat iPod product.
Stokes' Field Guide to Bird Songs, which I've owned for a number of years, is a three-CD set of recordings of about 300 bird songs. iBirdPod "software" is nothing more than a very elaborate script--I think it's just AppleScript but I'm not sure--that loads these CDs into iTunes (and thence to your iPod), but makes extremely clever (ab)use of the title, artist, and album fields, the playlists, and the feature that allows the user to define starting and ending times for each track.
For example, the track named "Towhee, Eastern" is by "artist" "drink your teeeee, towhee," from "album" "Pipilo erythrophthalmus."
It's contained in playlists "birdPod-All-alpha" (which includes every bird alphabetically by common name), "birdPod-All-phylo" (which includes every bird alphabetically by scientific name), "birdPod-Forest" (which includes only forest birds), "birdPod-Shrub-Brush," "birdPod-Sparrows" and "birdPod-Urban."
Every track is "cued up" to start at the very beginning of the most common song... particularly useful since the Stokes CD's sometimes double up two or three songs in one track.
So, if you're in a forest setting you can call up the "birdPod-Forest" playlist and you hear a bird calling something like "Drink your tea," scroll through the "artists" until you get to "drink your tea," and play the song to confirm it. Or if you read about Pipilo erythrophthalmus you can scroll through birdPod-All-phylo, read off that it's the towhee, play the song, and make a mental note that the mnemonic for remembering the song is "Drink your teeeeee."
When I learned about it, my first reaction was what? they're charging money for that? I could do all that myself. Then I remembered why I didn't have my Stokes CD's on my iPod already... and I made a quick mental estimate of just how long it would take me to organize the songs... and decided it was money well spent.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You might wanna check out this little gem even if it's a bit more expensive. :)
Pretty cool device and has everything you could possibly dream off. Forget the iPod.
Did you get it to work? It's kinda hard at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's easier. I did read that some percentage of the populace is unable to do it voluntarily, though. One way is to try yawning or swallowing (it's the same thing when you align pressure on an airplane).
51. Clean your iPod with brasso based on a slashdot comment. Take pics and post about it on your weblog. Get an amazing amount of traffic. Watch the adsense dollars flow in.
:)
I'm not saying I'm retiring soon or anything, but it was surprising to see the checks from google show up. Bonus!
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Despite the fact that you were modded a troll, I don't think you really meant to be labeled as such -- you're just providing an honest opinion on this device. The iPod (all of them) is not a remarkable piece of hardware in any way. There are superior players out there (hardware-wise). Similarly, iTunes is not the absolute easiest thing out there to use (despite the fact that by default, iTunes will automatically load the songs onto the iPod without any problems ... I suspect that you are using the Windows version, which you only just installed), but I would say it is up there. Still, the combination of those two things (plus the large, nearly *worldwide* iTunes catalog and minimal DRM) has granted it top-dog status.
The cities that you list as being supposedly "cool" cities are also heavily populated. I know that New York advises everyone who owns an iPod to get a different (preferably black) pair of earbuds to avoid mugging, which seems to be rather consistent from my view of people in New York. Tokyo and London probably have similar advisories. Just because you can't casually see it doesn't mean that they don't have it. Or better yet, maybe you're not seeing them at the right time. I have noticed that the U.S. west coast has much more of the devices than the east coast (or at least the users don't change out the white earbuds).
The comment about the metal back to the iPod is completely correct: they are designed to scratch, making them unique. It's a design statement by one of the world's most acclaimed industrial designers.
The comment about Jobs not inventing the device is quite true, but this philosophy can be extended indefinitely. At some point, you have to draw the line as saying that this person is responsible (not unlike a person in your position) for creating the iPod. He played a heavy hand in making it easy to use, as well as providing the necessary engineering and financial support to bring it up off the ground. I don't know of a single person who actually invented the PC, the GUI, or the iPod from scratch.
The comment about visiting fancy displays seems ill-mannered: why wouldn't you want to show off your product in the best way possible? So much about products (and people, places) come from the first impression. Those stores have some of the highest revenue densities in the world, and yet, they are designed to be spacious and unintrusive. I happen to find good design (not just technical design, despite my engineering background) rare and therefore, valuable. If anything, the feeling of being a complete tool comes from the fact that you bought what you felt was an inferior product because someone else asked you to do it.
Despite the fact that there are only 44 things (with an excuse that is at least quite funny) did you notice that there are more like 20-25 things you can do with your iPod - many of them (podcasting, record stuff, use it as a mirror, read texts, disguise it in some way, broadcast radio signals) are mentioned multiple times...
but how about this one: get arrested for installing linux on it
or this one: die from age while waiting for the unbeleivalble slow software to have uploaded your music on it
and this last one: waste your time on reading the same fun things to do with your iPod over and over again
well what shall I say... thats just the effect: no matter how bad your product is - when you broadcast enough advertisements the people will buy it... MS,HP,Apple (and more I don't recall now) live from that effect ^^
cya
AlgoMan
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Holy batman, it does work as well! Sadly, it's a bit faint, even at full volume and with open tubes. And it makes you look like a prat.
There's a market to be had here, surely.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
So if you can imitate the signal form the TV remotes, then you should be able to imitate the signal from car keys too?
I have a theory.
Apple's iPod is a not a music player. It is a detachment device. When the world gets to be too much, you whip out your little white world and detach into your own universe. Because of this, everything on the iPod, from the pure white face to the uncluttered interface, is straightforward, clean, and unnoisy. I've owned a lot of MP3 players over the years, and the iPod is the only one I would describe as "calming." The rest of them are cluttered with features and buttons, aesthetically noisy, and generally not what you want to turn to when you want to de-stress.
That's not to say the iPod is perfect... all of the ones that I've used have had problems ranging from easy scratching to not being able to forward between songs while using the scroll wheel to adjust a song's position. It also takes far too long to figure out how to turn off the blasted thing, a problem common with a surprising number of MP3 players. But it is the least crappy of all of the current crop.
As for the cost, there are more cost-effective player out there. But your goal is de-stressing, not maximum hdd per dollar. If something costs 20% less but makes you want to throw it across the room every time you use it, it isn't a savings towards your goal. If you can get a bigger hard drive in a bigger player that is so big you can't fit it in your pocket and therefore never take it with you... what have you gotten for your money?
I know lots of New Yorkers with iPods. They all have alternative headphones. The white cords are ubiquitous on Boston subways, however, as well as on Bart/Muni in San Fransisco.
And in Job's defense, he didn't create the iPod, but he has driven a heck of a lot of technology projects through to maturation. He drove the first really end-user-centric computer, his drive brought computers from geeky grey boxes to cool centerpieces of the living room, and he made online music sales a legitimate industry. No he didn't make these things himself, but without him these things wouldn't have been made (or would have taken a lot longer to get where they were). Remember: before the MAC, mice were rare and exotic.
The ______ Agenda
"50 fun things to do with your iPod besides listening to music with those white earbuds:"
I was going to suggest 48 too. Hearing societies recommend against using earbud style earphones since they are further down the ear canal and thus cause more damage to hearing when turned up too loud. Personally I think loud music from regular headphones will cause the same level of damage at the same perceived volume, since that's the volume that someone wants to listen at anyway, not a set number on the dial.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.