Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
List 45-50 are slashdotted, so here they are:
45. Blend in with a device everyone has
46. Untangled from useless features in cheap chinese knockoff
47. Free of battery failure with compulsory annual replacement
48. Go deaf
49. Buy back from eBay the iPod you gave someone for XMas, with original receipt and no shipping cost
50. Invitation to the iPod nano class action lawsuit
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Listen to music! Gosh its a music player for Gods sake, not second coming of a slice bread..
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Alright the #35 one should not count. That sounds like something fun to do with an altoid box, not an iPod.
There's actually only 44 things in the list, and about half of those are duplicates of each other (perfect for /. then...)
This was posted six minutes earlier at http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173360&c id=14423193
iBuzz: a music-activated, iPod-powered vibrator
http://www.lovehoney.co.uk/product.cfm?id=5294
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
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!
Buying one for your wife... meaning you have to upgrade your home machine to play iTunes... honest dear it just won't run on this single CPU one...
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Will it run.....It will? Awesome!!
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
One thing you won't be able to do, at least with Apple's factory setup of the iPod, is listen to radio (unless one day they charge for satellite radio). This could be so easily added as it is seen on competitors' devices but if users aren't listening to downloaded music, rather something from a source they do not control, then they are not buying things on iTunes. Am I correct to guess that this is a marketing thing and not because they can't fit a little radio on there? If so, that should be a big criticism of the device.
Im fairly sure you could swallow the nano with little effort.
-AlexC
Take the Book of God anywhere with BiblePlayer, listen to the Quran on your walk to the office, or discover the wisdom of the Torah on the train.
And you can also get meditation instruction, Dharma talks, etc... - Here ...FYI
I like to learn about Asian philosophy.
Get it?
Karma whore referring to a Buddhist Site!
I kill me!
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.
Seriously, god knows how many reviews/blogs/posts/whatever complaining about whatever mp3 player not having radio. Why would I want to listen to what someone else picks and ads and stupid people when I can listen to what I want, when and where I want to listen to it!
Really, it's not to hard to come up with a few good reasons. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
I use my iPod for music, audiobooks, podcasting, and storing notes. But one other thing I use it for is an emergency boot drive.
I cloned my start-up disk onto my iPod minus unecessary files and use it as an emergency boot drive. If I need to repair/maintain the start-up disk, I can do it with my iPod which has all the utilities I need. I've repaired my friends' Macs this way too. It's faster and more flexible than booting from CD.
Plus, I often simply boot from my iPod when I'm using my school's Macs or friends'. (With permission, of course.) I get to run my apps with my environment which I can sync back and forth with my Mac.
Unfortunately, now that all iPods no longer support FireWire, this will be my last iPod that can be bootable.
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 their website running on an iPod? If so, i'd take it off the list now :)
today is spelling optional day.
Since it didn't make it.
iPod bartender and iPod bartender shuffle
(I think something similar did make it, but mine is free.)
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
...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.
Well, I didn' t mod you a troll, but I would have if I was modding.
:)
Here's why:
1. You don't actually own, use, or appear to even like iPods, but you feel compelled to post on your second-hand experience of buying one for your girlfriend. Based on what sounds like about 20 minutes of using one, you think you're some sort of expert commentator.
2. You follow that up with some weird observation about not seeing iPods in use in major cities. Now, I'm in the bay area, but I do travel a lot. I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I personally see iPods everywhere, to the point where you'll see several people posting here about iPods being too popular or too trendy. I was at the gym last week and was amused to see that every single person on the row of elliptical trainers that I was on had an iPod of some sort.
3. You finish with a rambling observation that you don't see why people find the iPod (which you don't own) special or useful.
In summary: you're posting uninteresting, vague and uninformed observations about a product you don't even own or use, and that you appear to have a bias against. You also post vague statements about other products being better without offering any specific examples. I'm not even sure you like to listen to music. So, overall that would move you to troll in my estimation.
There you go.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
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
A mini (which had the best case, most reasonable size/capacity/price). I have had it for a year, and have replaced the battery myself just this Xmas. While it is nice and all, it is NOT a device worthy of the hordes of gibbering idiots that worship the damn thing. I have crashed the OS several time, had it freeze on me several times, had it corrupt data, had the battery not last half the expected lifetime, given up on iTunes (ml_ipod for Winamp for teh win - and yes, I prefer Winamp as a media player because the Media Library is great for dealing with hundereds of gigs of music and videos) and had other problems with it, but I still use it all the time, every day. In fact, I may have had my hands on it almost as much as on my dick. Oh, wait, I read /., nevermind.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
So if you can imitate the signal form the TV remotes, then you should be able to imitate the signal from car keys too?
#57 - Pacemaker -- You can raise and lower you heart rate with the scroll wheel. Note: required a slight modification of the ear buds.
Some settling may occur during posting.
My recipe goes like this:
- Clone DVD to get the VOB files to my hard disk.
- MergeVOB to get them into one huge file.
- Videora iPod converter to do the MP4 converting.
On my rather dated machine the process takes about an hour 40, but the movies are only 700mb and that doesn't make much dent in my 60GBOkay, now here's the kicker. I bought the movies legally on DVD and still have the case and all, why is this illegal? That's just stupid I don't care who you are. I should be able to put the disc in and iTunes should rip it for me, just like a CD.
This is not an illusion, a rip-off, or a ninja technique!
Seems a lot of the features are trying to turn an Ipod into a PDA. If some one would just make a PDA with a proper hard drive that has an Ipod style menuing system there wouldn't seem much of a fight for functionality. Ipods are still largely a single use device. I use my PDA all day long and would be lost without it. I'm guessing cost is the big factor holding it up. Personally I'm pretty happy with the 1 gig card on my PDA. I store a lot of stuff on it and have yet to use up 10% of the memory. If it breaks I can pull out the card and drop it into a new one and be up and running in minutes.
Being half deaf on the left, I wish someone would figure out a "hack" for balance control. Pretty sad such an obvious control would have to be a hack though...
"I can be self-referential if I want to," said Tom, swiftly.
I live in London, and it's pretty rare for me to sit ina tube carriage without seeing four or five other iPod users during off-peak times.
During rush-hour, naturaly, I can barely see anyone else who isn't presse dup right against me :(
James P. Barrett
4. exposure to music you don't own
That's why I bought the iPod in the first place.
The ______ Agenda
I am so tired of hearing iPod this, iPod that -- these devices are not the first, nor the best, the portable MP3 players. I am also surprised that so many people here in slashdot, who tend to be quite reactionary about privacy and public disclosure rights, seem to blithely surrender to iTunes, that software which rules your music collection -- one which is in some ways spyware (reporting back to apple what you listen to) and is subject to the whims of Apple and its cohorts. At what point will MP3s become unsupported unless digitally signed by some Authorized Party such as Apple or the RIAA? I live my Creative MUVO much better - just drag and drop your music, no sweat, no software, no Big Brother. And, unlike the iPod shuffle which I was misguided enough to get my girlfriend for Christmas, it doesn't require software (iTunes) which caused the CD drive of her computer to no longer be recognized by the OS. I returned it to the store, and am going to buy her a MUVO.
I don't travel so much, but here in Australia just about everyone with headphones seems to have little white headphones. This is my experience in Melbourne and (on a day trip) in Brisbane. They're everywhere!
As to the device itself, I haven't found the sort of problems you've had. In my experience it's been trivial to get music onto it. I bought one for my fiancee, and was rewarded at work with a Nano. I'd have never bought an mp3 player for myself, but after being given one, I find I use it a lot.
My fiancee is a PC user, with no particular feelings for or against Apple. She found the iPod simple to use, and now it's the source of her music collection. After opening the box, we had our entire CD collection of nearly 25GB on it in about 40mins.
The device is not particularly special in the specs, although I'd say they're competitive on price, especially the smaller units. It's just a small hard drive, reasonable audio circuitry and a very smooth interface. There are other options, but after trying them in stores I find them clunky to use. The iPod's not perfect, but it's the best of the bunch.
You say that people are giving Steve Jobs credit for something he didn't do. I've heard that he was personally involved with the project, not at a technical level, but at the design level. If that's true (and I've heard it from different sources, so I don't doubt it) then he can take fairly credit for some part of the iPod, but so also can the design team (headed by Ives, no doubt) and the technical team. It's just that we don't know their names.
Some things that aren't inluded in that list:
- Convert large text files and into notes for use on iPod
- Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod Using Free Software
- Use your iPod Photo or Nano as a Yahoo! Maps directions viewer
- How-To: Get TV shows off of your TiVo and onto your iPod
And that's just from clicking through del.icio.us search results for iPod a few times.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
Because it's perceived as special by so many people. Successful marketting. Hype leading to popularity.
I'm not attempting to downplay this. I've owned four different MP3 players over the years. Only my latest is an iPod. Why, after three significantly cheaper and perfectly capable MP3 players that I was perfectly happy with until I outgrew them (each has been bigger than the last) did I finally decide upon an iPod?
It had nothing to do with the device itself. Look at it and you'll find no clear advantage to anything else you compare it to. The hard drives aren't bigger than you can get on other devices, it doesn't really play more stuff (less, in fact, than WMA-capable players), it isn't really any easier to use than a large number of cheaper competitors.
If you don't see it, you're focused in too close. Pull back the camera a bit, so that you can see more than just the device itself. The reason I bought the iPod wasn't that it was, by itself, any better than the Creative or other players available. No, see those three aisles of iPod accessories in the store next to the iPod?
You can do more with the iPod, not because it does more, but simply because it's the one that everyone is making things for. The Creative player had three accessories I could buy. The iPod had three aisles of accessories. No matter what I wanted, I have a multitude of choices -- which style of case I wanted, what kind of speakers, specially built to both play and charge while it was docked in it, which kind, shape, and color of dash-mounting kit, etc.
The iPod is better because everyone thinks it's better, and manufacturers and sells accessories accordingly. What makes the iPod so special is that everyone thinks it's so special. It's like the proverbial self-fulfilling prophesy -- because so many people perceive it to be special, it actually is.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The IPod has a stellar "coolness" factor, but I tell everyone considering one to get an Ipaq instead. Maybe a bit less memory in most configurations, but WiFi, Bluetooth, Web browsing; or interface to your GPS, remote-control just about any IR device, print, use Word, Excel, read Ebooks, receive streamed video from your home server.... and of course, Solitaire. If you're not flush with extra cash, why get a less-capable device for more money?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
My ipod has never seen the inside of itunes. Every single song on it was loaded with gtkpod. Breaking my old Palm address file into files 1 per address didn't take long -- awk did it in a line of code. I can put backup files on it too, though that's of limited use since my Windows machine at work can't read the Apple-formatted drive. It's still a handy 60 gig drive I can just happen to listen to music on, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?