Archive for the 'ipod' Category

3OH!3

Published
by
shoo
on 6/26/2008
in Music and ipod
. 7 Comments

I know when my taste in music is hitting the deep end (I think it’s about right now), but I guess I’ve listened to one too many Decemberists - Eric Hutchison’s - Death Cab for Cutie’s. My latest iPod entries have been on the opposite side of the spectrum of your Death Cabs with Justice, Massive Attack, and F Buttons on my Last.fm profile for the Top Artists of the Week.

So it doesn’t surprise me when I come across a white boy group that raps over heavy electronic-crunk beats titled 3OH!3 (Three-Oh-Three) that I am immediately drawn in. Even better, they’re from the land of hippies Boulder, Colorado. I don’t know what it is about groups like Atmosphere, The Beastie Boys, (here’s one out of left field) Two Skinny J’s but I immediately want to crank it up and act like I have rhythm.

From the YouTube videos I’ve watched the guys look like nothing but a good time and have really heavy beats. Definitely something Mrs. Shoo will be yelling at me to turn it down.

This may be an iTunes purchase, but for now I am going to listen to Myspace tracks.

Custom webclip icon.

Published
by
shoo
on 1/16/2008
in iphone, ipod and spfldbloggers
. 6 Comments

Custom webclip icon for iphone, originally uploaded by gotshoo.

Apple’s newest release of firmware for the iPhone and iPod Touch allows users to create a custom home screen with rearrangeable icons. Also new is the functionality to create webclips, or URL shortcuts on the home screen by bookmarking sites. If you are a site owner, you can create a custom icon by following these steps.

I just created one for gotshoo? and spfldbloggers and m.spfldbloggers.com. Dave Heinzel has also got his signature H

Pretty cool.

I want to touch the iPod.

Published
by
shoo
on 12/27/2007
in Comp Geek Stuff, daveheinzel, iphone and ipod
. 14 Comments

IMG_6039
Santa was pretty good to Mr. Shoo this year and left enough Best Buy gift cards and cash to be able to get an iPod Touch. The Touch is very similar to the iPhone except that it’s not a phone, doesn’t have an external speaker, and doesn’t have bluetooth capability. What it does have is Wifi, photo slideshow, a web browser, about 8GB of storage, and it’s thinner than an iPhone. Not too shabby.

First thoughts:

Unlike Dave and his iPhone, I can manually manage my music, videos, and play directly from the iPod. Dave, something I did find out is that there is a 3rd party utility to copy your music from an iPod to your iTunes library if you use the Jailbreak hack (more on that later).

One of the first things I tried out was the web browser. Just unbelievable how easy it is to use. The browser allows for full page viewing of websites as well as modified mobile versions. Google has some iPhone/touch optimized pages for gmail, search, and calendar. With a double tap of the finger one can easily zoom in and check out a portion of a webpage. Of course, I checked out http://m.spfldbloggers.com first - and of course, I found out I need to fix a few features.

A neat thing that I can do from my touch since I am connected to the Internet via wifi is buy music from the iTunes library. Last night I bought my first album from iTunes while laying in bed half awake. It was way too easy. I clicked buy, entered my password and immediately after that I was automatically downloading new tracks to my iPod. The album also included some bonus features so as soon as I synced back with iTunes, iTunes started downloading new videos. All way too cool!

Jailbreak

Jailbreak is the method to get 3rd party apps installed on an iPhone / Touch. There are 100’s of tutorials out there so I thought I give one a shot. One of the first steps is to downgrade the firmware to 1.1.1. In 1.1.1 there is an exploit in the web browser to allow access to the root of the system so it’s possible to install applications. The Jailbreak software uses this exploit and then patches it right away. More info here.

CrunchGear has the easiest tutorial so far.

I gave it a shot tonight. Really easy to do. I installed a few apps under the 1.1.1 version, but when I went to upgrade to 1.1.2 I didn’t get the pre-installer for Jailbreak installed correctly so it reverted back to the factory settings. Eventually, I’ll try it again because it’s possible to get the same functionality from the iPhone of Google Maps and Email for the Touch that’s not currently included with the Touch.

So why didn’t you just get an iPhone?

Honestly, because I was worried about dropping a device that I would have so much invested interest into and having to pay for extra fees for mobile internet. You wouldn’t believe, but ol’ Shoo can be a bit clumsy at times. The rumor is that by June there will be a new 3G version of the iPhone and the current version will be out of date. And I guess the biggest reason why I didn’t get one was because somewhere in the iPhone contract there is small print that I must get a new puppy for GTG. Well, that’s what she keeps telling me.

Worth it?

Of course you could buy a Zune and be perfectly happy, but you wouldn’t have a kick ass UI (user interface) or a full internet browser. Yes, it’s worth it if you have the moola.