Status-Q

Apple is to allow you to download your photos straight from your digital camera to your iPod Photo, using the the iPod Camera Connector, due out in late March. CNET:

The camera connector, Joswiak said, is a small white plastic device, similar in appearance to a small docking station, that has a cable for connecting to the iPod and a USB port for connecting to a camera. It will work with both the new iPod Photos and with earlier photo player models, Joswiak said.

Pictures loaded onto an iPod directly will be able to display immediately on the iPod.

Oh, and the iPod Photos are now cheaper.

I’ve always been impressed with the sound quality from my iPod Shuffle, but today I plugged it into my Sennheiser HD590 headphones instead of the little earbuds, and I was blown away. Amazingly good sound. It depends on the quality of your MP3 files, of course, but if you’ve got some good headphones, give it a try.

The band that goes across the top of my head is substantially larger than the thing storing and generating the music!

John has opened a whole new frontier in the gadget war. After a recent visit to the Apple store in London, he gave me a gift of an iPod Shuffle. This means that he not only has technical superiority, but the moral high ground as well! I suspect he sleeps with a copy of The Art of War under his pillow…

Now, when the Shuffle came out, I must confess to thinking that it was a cute toy for those who couldn’t afford a real iPod, and I didn’t feel the least bit tempted. But having owned one for a few hours, I must say that, much to my surprise, I’m entranced! It’s just beautiful. I love the fact that it feels too light to actually contain any components, let alone a battery.

I love the fact that I can slip it in a pocket and still have room for other things. I love the way it sits, apparently lifeless, on my dashboard or desk, while pumping out high-quality music into my speakers. I love the fact it’s less than half the size of the dock for my regular iPod. I love… well, you get the idea. It’s not going to replace my big iPod for car use or for taking on trips with me, but as an everyday way of carrying music around, it’s great.

Now here’s an interesting thing. A USB plug normally has 4 connections in it: power, ground and two data lines. The iPod Shuffle has some extra lines slipped in between the usual ones, and nobody seems to know quite what they are.

They may be there simply for high-speed programming during manufacture, but I rather hope they have extra functionality, such as audio out, and control signals. I’m dreaming of plugging it straight into the front of my car stereo or my home amplifier.

I wonder how many people have realised that the iPod Photo could be a great way to carry Powerpoint-style presentations around? Or Keynote presentations, I should probably say. The video-out connectors would plug happily into most projectors. It’ll be interesting to see what the quality of the TV output is like; it may be rather low resolution for presentations involving much text or many diagrams.

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This year’s must-have Christmas present? I keep a backup of my photos on my iPod, so I guess being able to view them makes sense.

I think John’s going to beat me on this one – he can justify it if he keeps posting such nice pictures on Memex.

Thought for the day: the iPod is now usable as a contact list manager as well as an MP3 player. My suggestion for the next step: make it an outline browser. You could create arbitrary outlines in something like OmniOutliner or Radio and carry them around with you on the iPod. The user interface is superb for that.

Some outlining programs have a handy to-do list option. Each node has a checkbox, and an item is automatically checked when all its sub-items are checked. While entering text on the move would be a pain, checking and unchecking things is something you could reasonably do on an iPod.

Checkboxes would probably require changes to the iPod software itself, but simple browsing could be done initially by creating fake MP3 tracks in an appropriate directory hierarchy. That’s how the contact list idea started. Should be easy.
In fact, if somebody gives me an iPod, I’ll implement it…