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Nike+ Sensor To Be Embedded In All Running Shoes

Nike President and CEO Mark Parker announced last week that all Nike running shoes will have Nike+iPod integration by the end of 2007. Nike+iPod has been wildly popular with runners since it’s introduction in May of 2006.

Nike+ is a sensor embedded within the shoes measuring data such as distance traveled and how many calories have been burned. Users can then control the track, volume and other playback settings via their iPod Nano with specialized software announcing significant points such as milestones achieved throughout their workout. The sort of technology is certainly convienent for runners and other athletes, especially those who have traditional had to have multiple devices with them in order to track these sorts of milestones.

GizMac Accessories Has Sent Out Hundreds of Free Cases

GizMac, the makers of the Titan Clear free iPod case, has recently sent out hundreds of free iPod cases. According to Jessica Urbanovit, Sales Administrator for GizMac Accessories,

“GizMac Accessories did not want to tell our customers that the free iPod cases were being sent. The GizMac management wanted to give free Titan Clear iPod cases as a nice surprise and thank you to our loyal customers.”

Titan Clear iPod Case is Solid

The Titan Clear is a tough, clear polycarbonate iPod case for the second generation Nano. With the Titan Clear, not only will the iPod Nano body be protected, but the screen and click wheel will also be protected. The Titan Clear case itself will protect the screen of the Nano with tough, clear polycarbonate. For the click wheel, a thin film material included with the Titan Clear will protect it from possible damage.

The Titan Clear positions the Nano along the bottom of the case. Not only does having the Nano line up with the lower part of the Titan Clear case add to the appearance, it also allows for easy access to the bottom of the Nano. With the Titan Clear case, charging and oversize earphone plugs are not an issue as with other cases on the market.

The Titan Clear iPod case for the 2nd generation Nano has a US retail of $24.99 and is available at GizMac.

A very nifty gadget that a friend of mine had sent me a link to:

Griffin TuneFlex Aux

I guess it’s not out yet, but does do two very key things. First, it keeps your iPod in much battery sight. Secondly, hard wire line out. You can’t beat that. Nothing pisses me off more than my friends who download all these high quality songs (192kbps encoding +) and then hook up their iPod through an FM transmitter. Sounds like, the radio.

Plus, it would cure my charging woes, with you know, that battery issue I’ve been dealing with. Stay tuned for when this thing comes out, and I buy one if they don’t charge more than 50 bucks for it. The only issue that I can think of is if it can securely hold the iPod… those of you with aftermarket stiff suspension who drive in pothole-laden areas, beware…

Titan Clear Multi-Function iPod Case Now Available

GizMac Accessories, designer and manufacturer of innovative products for the iPod, is now shipping their new Titan Clear iPod case for the Nano. The Titan Clear is a tough, clear polycarbonate iPod case for the second generation Nano. With the Titan Clear, not only will the iPod Nano body be protected, but the screen and click wheel will also be protected. The Titan Clear case itself will protect the screen of the Nano with tough, clear polycarbonate. For the click wheel, a thin film material included with the Titan Clear will protect it from possible damage.

The Titan Clear positions the Nano along the bottom of the case. Not only does having the Nano line up with the lower part of the Titan Clear case add to the appearance, it also allows for easy access to the bottom of the Nano. With the Titan Clear case, charging and oversize earphone plugs are not an issue as with other cases on the market.

The Titan Clear iPod case for the 2nd generation Nano has a US retail of $24.99 and is available at GizMac.

Advances in Thin Film Research To Make This Possible

According to research done by the University of Manitoba, new advances in thin film research could theoretically make a hard drive capable of about 155 gigabytes (GB) per square centimeter, far beyond the capacity of the iPod in your pocket today. According to Johan van Lierop, “The largest current disk capacity on MP3 players is about 80 GB, representing around 20,000 songs worth of storage. Our work may help companies like Fujitsu develop components for an iPod that could hold 125,000 songs or around 500 GB of data.” Not that many of us have that many song titles, but advances like this would make the iPod as much of a portable storage device as a multimedia player.

Besides the fact that not many would need that much storage capacity on an iPod, imagine what that would cost. With an 80 gig iPod going for for $349, a 155 GB iPod would probably retail for at least $699. That’s just crazy!

So I got this iPod here, hangin’ out in the cupholder in my car while driving down to Virginia. 5 hour trip, maybe 6 if you hit a lot of traffic on the NJ turnpike. No problems right? Wrong. The battery on the iPod lasted a good 3 hours, and the iPod indicated that it had plenty of juice left (about half). No more than 2 Fugees songs later, the battery is completely drained. Yeah, it’s an older iPod, but I didn’t think the battery was going to be this crappy. Replacements are not that cheap either (going through Apple), plus if I were to do it myself, the labor involved that requires precision surgery to this already beaten iPod.

So I reverted to standard FM radio, and was quickly reminded why it sucks so bad. That new Puff daddy and Christina Aguilera song was played about 8 times in a span of 2 hours. No wonder so many people have iPods… so they can listen to the same shit just like when they are listening to the radio, just in higher quality sound, and no commercials.

Why doesn’t this damn iPod have a battery that doesn’t suck? Upon arrival to my friend’s place, I quickly jumped on Google to search some ways to remedy this battery dilemma. Stumbled upon this site :

http://www.vsa.cape.com/~danh/ipod.htm

A pretty intuitive site about iPods and their batteries. Unfortunately since I didn’t have the iPod since it was new, I don’t know the charging habits / usage habits of the old user. So it may very well be the user before me has run it down.

A little more searching brought me to this nifty idea : http://www.chrisdiclerico.com/2005/01/18/altoids-ipod-battery-pack-v3/

That seems like way too much work for someone as lazy as me, but if I’m bored one day… you never know…

So here I am, with an iPod, jamming away to some Tribe Called Quest, when my co-worker walks over and hears that I’m listening to “Scenario” and begins to sing “Here we go yo, here we go yo…” Promptly after he raps his rendition of this classic tribe song, he looks at my iPod and sneers “damn, that thing is old” and runs back to his desk and grabs his black Nano (yes, I’m sure it was a nano, I know now what they look like). Ugh, even my co-worker loves to snob it up with his iPod, thus reinforcing this general loathe I have for these iPods.

But alas, I give my first real hands-on test of this thing, and suprisingly, I like it. The scroll wheels i s pretty accurate. The volume output is very sufficient. The menu navigation, whilst simple, is easy to access and figure out. It is still a little bulky (remember, 4g iPod Photo 20gb) but for the amount of stuff it can hold, it’s pretty good. Not too shabby. My opinion is starting to change on these iPods. I’m really starting to believe that until…. iTunes becomes a pain in my ass, again.

What a piece of crap. See my rant on my last post. See what I’m going to rant about…

Ok, got my cord, now all I have to do is hook it up to my PC and download iTunes right? Wrong. iTunes installed pretty well, but everything after that was a mess. Despite telling it to manually manage my iPod(s) - it went ahead and formatted and deleted everything on the iPod. Then, the program froze and became none responsive.

Sweet. End task.

So I went online and did a little research on an iPod forum, only to find 15978137 different iPod forums, with about 91782391827 posts being “where can I get free music for my iPod?” After a little sifting (an understatement), I found out that Winamp could manage an iPod without issues. Wish I knew that before I plugged the damn thing in. iTunes is now uninstalled from my computer.

I also found this program that some people suggested to get, for ease of connecting it to any computer. It’s called YamiPod and it loads onto the iPod itself, allowing easy connections to virtually any computer.

Anyway, once I’m done loading the 15GB of Hanson and Backstreet boys albums off of doctechnical’s playlist, I’ll let you know how this thing works.

I walked into Staples Express today in Midtown to pick up some toner, only to walk by essentially what you can call an “iPod shrine”. Seriously, it had a bigger section than pens and highlighters, which in Staples, is a huge section. I pick up the toner and meander over to the iPod section to see if I can pick up a USB or firewire cord and a charger of some sort so I can hook this thing up to the computer, because one can only take a certain amount of this All American Rejects/Fallout Boy/Shania Twain(?) mix that is currently on the iPod. $45 for a charger that doubles as a cable! Made in China. Listen man - I have relatives there - I know this crap doesn’t cost them 50 cents to make. I leave Staples empty handed in terms of iPod stuff.

So, I went on eBay and bought a firewire plug and charger for this iPod. You know a product has been completely whored out when eBay is filled with accessories. Look at this BLING I found while looking for a pouch to carry this thing in. How do you make sure EVERYONE and their mothers know you have an iPod? Buy one of those things. It amplifies the “loudness” of your iPod ten fold.

Damn, this iPod is scratched up pretty bad, looks like homeboy dropped it a couple times pretty good also. Anyone know how to restore one of these besides taking my buffer out and waxing it? I wanna make mine as shiny as I can, so I can be an attention whore just like you.

Onkyo DS-A2 adds remote control access to your iPod

If you are like me, and swear by Onkyo home theatre receivers, you have probably thought about how cool it would be to integrate your iPod with the receiver, as well as control it through the remote. I stumbled upon exactly what I was looking for today, the Onkyo DS-A2 Docking Station . This station will control iPod transport functions, charges your iPod Battery, has video output and TV Based menus for browsing your iPod. The only downside I see is that videos and photos are not yet supported through TV based browsing, perhaps it’s a reason to hold out for the next version. At $99.99, the DS-A2 is a hair on the expensive side, but if you are looking for the convenience of this integration, it just might be worth every penny.