The Life of Me

Video iPod now available :) – via Mike

Nick is planning to introduce podcatching support into FeedDemon after being introduced to the new craze while at Gnomedex, and is already testing a working version of his Podcatching enabled FeedDemon!

By the way, I think we should start differentiating between Podcasting and Podcatching to help avoid any confusion.

More Information:
What is Podcasting
Alternate FeedDemon Icon (above).

I purchased my new phone on Saturday from Vodafone UK. I opted for one of their most expensive non-business packages, as I’m finding myself spending more and more on mobile calls. The package itself is costing me £50 a month (£600 GBP or $1,100 USD a year) so I expected Vodafone to bend over backwards for my money.

However, this is not the case – My Vodafone branded SE K700i has been modified by Vodafone so that it will only play DRM‘d MP3 ringtones. This was never (afaik) noted as a limitation on either the Vodafone or Sony Ericsson sites – In fact it isn’t a limitation on the other mobile networks. So now I can’t use any of the 1000’s of MP3s stored on my computer or iPod, I have to purchase them all over again… from Vodafone!

A Vodafone customer services representative told me that Vodafone are going to lose customers to other networks because of this… in fact they’ve just lost 1 customer… me!

I think I’ll go to O2, Orange, T-Mobile or one of the other networks and give them my money in return for a phone that works as advertised.

Shame on you Vodafone!

Apple release a colour iPod, the iPod Photo, that can store & view photos as well as doing the usual music stuff.

The newest member of the iPod family, iPod Photo comes in two sizes: a 40GB model, available for $499, and a capacious 60GB model that sells for $599. Both feature a razor sharp LCD display that lets you see your photos in vivid color — 65,536 colors, to be exact. And with its built-in backlighting, you’ll be able to admire those photos indoors or out.

Nice… and I want one now!

I wonder how much they’ll cost once they hit the shores of the UK?

A while ago I wrote about a tool I had used to increase the volume limit on my european iPod. Although it worked perfectly it required that I run the tool every time I automatically updated my iPod… not something I wanted to do indefinitely.

So last week I set about trying to find another fix for my iPod “problem” and found an awesome little piece of software that modifies the iPod firmware (its completely reversible – don’t worry) to remove the European volume limit imposed on European iPods.

And so, I thoroughly recommend goPod,iPod & iPod Mini Compatible!

Are you a closet iPod user?

I am, but not by choice… the Apple earphones hurt my ears, so I wear these awesome Sony inner-ear ‘phones.

How about you?

For the past month or so, I’ve been listening to lots and lots of “podcasts”, especially when travelling to and from University. Podcasts, put simply, are audio files that you subscribe to via a feed in iPodder based software. These audio files are then automatically added to the media player of your choice and then automatically uploaded to your MP3 player.

The MP3 player and media player isn’t supposed to be important at the moment, but most of the work is going into iPods and iTunes at the moment. Probably because Adam Curry laid the foundations with his original iPodder applescript.

What do I need?

First of all, you’ll need some iPodder software.

For Mac, iPodderX seems to be most popular, and for Windows there is the amazing iPodder.

Then you’ll need to grab some feeds.

• Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code
• Adam Curry’s & Dave Winer’s Trade Secrets Show
• Dave Slusher’s Evil Genius Chronicles
• Dave Winer’s The Scripting News
• The Weekly Standards Audio Show

Then What?

Using your iPodder software, subscribe to any RSS 2.0 feed that has mp3 enclosures and if you’ve done everything correctly you’ll see new files downloading, and then new playlists being automatically created inside your media player. Once the download has completed you should see the PodCasts being automatically uploaded to your media player.

More Information

• iPodder.org
• PodCasts.org
• PodCaster.net
• PodCaster’s Groups
• Engadget’s Podcasting How To
• How to Podcast with Windows

Once the software matures and the number of feeds increases, Podcasting is going to be massive!

Edit: Corrected the feed URLs.

Once again its time to empty my “to-blog” bookmarks folder. There is no particular theme to this weeks bookmarks… it’s just some mighty good linkage.

• Design Books
  Jason Santa Maria shares his design book short-list.
• Photo-realistic Illustrations (via)
  And even more Illustrator Magic from newrecruit
• Copying iPod Music back to a computer
  The ipodlounge shows us the correct way to recover music from your ipod.
• Eustress, We Stress…
  Commonsense suggestions to help de-stress your day
• Top 7 Trends in Online Ad Design
  Another great article from Sitepoint.

An article over at MP3.com covers the “secrets” behind the iPod’s scroll-wheel. It covers all generations of iPod and documents the improvements and changes made throughout the years.

Although there are no real secrets in the article, its an informative way to spend 5 minutes of your time.

If you own a 1G/2G/3G iPod, then go sign this petition in the hope that we’ll see the latest iPod software improvements made available to older iPods.

fingers crossed…