Entries tagged with “ipod” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

Folk-rock artist Jimmy Camp was recently evaluating options for recording his demo album. In frustration at not being able to find an affordable commercial recording studio that met his budget, he wound up recording using only his iPod. He purchased a Belkin Tune Talk ($70) mic accessory for his video iPod, connected it to a basic mixer, and was able...

Yeah, yeah. The Zune may be a miserable failure according to some, but there are definitely some positive points about the Zune that Apple should take note of and consider emulating. Here is my list of six lessons Apple might consider learning from the Zune and implementing in their iPod line. 1. Be fingerprint resistant. The soft feel of the...

Macworld 2007 was busier than I've seen in years, but it didn't feel like a computer show. Indeed, as I squeezed past everything from iPod toilet-paper holders to all manner of cases, bags, and enveloping speakers, I was struck by how many of the products were simply designed to dress up your toy. The ubiquitous music player has become a...

"Tis the season for gift guides to be sure. (Yes, we have one here if you're looking for an O'Reilly book.) But I'm guessing many people are going to follow Scott Bourne's advice from the end of the great gift-giver's guide edition of the iLifeZone podcast (episode 16) and just go for the iPod. Why not? Scott's right, this gift...

One of the great things about working for O'Reilly is that I get to check out the latest books. Yesterday I got a PDF copy of iPod: The Missing Manual, 5th Edition, by New York Times Circuits writer J.D. Biersdorfer. My mission: to extract some of the tips and present them in HTML so you can see them too....

My colleagues at PaidContent.org shared some insights from a recent Steven Levy article in Newsweek regarding the iPod turniing five.......here are the most entertaining pieces: iPods are cool and useful, but the fifth anniversary of the digital music player is getting an enormous hype party -- the full cultural milestone treatment, sort of like when Tom Cruise turned 40. Newsweek...

Go here and bang around for "appliance." http://www.projectbarbq.com/bbqtopic.htm (thanks for the photo, Dave Battino) http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2032 You'll see that the topic of "PC versus Appliance," especially as relates to audio, was brought up elegantly in 1997 by Van Webster in a talk he gave at our conference, Project BBQ. Since then, the "church of appliantology" has created quite a stir...

Kelli Richards’s straightforward suggestion for ending the fighting between Apple and Apple Corps got me thinking about software enhancements for the iPod ecosystem. Specifically, I envisioned a tool that would create iPod Packs—enhanced enhanced podcasts—without all the overhead of GarageBand. I’m imagining something like MixMeister, a Windows program that detects the tempo of each song in a playlist and then...

My co-author Kelli Richards, who spent a decade promoting music at Apple, has an ingeniously simple suggestion for how Apple and the Beatles’ Apple Corps can resolve their ongoing dispute. What if producers and DJs designed your next iPod? Although Kelli didn’t list a Beatles iPod in her plan, I’ve long wondered why Apple stopped with the U2 model. I’d...

The MusicGremlin = iPod + WiFi - Computer. It moves us closer to the celestial jukebox ideal: it's a wireless portable music player that doesn't need a computer. It could be the next iPod--unless the next iPod is essentially a MusicGremlin.

Last night I saw a demo of a handheld music player with an intriguing twist: Not only could it download songs wirelessly, it could also beam them to other players—while compensating the artist.

Newer versions of Flash enable you to add high quality video to an HTML page that members of your audience can watch even if they don’t have the most powerful computer equipment or the fastest internet connections. Examples in this posting include clips from a Godzilla inspired short video and a social issue documentary on immigrant teens.

The iPod’s screen is by no means large, but if you understand the basics of codecs and video compression, you can make video podcasts that look really sharp.

Forget the tired “smiley curve” or the all-faders-on-stun settings most people use on graphic EQs. After this music fan posted his “perfect” EQ curve for iTunes, a recording engineer made it even better by turning it upside down.

Apple fans everywhere are anticipating next week's announcement (Sept. 7th). What will Apple announce?

Apple announced this morning that iTunes now supports podcast downloads, and a new podcast section at the iTunes music store.

An article about making free phone calls with an iPod led me to a site with downloadable telephone touch-tones. Then I found another use for them....

Sometimes you can't just rock and roll all alone - you need Jimi or Stevie Ray along for the ride. The JamPod for guitarists allows portable iPod play-along jamming through headphones. But are there enough digital smarts in the device to make it truly useful?

Apple is rightfully concerned about Real's new Harmony product that acts as a translator between three major DRM formats: Fairplay, MS DRM and Real's Helix.

Will wireless community networks create the so called great jukebox in the sky?