My iSkin Arrived

The iSkin eVo2 I ordered for my iPod arrived today. I got the charcoal one with the set of five colored screen protectors. With shipping, that came to $45. Happy birthday, me!

I'm a little disappointed in the color; it's… duller… than it appears on the web site. Thankfully, I got the screen protectors to jazz things up a bit. My DW thought I should get the wasabi skin, but (as most of the members of my family will attest too) I'm not quite that daring in the color department. Also, the Wild Sides weren't yet available when I placed my order, but I did time it right to get one of the new click wheel covers.

In addition to protecting my iPod, I got the skin for it's additional "grippiness"; I was always afraid the iPod was going to slip out of my hand. As a lot of the forums indicated, the silicone does tend to pick up dust, however it comes off easily with a damp cloth and folks say that the tendency goes away with use.

The colored screen protectors make the screen a bit harder to read, so I may need to use the backlight more often than I currently do. I haven't had an issue with battery life so far; we'll have to see if this has an impact. On the plus side, the darker screen means more privacy for those times when your listening to guilty pleasures at work!

I did make one modification to the stock skin: it comes with "an integrated docking port cover to keep dust, dirt and liquids out of your iPod's docking port, preventing permanent damage." It does seal well enough that it probably would keep out liquids; however, I'm not quite that casual in my treatment of the iPod and I plug in often enough that I could tell the flap would be a major source of frustration, so… snip!

Speaking of plugging in, the extra thickness of the skin means that I can't use my iPod dock at this point. Don't know if I'll try modding it, or if I'll just stick with the cables.

Update: I ended up chucking the click wheel protector that came with the iSkin -- it was constantly interfering with the "hold" commands (backlight & off). I know they added it 'cause a lot of reviewers lamented its absence, but for me I really didn't add much other than annoyance!

An iPod Update

I've been living with my iPod for a while now and I continue to be impressed. I frequently think "it'd be really useful if it could…" only to find out that it can. The latest of these was when I wanted to rate the songs I was listening to; lo and behold, you click the select button twice and rate the song by using the scroll wheel to select 1 to 5 stars.

Nonetheless, there are some things that Apple could do to make the iPod even better – most of which could be accomplished by an update to the iPod software.

• The main non-software update I'd like to see would be to the case. Yes, the shiny chrome looks really cool with the iPod's white front, but it picks up fingerprints and tiny scratches like crazy. Apple should either go with a matte finish or apply some sort of clear veneer to fend off smudges. I recently ordered an iSkin, so this is soon to be less of an issue for me.
• iTunes has an option to "Group compilations when browsing" that Apple should really carry over to the iPod. I noticed that a lot of CD's are incorrectly identified as compilations by CDDB, so you may have to edit your library for this to work correctly. As an alternative, Apple could provide a setting that lets you specify the minimum number of songs for an artist to show up in the list.
• The scroll wheel is way to sensitive for effective input of song ratings. Trying to dial in a three requires a lot more time and attention that it should.
  
• I'd really like some way to specify an MPAA-style rating for songs, particularly if iTunes had a master list and was able to assign those ratings to your songs. As a parent of young kids, I'd like to be able to screen out some of the more "colorful" songs in our collection when we're all riding together in the car.
  
• Lastly, I'd like to see Apple come up with some way of allowing you to shuffle playlists – either by invoking something from the playlist itself, or by extending the "Shuffle Songs" option to allow you to select "all" or one of your playlists.

My final beef is not really for Apple, but a plea to the Mozilla community. I would really like something that could sync my contacts & calendar from Thunderbird to my iPod. Maybe if I weren't spending 2½ hours a day on the road I could take the time to learn XUL and write one myself, but for now...

Update: My Apple-hip bro-in-law pointed out that you can actually shuffle playlists by setting the "Shuffle" setting to songs and then playing the playlist; my sis then came up with an excellent replacement: being able to access a "more from this artist/album" option when playing back songs -- particularly during shuffle mode! I've also sent these suggestions to Apple via their feedback page.

Love love love my iPod

It all started three months ago, when my favorite brother in law brought his iPod with him to my parents' house. At that point, I had read many reviews of the various MP3 players out there and thought it would be neat to be able to tote our entire CD collection around with me, but I couldn't quite justify the cost. When I was finally confronted with how small the 40GB iPod really is and with how cool the click wheel is in practice, however... the true lusting began. I told everyone that what I really wanted for Christmas was cash towards purchasing one of my own. Add to that a very generous birthday advance from my parents, and I was finally able to lay out the necessary $400. I did have a moment of hesitation over the price tag (am I really going to spend $400 on a music player?) but my technopile id won out and soon the little white & chrome gadget was mine.

I've had my iPod for about two weeks now and I can definitely say that it is the best extravagance I have ever fallen for. Thanks to the Monster iCarPlay adapter my sis and her hubby got me for Christmas, I can enjoy my purchase during my 1¼ hour commutes to & from work. Once I get to work, I put on my headphones and can listen to music all day on a single charge. Several small scratches have started to appear on my iPod, so I'm thinking about getting a case for it, probably an iSkin evo², 'though I can't quite decide on the color.

The iPod has a very bright backlight, so I could still select albums during my (dark) commute home. Instead, I have been putting the iPod in Shuffle mode, where it randomly selects from the 1800+ songs currently loaded on it. Some interesting observations:

• I'm much better at identifying the artist than the song title – largely a symptom of having traditionally listened to entire albums rather than individual songs.
  
• You can actually listen to Billy Joel followed by Kittie followed by Garth Brooks followed by Bif Naked without having your brain explode.
• Songs stand out much more when they're not played in the context of an album. It seems fairly evenly split between whether this is a good thing vs. pointing out that the song was really just cr@p filler.
  

Techno Musings: SPOT off

I blame Dick Tracy. For years, manufacturers have been trying to cram more than just timekeeping capabilities into the venerable watch. Back in middle school, a classmate had a watch that doubled as a calculator. An appealing thing until you actually tried to use the miniscule keypad on the darn thing.
Then, in 1995, Timex came out with the "Data Link" watch that flashed lines on your monitor to synchronized the watch with their proprietary PIM software on your Windows PC. The original was limited to 70 entries; newer models (yep, Timex is still producing these puppies) store several hundred entries and use USB, but the software is still proprietary.
Fast forward to the height of the PDA phenomenon, and a few daring watchmakers sold models running the Palm OS. The initial models were pretty bulky; even though later models got the size down to something more reasonable, the fact remains that -- for all of these attempts -- the wrist-borne form factor is lousy for input.
So here we are in 2004 and Microsoft comes out with the latest generation of their MSN Direct (née SPOT) technology and watchmakers have hopped on board. The watches themselves look pretty cool, and if you're lucky enough to live in one of the ten cities MS supports and you shell out $40 a year, one of these watches can display information MS broadcasts over a special FM station.
Actually, Microsoft was surprisingly close to getting it the right, but they overshot a bit. After all, this is MY watch. It's probably a few years off, but when we finally see a useful digital wrist whatever, it will be a way for your other digital gear to let you know what's going on. Instead of playing a damn ringtone, you'll be able to set up your cell phone to trigger the watch's vibrating alert and display the caller's ID. Your PDA or laptop can send you reminders about appointments you're about to miss, and your Blackberry or mobile IM device could send you the kind of information that MSN Direct is pushing.
The point is that the watch would be a display device. Sure, it might have the ability to send back a simple response to the originating device such as dismiss or snooze, but the point is that it really wouldn't know much other than something to identify it as yours and to store some basic personal preferences. Other things that this watch will need to be successful:

• Platform agnostic -- it shouldn't care who made the device that is trying to communicate with you, just that it's conforming to a set of open standards.
  
• Secure -- your devices will need some way to ensure that it is your watch they're communicating with and, possibly more importantly, there will need to be some way to prevent spammers from overloading your watch with useless junk.
• Low power -- whatever wireless method is used to communicate with the watch (Bluetooth, wireless USB), it can't be so power hungry that you need to haul around a car battery to keep your watch running.
  
• Easily rechargeable -- I really don't want to have to "dock" my watch every night. There is some promising work being done on "mats" that can recharge any device placed on it without having to have the device plugged into it. Again, an open standard would be needed.