Apple fans remember October 23, 2001 as the debut of the first ever iPod. Turns out right on the day of its launch, people were already dissing what’s easily Apple’s most successful product line as “just another MP3 player”. Get ready to feel smug folks, for hindsight always is, and dismissive thoughts were saved for posterity at the MacRumors forums:

elitemacor: “iPoop… iCry. I was so hoping for something more.”
WeezerX80: “Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where’s the Newton?!”
Pants: “hey – heres an idea Apple – rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, …read more

The contributions of Julien Madérou to humanity: the apparent invention of an iPhone dock made out of paper, and DIY instructions on how to make it made available for easy sharing. Now Apple fans have another way to maintain their snotty consumer-electronics superiority!
Seriously though, Madérou is a genius! He even made provisions for the iPhone cable! The instructions are available for printing on A4 or US letter (8.5″ x 11″) sheets, and are a simple matter of cutting out the template and following the video below.
I’m assuming a iPhone dock made out of Japanese paper will crumple in an instant …read more

Or, more accurately, free Beatles and Metallica mash-ups. Some of you may hiss at me for writing about Beatallica, a spoof band that came out way back in 2001 that combines music from… the Beatles and Metallica! But with those new remastered Beatles Albums just released, it’s possible Beatallica has become more relevant again (or so I hope).
For those not familiar with Beatallica, the band takes the message and theme of famous Beatles songs (like “Let it Be”) and modifies the tone to match Metallica’s sound (”The Thing That Should Not Be”), ending up with a usually hilarious song influenced …read more

The Aura BluNote is a speaker set that accepts music streams via the Blutooth A2DP format, making it compatible with a wide variety of devices including PCs, laptops, mobiles, gaming consoles, and portable media players. It thankfully comes with a 3.5mm input jack for devices that don’t support Bluetooth.
Make Spracht wants you to know that the BluNote can store up to 8 Bluetooth device profiles, runs on an AC adapter or 4 AA batteries (both are included in the package), promises good audio quality through its Stereo Widening and Bass Boost functionality. On top of that, as a speaker, the …read more

To be fair, it’s Apple’s status that are causing people to pay attention, when they hear stories about iPods and iPhones exploding and injuring their owners. But the company’s stance of offering refunds in exchange of keeping quiet also merits notice.
At first glance, Apple is protecting its bottom line—which any publicly-listed company has a legal an obligation to do, given it’s responsibility to shareholders to increase share value and dividends. What I personally find disturbing about reports requiring silence in exchange for refunds is that the company wants to be held unaccountable for obvious design faults with its products. Something …read more

Someone sent me a link to an online video, trying to plant the seeds for an upcoming campaign. And because it’s got nearly naked beautiful women strutting confidently down the street, I obliged.

When the Palm Pre debuted, many made noise over its ability to sync with iTunes. The talk mainly centered on how Palm figured this out, and what actions Apple would take.

So it comes as no surprise that the latest iTunes update basically “disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre.” Palm’s reaction to this isn’t clear yet, but here are some possibilities:
Palm Sues Apple. Given Apple’s dominance of the portable music industry, could Palm’s lawyers argue that Apple is being anti-competitive?
Someone hacks iTunes to restore Pre compatibility. Or simply comes out with a program that fools any …read more

To rebut a wall street journal article that declared Verizon Wireless and Microsoft were on an iPhone rival, Microsoft spokesman John Starkweather said “Microsoft is not building a Zune-specific phone. We’re deepening our relationships with our hardware partners”, as reported by PC Mag.
The last sentence of that money quote does make sense. After all, if you’ve spent years licensing—and earning—off manufacturers who want to use your mobile platform, you don’t kill that kind of Golden Goose. This remains true even if your mobile platform has steadily lost market share and presence to Apple’s offerings, and even a yet-to-be-released smartphone from …read more

A great concept design by Ji Woong, the Zip-It Earphones is basically the bastard child of earphones and a zipper. A zipper is built into the cord, presumably from the audio jack up to a inch or so from the earphone buds themselves.

The volume controls are—fittingly enough—are integrated into the zip pull. The concept calls for twisting the pull to adjust the volume, and pressing a button to prevent accidental volume changes.

I’m all for the Zip-It going on the market, but I think the zipper shouldn’t go all the way up to the person’s ears. The zipper would rub on …read more

There are plans in the Philippines to offer a PHP 100 million reward (a bit over $2 million) to anyone who can find holes in the automated election system for the country’s 2010 elections. This Monday, Philippine Senator Alan Peter Cayetano will file a resolution seeking to allocate that much money from the automation project’s $230 million budget.

As Technograph reports:
Cayetano, at a press conference Friday, said that if any IT expert can establish that the system to be used in the 2010 polls is not secure from fraud and tampering, “Comelec should cancel the contract, save the P11 billion and …read more