Category Archives: Gadgets

Engadget Labs launching October 15

The popular gadget blog Engadget is moving into new offices in New York and will be launching a testing lab for in-depth product reviews. The Engadget team announced the new venture at their San Francisco Engadget Reader Meetup. Engadget Labs will perform benchmarks and in-depth reviews of products. It sounds like a nice departure from the typical pay-per-article model of weblog networks. Editors Peter Rojas and Ryan Block will work out of their new office in New York with possibly a few other members of the Weblogs Inc. network. The new office space will include a special podcasting room…

My new iPod nano

I arrived at the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco today right before the first shipment of iPod nanos arrived via FedEx. I had to wait a little while, but I am now the proud owner of an iPod nano 4 GB in black. I already have a 1GB iPod shuffle but my biggest frustration was not being able to see what I was going. I would often load my iPod shuffle with just a few tracks — podcasts at the beginning followed by music — to avoid not knowing where anything was. My shuffle barely ever contained over…

Reserve a product at your local Apple Store

Would you like to get your hands on the latest Apple product as soon as it hits your local Apple Store? You can go online at the store or from anywhere in the world to reserve a product when it becomes available. I used the system to reserve an iPod shuffle and I received a call today that the San Francisco Apple Store will keep one on hold for me until the end of the day. URL syntax is http://apple.webassociates.com/request/reserve.cfm?sid= + your local Apple Store ID. Visit the Apple Store retail page, select your nearest store, and note the store…

Apple releases Mac mini, iPod shuffle

Apple released the Mac mini and the iPod shuffle at this morning’s MacWorld Expo keynote address. The Mac mini is available for $500 in an anodized aluminum enclosure housing a 1.25GHz G4 processoor, 40 GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM, slot-loading Combo Drive, and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card with dedicated memory. The iPod shuffle is available in 512 MB and 1 GB flavors for $100 and $150 respectively. The music player has no display and doubles as a USB data stick. The new iTunes Autofill feature should be very interesting for loading up the latest podcasts. What is…

iPod DJs

The Playlist Club in London promotes an open DJ atmosphere where club patrons sign-up for 15-minute sets playable from an iPod. The best DJs of the night, judged by audience reaction, win prizes. It’s like an open-mic night for DJs! (via PC Advisor)…

Verizon now offers RingBack tones

Verizon Wireless announced Ringback Tones, ringtones for incoming calls. When someone calls a user who subscribes to the service they hear music instead of a ring. Ringback Tones is a $1 per month service and users can license songs for $2 per year. Now available in Sacramento and Southern California, nationwide by mid-2005. You can play for New Kids on the Block for all those people you wish would stop calling you….

iTunes backup encouragement

Today I downloaded an album from iTunes and the complete download of the album an alert box popped up reminding me to backup my music. To an iPod perhaps? Apple needs to make it easier for people to use their iPod as a backup device or at least turn a blind eye to the tools that help people backup and retrieve their music using Apple’s hardware. I purchased Jack Johnson’s iTunes Originals. Good narratives between tracks, but only a few of the tracks are originals….

iPod photo thoughts

I kept quiet when Apple announced the iPod photo a week ago, not wanting to join the crowd and hype another Apple product like the rest of the cult of the Mac. On Sunday I visited the Apple store in San Francisco and played with the iPod photo for a little bit and realized what an iPod is really about. I want to be able to backup my data easily, and have that data available at all times, possibly enabling synchronization on multiple machines. I live on the edge when it comes to my software environment and sometimes I…