Wicked Widgets released iPodage today, a widget that tells you how many songs will fit onto your iPod. You can set the average song length and the bitrate, the widget then displays what you can fit onto your iPod. The widget is free and available for download today.

TuneConnect v1.1 is available for download! This app allows you to control your iTunes library from a remote computer and a whole lot more besides. Play your music on a computer with better speakers or use it in conjunction with an AirPort Express… grab your wireless laptop, and use it as a remote control for your stereo!

New features include improved stability, a radically redesigned interface, better support for iTunes 7, album art in Growl notifications. Of note is support for more IM clients for track reporting (Adium, Proteus, Yahoo!, Skype, and AIM), this will allow you to let people know what you are listening to whilst you are chatting to them.

You can download the new release here.

Within hours of the first deliveries of Apple’s new 2nd Generation iPod Shuffle. ifixit.com have released disassembly instructions of the new miniature MP3 player. It is quite surprising how easily the unit comes apart and just how small all the components are. See the full details here.

If you ever fancied trying out the iPod +Nike kit with your Nano, but do not own a pair of the required Nike trainers this may be of interest to you.
SwitchEasy have just announced RunAway, a holder that attaches to any regular pair of trainers. It holds and protects the iPod Nike transmitter.

From the SwitchEasy website “RunAway ™ is the ultimate companion for your iPod Sport Kit! It’s a shoe adapter and an orgainizer for your sport kit! RunAway™ works with any running shoes with shoelaces, and it also stores your receiver too! Our RunAway™ is made of an ultra strong polycarbonate base and an ABS cap which safely protects your iPod Sports transmitter. With its compact duo tone design, you’ll be soon the most enviable person running in town!”

Available in various colours for $7.99 + $2 shipping here.

ezGear today launched it’s Clearcase for the 2nd generation iPod Nano. The protective case is made of clear acrylic plastic and is designed to be a perfect fit for the new Nano. The top opens to allow you to slip you Nano in and out of the case. There are openings on the bottom of the case to allow full port access. The screen is completely covered, whilst the click wheel is not. A neck strap is also included.

Price: $15.99 + shipping.
Available at ezGear.

Apple Computer has had three major marketing campaign runs that have changed the way the world looks at Apple Computer. ” Think Different,” “Switcher,” and most recently the PC and Mac guys. With the two most recent campaigns Apple has focused on the fear that many PC users have of getting a virus, leading users to believe that using a Mac on the Internet is like living in a small country town instead of the big city. Simply put, use a Mac and you will be safe from the dangers of the scary Internet. For the most part this has always been true. As Mac users we are fairly safe from viruses and spyware, or so we are lead to believe.

The safety that resides in the Mac community is based on its size, and that our hardware and software is completely different. The Mac community is changing and it is changing fast. We are no longer as different as we once were and our numbers are growing rapidly. This fact has been present for a number of years but was not a huge concern because the internet script kiddies (hackers who base thir hacks off of prebuilt applications that require little or no computer knowledge to use) had yet to see anything that targeted the Macintosh. Today things are different.

During my weekly trips to the local monster chain bookstore I always make a point of checking out all the new computer magazines to catch up on any events that I may have missed. I always make a special point to keep an eye out for the hacker magazines that all the wanna be hackers across the globe pick up. While flipping through one I found a very interesting article titled “iPod Sneakiness.” This article was focused on targeting unsuspecting computer users who are more then happy to let someone plug in an iPod for a quick charge. The article provides details on configuring the iPod as a hacking tool to automatically collect data in the background while it is charging. Very much like a DVD can automatically play when inserted into your computer, an iPod can automatically complete tasks as well, such as gathering passwords and personal information.

Although this has always been possible it is important to make note that Apple products are now gaining attention in the computer underground. For Mac users the coming years are going to end up showing just how unsafe our Mac community may be. Although you may feel it is a waste of money to purchase, install, and update regularly a respected virus scanning application, just remember that virus scanning software only protects you from what it knows about. If you don’t update virus software you may never know about the new virus out there.

While writing reviews of products I often run into new terms that aren’t explained well. Acutally, I run into new terms with almost every product I wrestle out of its packaging. The i-Fusion review presented me with a new twist on batteries, the three phase lithium ion rechargeable battery. I undertook a search to discover what is different about a 3-phase battery. In my search I uncovered a nice site that actually explains in detail about the myriad of batteries we now use on a daily basis. I didn’t uncover the secrets of a three phase battery, but I certainly learned a few new tricks about battery life.

The site is actually called Battery University, published and sponsored by Cadex Electronics Inc. “The material is based on the book Batteries in a portable World – A handbook on rechargeable batteries for non-engineers, and is written in condensed form.” The text is easy to read, and all those voodoo-ish terms we see tossed around concerning the most common component of our plugged-in lives are explained.

Other sites that contribute useful knowledge to your battery gray matter are Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and of course Apple’s page on Lithium-ion batteries.

Almost a year ago, Jan. 17, 2005, to be exact, I was reading about iPod Shuffles on Apple’s site (http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/) and found this in the small gray type at the bottom of the page:

“1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
3. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles
and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of
charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries
for more information.
4. Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock
or a USB cable extender (sold separately).”

Checking back today, I see that # 2 has been removed and replace with the text of #1, and #1 now has a reference to the 2 different sizes of the Shuffle. It just got me to wondering…. do ya think someone got fired over that original little note? I wonder how long they let it be, before it was removed. Heh…

Two days ago I posted about an idea I’d been kicking around for a couple weeks: video podcasts. Today I read an article on Wired about the new trend in blogging: video blogging. Apparently Apple (along with several others) was way ahead of me, and iTunes 4.9 already includes support for video-casts or, as some marketing genius decided to label them, vlogs. Now I really wish I had posted when I first though of this after reading about Apple contracting with Alphamosaic for mobile video chips way back in April (linky linky).

It’s nice when everything comes together, isn’t it? Apple already has video-cast (so much better than vlog, in my opinion) support in iTunes, there’s all sorts of evidence that they’re gearing up to provide some sort of mobile video device using either Alphamosaic chips or Intel’s XScale or both, and places such as Akimbo are apparently already offering tv content through video-casts. Perhaps my dream of watching my favorite shows on my vPod while riding BART to work in the morning will come true far sooner than I had expected (sadly Akimbo’s BBC offerings don’t seem to include rugby matches …yet).

The only question left is when Apple will announce the iTunes video store where you can subscribe to commercial video-casts and the accompanying vPod.

Jon Stokes over at ArsTechnica has published an article about the future of Apple and how the switch to Intel relates to the iPod. The upshot of his article is that the future of Apple lies not with the Macintosh, but with the iPod. He claims that the current success of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store are simply part of a transition away from the personal computer and towards mobile devices, much like the transition from mainframes to personal computers that started largely due to the success of the Apple I and II. With this in mind, Stokes offers the theory that the switch from IBM to Intel had little to do with performance and a lot to do with volume, pricing, and the XScale. With Intel processors powering the entire Macintosh line and the volume discounts that Intel offers on chips, it would make sense to use as many Intel chips as possible in as many products as they can go into. And so Stokes predicts the rise of the XScale powered video iPod, a competitor for the Sony PSP.

The video iPod has been one of those persistent rumors, hanging around for years and rising out of the background at nearly every product cycle. Usually it’s dismissed as impractical: the screen is too small, no one wants to watch video the same way they listen to music, &c., and for the most part I’ve agreed with these objections. Until recently.

TiVo has shown the world that people like to watch tv on their own terms. None of this prime time crap for us, we want to watch the shows we like at the times we like, and we want to be able to watch them even when they air simultaneously on different channels. And isn’t that pretty much exactly what podcasting is? It is, or at least can be, a method for time-shifting radio broadcasts. And Apple’s recent embracing of podcasting with iTunes 4.9 has raising some interesting possibilities in my mind. Apple has basically brought the podcast to the mainstream. They’ve made it easy for anyone to find and listen to a podcast in the same way they made it easy for anyone to buy and listen to digital music. So what’s the next step?

In my opinion, the next step is video podcasts. Instead of using your iPod to fill your commute with glorified talk radio, I plan on using my video iPod to fill my commute with the latest episode of HBO’s Entourage, or BBC’s broadcast of last night’s rugby match that aired at 3am California time (and not even on any stations I can watch). It could finally be real on-demand television: what you want, when and where you want it.

The industry usually follows the pirates. With 56k modems and early broadband we saw the rise of mp3s, Napster, and the age of free music. That stuff is now passé; anyone with a cable modem can download music at a decent speed, and get it at high quality from legitimate sources. Now the pirates are all about video: with a BitTorrent client and a good source you can download the same movies you can see in the theater, old film classics with your favorite actor/actress from yesteryear, full seasons of your favorite television show, just about whatever you want. And as with the music industry, the future path of the video industry—whether they like it or not—is to just go along with it. There are already plans in the works for commercial digital video distribution networks, and I think Apple is intentionally positioning themselves to be a major outlet for these networks, just as they did with the iTunes Music Store.