iLounge

According to Barnes & Noble booksellers, a second edition of “iPod: the Missing Manual” by David Pogue will be released January 2, 2004. A B&N sales rep stated that its stores should have the new $24.95 volume available for sale two days later.

iLounger Rob has launched PodPal, a New York based service to help would be iPod owners buy, configure, accessorize, install and load music onto their new iPods. Think of Rob as your Personal iPod Assistant.

Long time electronics retailer, Crutchfield is now sellings iPods through its online iPod Store along with several Apple branded iPod accessories.

We found several books for our Japanese readers titled, ‘iPod Fan Book,’ ‘New iPod Perfect Mini Guide,’ ‘iPod Perfect Mini Guide’ for older iPods and ‘With iPod iTunes Life’ while at Amazon Japan.

Galileo Design has released the first iPod book by MACup magazine authors, Soenke Jahn and Matthias Kremp simply titled “The iPod Book.”

Vern Seward for The Mac Observer describes his iPod envy and the subculture that drives it.

Rob Walker for the New York Times Magazine has written an extensive article (6 web pages) on all things iPod - past and present. The article touches on the cult of iPod, the design - inside and out with Apple’s Jonathan Ives, the system, the competition, comments from Steve Jobs and more.

Dave Shroeder has emailed us in his own words about the events that took place between the Neistat brothers and himself. Click ‘Read more’ to read the letter.

According to Dave Shroeder, the Neistat brothers (producers of the iPod’s Dirty Secret movie) had no intent on letting people know that there were solutions available for replacing the battery in iPods. Dave had provided the Neistat brothers with a mirror (server space) for their website, ipodsdirtysecret.com, to host their now infamous movie. Dave did this with one condition, that they place a link to Apple’s iPod Battery Service along with the movie. At first the Neistat brothers agreed, but then never posted a link to Apple’s website. Dave has since removed the mirror to the website and has posted a text file containing the email conversations that took place between Dave and Casey Neistat. Dave told us, “Please spread the word on these brothers who’d rather spread lies than the truth.”

Macworld UK talks with Apple’s UK general manager Mark Rogers on digital media’s future and the iPod’s push into several UK retail stores, including 165 Virgin music shops.

In its December 2003 issue, Stereophile magazine has named the iPod as the Editor’s Choice and Budget Product of the Year. Our informant, Bill S. notes that the Editor’s Choice ‘usually goes to $30K CD players and so forth.’ Click ‘Read more’ for an excerpt from Stereophile magazine.

Unfortunately, iPod’s in Australia are etchnically in breach of copyright if you copy CD’s to them! Plus, iTunes music service is not available in Australia anytime soon.

For all those Aussies and Kiwis that seem to be excluded from any competitions to win an iPod (as they are based in US), we now get a healthy option! Blackmores is offering one of 3 Canon Digital Video Cameras, 5 10GB iPods, and 10 World Music Chill Out CD Packs to winners of a simple and fun quiz. Competition closes 12th Dec 2003. Good Luck!

Dealmac: Small Dog Electronics has the lowest price we know to be available for the new AppleCare Protection Plan for iPods, which extends the warranty coverage and phone support to two years from the date of purchase. It charges $55, $4 less than Apple.

Kevin Muoio informs us of his line of iPod t-shirts which simply display a line of text which reads ‘ask me about my iPod.’ and another that reads ‘i own an iPod.’ Each design is available on several shirt styles/colors and start at $19.

Key Features:

Leander Kahney for Wired News writes about the ‘jack sharing’ phenomenon reported earlier on iLounge. In his story Kahney talks to Steve Crandall (known as ‘esc’ in the iLounge forums) about his recent experience with ‘jack sharing’ in his hometwon in New Jersey. The story goes on to expose other ‘jack sharing’ locales, including Cambridge, UK.

Like the age-old battle between the Beta format and the VHS format we are at the very beginnings of a digital media battle…. The solution? Apple should avoid the potential of becoming the Beta by having the iPod able to play WMA files.

The newly released Extended Edition of the Two Towers DVD has a documentary which describes how, when in London, the digital artists would copy information sent from New Zealand to their iPods and take them home to work on the data.

They had set up a ‘fat pipe’ link from NZ to the UK to send each day’s work to the director, Peter Jackson for him to review. However the connection would not function in his home and so they had to travel to the nearest access point and copy the information to an iPod.