iLounge

Score a new iPod or iPhone over the holidays? Sign up for iPodweek to stay in touch with the latest happenings in the world of iLounge via email. iPodweek is iLounge’s weekly newsletter recapping the week in news, announcements, articles, reviews, and more. There’s still time to sign up for this week’s installment, so if you’d like to receive iPodweek, and be eligible for future newsletter-specific giveaways and deals, simply use the form below to submit your email address.

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With the gift-giving holidays over and the New Year fast approaching, iLounge’s editors want to know: how did December treat you? Did you just join the ranks of the iPod or iPhone nation? Get some great new goodies? Tell us your story in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you!

Next month, separate trade shows in Las Vegas (CES) and San Francisco (Macworld Expo) will serve as the unveiling grounds for the latest and greatest iPod and iPhone accessories, software, and services. As always, iLounge will be covering the announcements as they happen, and issuing our annual Best of Show Awards to the cream of the crop.

In order to help additional companies participate in our awards, we are publishing our eligibility guidelines—previously e-mailed to vendors on our subscription list—at the Additional Details and Comments link below. Our submission deadline is December 28, 2007, and our bright line rule is that “only newly announced products that are being demonstrated in working form at a booth at the 2008 CES and/or 2008 Macworld Expo are eligible for consideration. Products announced or released prior to CES are not eligible.” Read on for further details.

If you are a vendor and would like to be added to our mailing list, please send an email to this address and we’ll add you today. Thanks!

Much of the United States will take part in another holiday tradition tomorrow. Known as “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving marks the official start of the holiday shopping season, and every year retailers do huge business, partly on the backs of heavily discounted items. If you’re wondering what to get the gadgeteers in your family, we suggest you take a look through our 2008 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide. Filled with information on Apple’s line of music players, it also features comprehensive coverage of iPod accessories big and small, along with some insight into other products that we’ve looked at. So whether it’s a stocking stuffer for a friend at work, an iPod speaker system for someone at home, or anything in between, you can find ratings, reviews, and more inside the ‘08 Buyers’ Guide, “The Ultimate Black Friday Accessory Guide.”

iLounge is pleased to announce the Shure In-Your-Ear Giveaway. Shure is giving away 10 pairs of its SE110 Earphones ($120 retail value), which feature a Balanced MicroSpeaker for more vivid and detailed sound, assorted sleeves, and a modular cable, and come with a carrying case and nozzle cleaning tool, as well as a 2-year limited warranty. To enter, simply fill out and submit the entry form. The contest ends on Nov. 30 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time; for official rules and more info, visit the official contest page. Good luck!

Following last Thursday’s release of our 2008 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide, iLounge’s editors received this terrific image from Times Square, showing the announcement of the Guide, which has been downloaded over 250,000 times since its debut.

Now that we’ve had a chance to catch our breath, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your continued readership and participation in the iLounge community. Beyond just the huge download volumes we see for our Guides and Books, we truly appreciate the contributions you make to iLounge’s articles, forums, and galleries — each of our publications is as much a celebration of the fantastic collection of iLoungers as it is the iPod itself.

Alongside the debut of our 2008 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide, iLounge is pleased to announce our Best of the Year iPod and iPhone Accessory Awards. Logitech came away with four awards, including iPod Accessory Maker of the Year, Portable Speaker and Deluxe Speaker of the Year awards for its Pure-Fi Anywhere and Pure-Fi Elite speaker systems. NLU Products’ BodyGuardz won iPod + iPhone Accessory of the Year, and Griffin Technology took home two awards for its Evolve Wireless Sound System and iClear case for the iPod touch. Keep reading for the complete list with additional comments by iLounge, and you can check out all the winners in our 2008 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide.

It’s here! Our annual guide to iPods and their best accessories now includes iPhone, too! Welcome to the 2008 iPod + iPhone Buyers’ Guide!

This year, we’ve completely redesigned the Guide, optimizing it for viewing on PCs, Macs, iPhones and iPod touches. Two versions—a two-page-wide edition, designed for monitors 20” and up, and a one-page-wide edition designed for smaller monitors, iPhones, and iPods—can be downloaded from the links below. Each version contains the same content: a complete guide to the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV family, 20 exclusive accessory sneak peeks, brief reviews of over 125 top add-ons, and ratings for over 1,500 products. We’ve included shopping tips to help you get the best prices for new and used iPods and accessories, the winners of our Holiday iPod and iPhone nano Concept contests, Best of the Year awards (hint: did you win one?), and much, much more.

As always, the Buyers’ Guide is 100 percent free for iLounge readers, and in PDF format. For additional details, click here to see the full story. And please do your part to share the Book by telling a friend, or hosting it on your filesharing network of choice. Enjoy!

Our 2008 iLounge Buyers’ Guide Contests end tonight at midnight, so if you haven’t yet submitted an entry, you have until 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time tonight to enter for your chance to win. We’re running two separate contests for our upcoming 2008 Buyer’s Guide — the Holiday iPod Photo Contest, and the iPhone nano Concept Contest. Thanks to the contests’ sponsors, Ultimate Ears and Geneva Lab, we have $3795 worth of goodies ready for the winners. For more details about the contests like how to enter and for official rules, check out the contests’ page. Good luck!

It’s Friday, which means that iLounge’s weekly newsletter, iPodweek, will be available later this afternoon. iPodweek is a weekly summary of the best iPod news, reviews, and feature articles we’ve published, and it also features giveaways and iPod accessory discount offers from various companies. You still have time to sign up for this week’s edition, if you haven’t done so already — just use the simple form below to submit your email address.

IMPORTANT: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink and others, make sure we don’t end up in your spam box. Please accept emails from iLounge.com. Thank you.

Competition in the 2008 iLounge Buyers’ Guide Contests is heating up, with some excellent submissions already turned in. In case you missed it, we’re running two separate contests for our upcoming 2008 Buyer’s Guide — the Holiday iPod Photo Contest, and the iPhone nano Concept Contest. Thanks to the contests’ sponsors, Ultimate Ears and Geneva Lab, we have $3795 worth of goodies ready for the winners. Keep reading for more details and a look at some entries we’ve already received.

Later today iLounge will be sending out the latest edition of iPodweek, our weekly newsletter recapping recent news, announcements, articles, reviews, and more. In addition to a summary of articles we’ve published, iPodweek also features giveaways and iPod accessory discount offers from various companies. There is still time to sign up for this week’s installment, so if you’d like to receive iPodweek, and be eligible for future newsletter-specific giveaways and deals, simply use the form below to submit your email address.

IMPORTANT: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink and others, make sure we don’t end up in your spam box. Please accept emails from iLounge.com. Thank you.

iLounge is pleased to announce two contests for our upcoming 2008 Buyer’s Guide, the Holiday iPod Photo Contest, and the iPhone nano Concept Contest. The Holiday iPod Photo Contest has iLounge readers submit a photograph that fits within the broad theme of “an iPod or iPods during the December holidays.” The top entry will receive a pair of Ultimate Ears’ custom-fit top-of-the-line UE-11 Pro Earphones, with a second place winner getting a pair of Ultimate Ears’ triple.fi 10 Pro Earphones, both courtesy of Ultimate Ears. The third place winner will receive a new 80GB Apple iPod classic, courtesy of iLounge.

The iPhone nano Concept Contest calls on our readers’ imaginations and artistic abilities to create a rendering of what you’d hope an “iPhone nano” will look like. The top entry in this contest will win a Geneva Lab Model L Sound System in white, courtesy of Geneva Lab, and a 16GB Apple iPod touch, courtesy of iLounge. A second place winner will receive a Geneva Lab Model L Sound System in red, courtesy of Geneva Lab, while the third place winner will receive an 8GB Apple iPod nano, courtesy of iLounge. Both contests are open now and end on October 25; for more information and to view official rules visit the contest page. Good luck!

The latest edition of iPodweek, our weekly newsletter covering all things iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and Apple TV, is coming later today. iPodweek is a weekly summary of the best news, reviews, and feature articles we’ve published, and it also features giveaways and iPod accessory discount offers from various companies. There is still time to sign up for this week’s installment, so if you’d like to receive iPodweek, and be eligible for future newsletter-specific giveaways and deals, simply use the form below to submit your email address.

IMPORTANT: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink and others, make sure we don’t end up in your spam box. Please accept emails from iLounge.com. Thank you.

iLounge and iSkin are pleased to announce the iSkin Dream Giveaway. iLounge and iSkin have partnered to give away one of ten iSkin Dream iPhone accessory kits, which include an iSkin Cerulean TX+RX Bluetooth Transmitter + Receiver, the iSkin Cerulean F1 Stereo Bluetooth Headset, and one iSkin revo iPhone case. To enter, simply hit the button below and fill out and email the form provided. For official giveaway rules, visit the giveaway page.

To date, iLounge readers have posted over 1.2 million public messages on the main iLounge.com web site and in our Discussion Forums, the vast majority of them positive contributions from fantastic people around the globe. Last month, we announced that we were shifting certain posts from the main site into the Forums in order to cut down on astroturfing that was detracting from those otherwise great discussions. But we also wanted to make it easier for our readers—individuals and companies alike—to share worthwhile comments with other readers, our editors, and our business team, as appropriate.

Today, we have created a new Comments + Questions page on iLounge with easy links to key iLounge staff, and clear explanations of our public and private commenting policies. This page contains links so you can submit (1) news tips, (2) error reports, (3) public comments and iPod questions, (4) private comments, (5) editorial questions, and (6) business inquiries, and get them read more promptly; it also asks that tips, error reports, and editor- or ad-specific questions be submitted to the specific people who need to receive them. Heavy e-mail volumes preclude us from responding to all questions, but we do our best—these links will make things easier and better.

We have linked to the Comments + Questions Page, and many of those key areas, on all of the main site’s comments pages. By reader request, our product preview and review pages are also being updated to automatically direct new product-specific comments to specific iPod and accessory forums, rather than the temporary catchall page we were using before. Thanks for your continued support as we work to make iLounge an even better community for all of our readers!

iPodweek, iLounge’s weekly newsletter recapping the week in news, announcements, articles, reviews, and more, will be sent out later today. There is still time to sign up for this week’s installment, so if you’d like to receive iPodweek, and be eligible for future newsletter-specific giveaways and deals, simply use the form below to submit your email address.

IMPORTANT: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink and others, make sure we don’t end up in your spam box. Please accept emails from iLounge.com. Thank you.

Like free iPod goodies? Want a quick summary of what happened in the last week at iLounge? iPodweek, iLounge’s weekly newsletter recapping the week in news, announcements, articles, reviews, and more, will be sent out later today. There is still time to sign up for this week’s installment, so if you’d like to receive iPodweek, and be eligible for future newsletter-specific giveaways and deals, simply use the form below to submit your email address.

IMPORTANT: Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink and others, make sure we don’t end up in your spam box. Please accept emails from iLounge.com. Thank you.

During the Apple Special Event “The Beat Goes On,” iLounge launched new forums to cover the latest additions to the Apple iPod family. We’ve spent the weekend tweaking them—and actually, all the forums—to make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for.

The new iPod classic has joined with the existing iPod (with video) forum to cover the full range of video enabled iPods, while a new iPod touch forum can be found here in a dedicated discussion forum.

A new iPod nano (video) forum has been created here. Discussions of 1st and 2nd generation iPod nanos have been moved to the Discontinued iPod nano (1G/2G) forum.

In addition to these iPod-specific forums, we have also opened a new cases forum for the new iPod touch, consolidated our Third-Party Software forums to include iTunes and non-iTunes software, and created a new Games forum for you to discuss iPod 5G, classic, and nano (video) games. Enjoy!

There’s been a ton of new iPod and iPhone news over the past day. Here’s a quick summary of where you can find all the best information we’ve posted.

Apple introduced three new iPods, refreshed the iPod shuffle, and dropped the price of the iPhone by $200 per model, as detailed in this news story. It also announced new iPod accessories, version 7.4 of iTunes with a 99-cent ringtone creator, and a Starbucks-backed iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for its portable devices. Apple today offered a $100 Apple Store credit to all early iPhone adopters.

The iPod classic is the sixth-generation hard disk-based iPod, preserving its predecessor’s 2.5” screen size and body footprint, but changing its face material to silver or black metal, upgrading its user interface, and offering 80GB of storage for $249 or 160GB of storage for $349. We have unboxing photos here, a First Look here, and a user interface video here.

The third-generation iPod nano adds a 2” screen with video and game playing features to its super-popular flash memory-based predecessor. A silver version is available for $149 with 4GB of storage, and five colors (red, black, silver, green, and blue) are available in $199 8GB models. We have unboxing photos here, a First Look here, and a user interface video here.

The iPod touch is Apple’s first 3.5” widescreen, multi-touch iPod. Though it preserves some of the wireless (Wi-Fi) functionality and interface of the iPhone, it strips the cell phone, built-in speakers, camera, and microphone, and Bluetooth features out, losing .2” of height, and loses several features such as e-mail and text messaging in the process. It is the first iPod with Safari web browser functionality, but does not currently support iPod games like the new iPod nano and classic models. We have a First Look here, and a user interface video here.

Apple also refreshed last year’s iPod shuffle with four new colors, preserving the original silver model and last year’s $79, 1GB pricing. We have unboxing photos here, and additional color comparisons with last year’s shuffles here.

We’ve also posted an editorial on the new Apple announcements, reflecting our mixed feelings, and a Ten Things You Want to Know article about the new iPods. Much more is coming very soon.