iLounge

We’ve added two new iLounge T-shirts to our online Lounge Store. The first design features the iLounge name written with the cable of a set of orange “old school” headphones. The second shirt is a variation of the original shirt we offered last year featuring a silhouette hand holding an iPod. Both new shirts are silkscreened on a soft, 100% cotton grey American Apparel tee. Like our white logo tee, both new shirts are priced at $15 and come in small, medium, large, extra-large and double extra-large sizes. International orders are welcomed.

Get your creative juices flowing because you could easily win one of several Vaja gift cards just for coming up with a clever slogan. We’ve just kicked off our “Vaja Slogan Contest” in which we’re giving away 45 $100 Vaja gift cards and a grand prize of one $500 gift card to iLoungers who come up with the best new slogans for the iPod case maker.

Simply check out Vaja’s ads on page 29 of the iLounge Holiday Buyers’ Guide, page 12 of the Free iPod Book, and Vaja’s web site to get familiar with their products. Then, think of a new slogan that matches the company’s products and philosophy, and submit it here. Vaja will choose the best entries and award the gift cards. The contest ends December 23, 2005 11:59 p.m. PT.

We’d like to wish everyone a very happy and safe Thanksgiving! We have many things to be thankful for this year, but we’re especially lucky to have such wonderful readers, forum members, contributors and advertisers. We’ll return just as soon as we’ve recovered from the turkey and cranberry overdose.

We’re happy to announce that the new iLounge T-shirt is now available for order. The white shirt sports the iLounge logo with our “iLounge.com | All things iPod” slogan. It’s priced at $15 and comes in small, medium, large, extra-large and double extra-large sizes. The iLounge shirt is silkscreened on a soft, 100% cotton American Apparel tee. By purchasing the shirt and showing the world you’re an iLounger, you not only help promote the site, you also help support it. International orders are welcomed.

iLounge has today opened the Library, a section of the site dedicated to our free Buyers’ Guides and Books. The Library provides one-click downloading access to each of our previous editions, starting with our 2004 Buyers’ Guide, continuing to our Spring/Summer 2005 Guide, The Free iPod Book, and our most recent Holiday 2005-2006 Buyers’ Guide.

The Free iPod Book contains comprehensive iPod and iTunes tutorials, as well as information on the wealth of iPod-related repair, customization, and CD ripping service providers currently out there. Past editions of our Buyers’ Guides focus heavily on accessories for discontinued iPods and iPod minis. All of these publications are in PDF format, and available free of charge.

The iLounge team will be on hand at next week’s Portable Media Expo & Podcasting Conference in Ontario, California. Our booth will feature a hands-on lounge area with a number of iPod accessories from companies such as Altec Lansing, Belkin, Griffin, DLO, iHome, JBL, Macally, Oregon Scientific, iSkin, and Speck.

The booth will also feature a “History of iPod” display showcasing every generation of iPod with music and featured podcasts to listen to. The iLounge booth will sport two 20” iMacs for checking out the Holiday Buyers’ Guide and the iLounge website, as well as a 50” Plasma display showing visuals to music. We’ll also have giveaways of iLounge T-shirts and iPod accessories. In addition, iLounge Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz will moderate a panel featuring leading members of the iPod economy at the event. You can check out renderings of the iLounge booth by clicking below.

It’s here: just in time for your wish list, iLounge released the free Holiday Buyers’ Guide 2005-2006, packed with all sorts of amazing iPod goodies, ratings of over 650 products, tables of used iPod prices, and much more. Click on read more for details and download links. Enjoy!

We’re happy to announce that in addition to the iLounge Mac OS X Dashboard widget, we now offer a downloadable widget for users of the cross-platform Konfabulator software. Like the Dashboard widget, the free Konfabulator widget provides quick access to iLounge news stories, reviews, and FAQs. The widget also lets you easily search the site or our forums.

For those of you not familiar with Konfabultor, here’s a quick summary taken from the software’s website: “Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.”

Download: iLounge Konfabulator widget for Mac
Download: iLounge Konfabulator widget for Windows

We’ve posted a large photo gallery from today’s “One more thing event” in San Jose, California. The gallery features 350 pictures from Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ presentation and numerous hands-on shots of the new iPod from after the keynote.

On November 1, 2005, iLounge will publish its Holiday 2005 Buyers’ Guide, and as always, we will be prominently featuring the art and photography of our incredible readers. Today we are announcing two new contests, one for artwork, one for photographs, with over $1,800 in prizes at stake.

The Ultimate iPod Accessory Design Contest gives you a chance to create a great new iPod accessory and win a prize for it. We’ll pick a total of three winners in three different categories - “creative,” “realistic/practical,” and “funny” - with the best overall winner receiving The Ultimate iPod Accessory Bundle from Belkin and Oregon Scientific.

The Black and White Photo Contest honors the release of the photo-ready, black- and white-bodied iPod nanos with a new photo contest. Two winners will each win a brand new iPod nano in the color of their choice.

For complete details, check out the new Contest pages. Winners will be shown in the new Buyers’ Guide on November 1. Good luck!

The three winners of iLounge’s Blog the Book Contest have been announced, and they are:

1st Place: Mugglenet.com (Winner, 10 iPod shuffles or $1000). To further thank Mugglenet, we will also donate one Harry Potter Audiobook Card for the site to do with as it wishes. Congrats!

2nd Place: Junk-Feud.com (Winner, 3 iPod shuffles or $300)
3rd Place: iPodmania.it (Random Winner/25 entries or more, 2 iPod shuffles or $200)

Congratulations to all of the winners and thanks to everyone who entered for your support and participation!

Congratulations to the winners of iLounge’s Search for iPod Trivia contest! Each of these three winners will receive a Klipsch iFi Speaker System for the iPod (value: $399), courtesy of Klipsch.

Michael Ollier of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, Great Britain
Erica Hyman of Cranbury, New Jersey, United States
Vernon Tang of Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

Our other contest, Blog The Book, is now in its final 48 hours. For more information on the contest and its total of 15 iPod shuffles (or $1500) in prizes, please see the official contest page.

iLounge’s Dennis Lloyd and Jeremy Horwitz are on the scene at this week’s Apple Expo in Paris, France. They will be bringing you exclusive hands-on reports of all the iPod and iTunes products being shown at the event. While Apple has stated that Steve Jobs will not be delivering a keynote speech, the CEO and other Apple executives will reportedly be on hand for a Q&A session with the media.

As a reminder for potential entrants, two iLounge contests with roughly $2700 in prizes are ending this week - one tonight. Our Search for iPod Trivia Contest gives you the chance to win one of three Klipsch iFi Speaker Systems, each worth $399. You’ll find the contest on page 72 of The Free iPod Book and Back to School Guide. This contest ends at 11:59PM tonight.

Our separate Blog The Book Contest ends on September 23, 2005, so new bloggers still have a chance to win. A total of 15 iPod shuffles or cash prizes up to $1500 will be given away. Complete contest rules are available here.

Want easy access to our news stories, latest reviews, and FAQs at any time? Mac OS X Tiger users can now download the iLounge Dashboard Widget, a free tool that provides immediate desktop access to all of our latest updates. Three sets of pages can be accessed independently by clicking on links in the upper right corner, and individual updates scrolled through using the window below. Search buttons permit easy access to all of iLounge’s online content, and Discussion Forums. Thanks to Solspace.com for developing this handy new way to enjoy iLounge. The next project is Konfabulator widgets for Mac and PC.

Download: iLounge Dashboard Widget

As part of our just-launched Blog the Book Contest, we’re giving away a total of 15 iPod shuffles - or the cash equivalent - to selected winners who link to our new iPod Book and Back to School Guide. To enter, all you have to do is add one of our contest badges to your blog and point to the Book, which is available here.

The grand prize winner with the most referrals to the Free iPod Book download page will win 10 iPod shuffles or a cash-only prize of $1000. The second place winner with the second most referrals wins 3 iPod shuffles or $300 in cash. The third place winner will be chosen at random from those with at least 25 or more unique referrals to the iPod Book download page, and will get 2 iPod shuffles or a $200 cash-only prize. Full rules can be found inside.

First debuted as a section of The Free iPod Book, The iPod Directory is now available in fully searchable form on the iLounge web site.

The Directory was designed to help iPod owners quickly locate information on key iPod & iTunes hardware, software, accessory, and service providers. By using the Main Directory Page or its built-in search engine, you can look through the hundreds of listings to find names and contact details for any major product or service you could want.

If you are an authorized company representative and want to add or update company information, please contact info (at) ilounge.com with your details. Enjoy The Directory!

It’s here: The Free iPod Book & Back to School Guide, by iLounge.com. Covering all things iPod and iTunes, our first book includes exclusive sneak peeks at new iPod accessories from JBL, Belkin, Griffin, Oregon Scientific, Blumac and Sumo Cases, plus tutorials, contests, and more. Click on read more for the details and the download links. Two versions - printable and widescreen - are available; please download only one. We hope you enjoy!

We don’t generally post awards or kudos we’ve received on the main page of our site, but we wanted to thank Forbes today. They’ve named iLounge to their “Best of the Web” list, and also to the more exclusive “Forbes Favorites” list, calling iLounge “The ultimate in product reviews and tutorials on all things iPod.”

Thank you, Forbes, and thank you, loyal readers, for your support of the Lounge!

iLounge’s Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz will appear on tonight’s Your Mac Life radio program to discuss video iPods and other subjects of interest to iLounge readers. Jackie Martling, formerly of Howard Stern Show fame, will also be a guest. The broadcast begins at 5:30PM Pacific Standard Time, 8:30PM Eastern, and runs until 8PM Pacific, 11PM Eastern.