iLounge

iLounge is pleased to announce the imminent sign-up of our 100,000th forum member and the posting of the 4,000th photo in our iPods Around the World photo gallery. In celebration of the milestones, iLounge will be giving away a custom-colorized fifth-generation iPod to the 100,000th validated forum member (if you already have an account, please don’t sign up again - tell a friend!), and a custom-colorized iPod nano to the member who posts the 4,000th validated photo in the iPods Around the World gallery. Winners will be announced on the iLounge site.

To celebrate the upcoming launch of iLounge’s Free iPod Book 2.0, we’re holding two big contests and giving away six pairs of Shure’s high-end E500 earphones and one brand-new Mac mini. In the “iPod 2010 Concept Art Contest,” we’re looking for the four best “future iPod” pieces of original concept art. A grand prize winner will get the Mac mini, while the most realistic, most creative and funniest entries will get a set of Shure earphones. Our “iPods Everywhere Photo Contest” seeks pictures taken of iPods in the car, in the home or on the go. The winner in each of the three settings will also win a set of Shure earphones.

Participating in tonight’s live iLounge chat with Griffin Technology, five iLounge readers won huge Griffin iPod Survival Kits full of new accessories, and one reader also won a new Griffin TuneCenter Pro Home Media Center. Griffin representatives also answered iLounge reader questions on a wide variety of topics. A complete list of prizes and winners can be found in the full story link above or below, along with some of the Q&A. Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to everyone, including all of the representatives of Griffin Technology, for participating in the chat today!

By reader request, the third in our series of live iLounge chats - hosted in our recently opened live chat room - will be with three representatives of Griffin Technology, who will be available to answer reader questions, and give away five total iPod Survival Kit prize packages to lucky iLounge readers. One of the packages will include Griffin’s new TuneCenter or TuneCenter Pro Home Media Center, while the rest will be packed with car, home, and travel accessories. The format will be trivia; additional details are below. Please join us in the chat room on Monday, April 17, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. PT/8:00 p.m. ET.

Participating in today’s live iLounge chat with speaker maker iHome, five iLounge readers won new iH5 clock radios (white/black) or iH26 portable clock radios (white/black/silver) in their choice of colors. A complete list of winners can be read from the full story link above or below. Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to everyone, including iHome/SDI’s Evan Stein, for participating in the chat today!

As the second in our series of live iLounge chats, hosted in our recently opened live chat room, popular clock radio and speaker maker iHome will be giving away iHome iH5 clock radios (iLounge rating: A-) and portable audio systems to iLoungers this Thursday. Rules for the giveaway will be announced during the live chat, so please join us in the chat room on April 6, 2006 at 3:00 p.m. PT/6:00 p.m. ET.

Participating in tonight’s live iLounge chat with headphone makers v-moda, twenty iLounge readers won new pairs of Remix M-Class earphones in their choice of three colors (silver/black, blue, or pink). A complete list of winners can be read from the full story link above or below. Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to everyone for participating in the chat tonight.

Last August, we launched The Free iPod Book 1.0, a free 142-page tutorial to all things iPod and iTunes, including a Back to School Buyers’ Guide. In keeping with our tradition of releasing premium-quality free publications for our readers (and despite our April Fool’s joke), we have announced today that we will release The Free iPod Book 2.0, a substantial update to the earlier edition - with some thematic surprises - in early June. As with all of our past Guides, the Book will contain original content not found on the iLounge.com web site, and new reader contests will be announced shortly.

Bowing to industry pressures and hoping to boost income from its widely-read iPod and iTunes web site, iLounge.com has announced substantial changes to its free content offerings, refocusing heavily on revenue-generating measures. Effective 9:00PM PST today, April 1, thousands of previously free pages on iLounge.com will be locked, and made available only on a pay-per-page or monthly subscription basis. “Having watched the experts at Napster and RealNetworks practically mint their own money with similar plans,” explained Jeremy Horwitz, Editor-in-Chief of iLounge, “we decided to bet the company on a similarly great idea. Soon, users will be able to unlock the site with individual ‘iLounge Keys,’ sold for 99 cents per page, or monthly ‘iLounge Gold’ site-wide access for only $12.95. Everyone else is trying to sell something to Apple fans, so why not us?”

“Too many times, we’ve passed up opportunities to make an easy buck,” said Dennis Lloyd, Publisher of iLounge, “so starting now, we’re going to change that.” In addition to starting an all-nude version of its popular iPods Around the World photo galleries, the site will begin to publish reviews written by accessory and service providers, and open its Discussion Forums to endless quantities of viral advertising and astroturfing. Lloyd also disclosed that Ask iLounge, the site’s weekly Q&A column, would be cancelled in favor of ‘iPod Buddies,’ a $65/hour consulting service where iLounge editors or high school students (as available) will offer in-person or telephone iTunes assistance and music recommendations to needy readers. “We think that these changes will ultimately benefit both us and our readers,” said Lloyd and Horwitz, “and if they don’t, at least we’ll be able to enjoy the nude photo galleries.”

Update: Happy April Fool’s Day, everyone! Expect a real announcement soon!

To kick off a series of live iLounge chats in our recently opened live chat room, fashion headphone maker v-moda will be holding a live trivia contest and giving away 20 pairs of Remix M-Class earphones (iLounge rating: A-) to iLoungers. Ten questions will be asked, and two people per question will win headphones for correct answers - one pair maximum per person. Winners will be announced on the spot. Answers to the questions can be found either on v-moda’s website or in iLounge.com news coverage of the company and its products. The live chat will be held on April 3 at 5:00 p.m. PT/8:00 p.m. ET.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve made a number of subtle but important changes to parts of the iLounge web site. You may have noticed one of them right here - our new News Views bar. Though it looks like the old bar, it now gives you three different ways to customize news on the iLounge home page to your liking, and saves your choice for later visits.

iLounge’s Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz will appear today on New York City’s WNYC (93.9FM) radio program Soundcheck to discuss iLounge and the iPod accessories market. The audio segment - our first since pausing production of the iLounge Week-in-Review Podcast - will air at approximately 2:45PM Eastern/11:45AM Pacific.

The iLounge/Sumo Tough Love Valentine contest ends tomorrow night at 11:59 p.m. But there’s still time to win your sweetheart a unique trip that they won’t soon forget. Just tells us your tough love story—gaining or losing an important love—and you could win a trip for two to the US Sumo Open in Los Angeles. You’ll get airfare, tickets, two Sumo nano flip cases, and a one night stay at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. 100 runner-up winners will receive their own Sumo nano flip case.

We’re proud to announce the launch of iLounge Mobile Edition, a fast-loading, condensed version of the iLounge.com main page created especially for users of portable devices. This page, available at ilounge.com/mobile, provides one-page access to our top 12 News stories, top 10 Reviews, top 6 Articles, top 3 current and past Contests, and top 5 Backstage entries. Each link is simplified for speedy reading without excessive scrolling, including reader comments, and additional Mobile content can be accessed through “More” links at the bottom of each section.

iLounge Mobile Edition will continue to evolve in the days to come. Your suggestions are, of course, welcomed.

As iLounge’s editors close out 2005, we look back fondly at a year that was as amazing for the Lounge as it was for the iPod. We were blessed by a massive surge in readership, which saw our traffic double from roughly 2 million loungers per month to around 4 million, while our Forums grew from under 40,000 registered members to over 83,000. Repeated server upgrades, the last one just a few weeks ago, have been necessary to handle all of the new traffic. On top of all the new people, there have been too many new iPod and major accessory launches to count, and hundreds of new news stories, tutorials, reviews, and photographs as a result. It has been an incredibly busy but exciting year.

Now, with our holiday vacations coming to an end (Jeremy has returned from shopping in Asia, while Dennis is soon to finish his tropical lounging in Hawaii), 2006 is here, and it’s going to start off with two bangs. iLounge will provide live coverage from the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show starting this week, where a huge array of new iPod accessories will be launched, and then the team will be in San Francisco for the annual Macworld show the following week. We expect Macworld to be big on Mac-related announcements and iPod accessories, but not on new iPod hardware. (For more on that subject, we’ll soon have a new Backstage entry to share some of what we’ve heard.)

Thank you to all of our readers for your continued support and participation in the growth of iLounge. Even if we can’t respond individually to the thousands of messages that appear here and in our e-mail boxes every day, we appreciate every bit of your involvement, and strongly anticipate that 2006 will be an even bigger Year of the iPod - a major step forward for the entire iPod community, with some huge surprises in store for iLounge, too. Happy New Year, and stay tuned for what’s next!

If Santa brought you an iPod this year, then you’re at the right place. Whether you got a video iPod, an iPod nano, iPod shuffle, or even a previous generation iPod or iPod mini, iLounge will help you get the most out your new favorite gadget. If you’re looking to accessorize your iPod, check out our extensive list of iPod accessory reviews or the latest iPod accessory news. You can find answers to common iPod questions in our Ask iLounge and iPod 101 & 201 sections. If you want to ask a specific question or just chat with other iPod owners, hop on over to the iLounge Forums. And be sure to download our free Holiday Buyers’ Guide, which is loaded with tons of cool iPod gear and info.

Everyone at iLounge would like to wish you and your family a very happy holiday season. As a special thanks to all of our wonderful readers, advertisers and those in the iPod industry, we’ve created this holiday card for you to enjoy. We’ll continue updating the site throughout the week.

We’ve updated the iLounge Mac OS X Dashboard Widget, which provides quick access to our news and reviews, plus a panel for recent FAQs and help, and an easy full-site search feature. Version 1.5 of the widget displays a rotating gallery of photos from the iPods Around the World Photo Galleries and checks our server for the latest version for download. Stay tuned for an update for the iLounge Konfabulator Widgets.

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.