Deliciously Musical

The new ipod shuffle is small and kind of lacking in Apple’s usual showy design department.  A small silver brick that you could lose just as easily as you can buy one.

While much has been said about the design and the problems related to the ipod shuffle the fact is the bland little baby opens itself up to the design creativity to everyone else outside of the apple network.  Chocoshuffle is just one such bit of designer brilliance.  The ipod case is just as delicious as the name makes it sound.  Basically you can dress your ipod as a lovely little piece of chocolate rather than as a sleek silver glob (this is much more cute).

The Chocoshuffle comes in dark chocolate, white chocolate, and strawberry chocolate.  Just remember, just because this makes the new ipod shuffle a bit more interesting it doesn’t make the thing any less easy to lose.

Just Singing in the Pool

It’s summer now, July already.  Which means it’s time for a job, sunburns, blockbuster action flicks, and in the occasional free moment, swimming.

Swimming poses an especially precarious situation for we the tech obsessed.  Water does not usually mix well with electronics of any sort.  This summer however, it seems there’s a new solution to at least one gadget related dilemma.  The iSH2 Waterproof Headset is ready and waiting to protect second generation ipod shuffles from the murderous chlorine enhanced waves.

Unlike many other waterproof casings designed for ipods the iSH2 is actually made for swimming (not just safety in a pool inhabited area).  Though some reviews complain of the loose fitting earbuds on the iSH2 it still sounds like the best in water option out there at the moment.  Who doesn’t want a little personal work out music during laps?  Just remember not to sing along.

Digital Music

I have a huge digital music collection. When I say huge, I’m talking about over 120 gigs of music - close to 30,000 songs.  (And for you record execs out there - it’s all legal, as the many cartons of CD’s in my garage can attest to) I consume digital music in every imaginable way. As I write this, I’m listening to a playlist of songs on my computer. I have an iPod Shuffle for the gym - the old one that looks like a pack of gum. My 80gb iPod is bursting at the seams with music and videos. (One day soon, I’ll tell you and Steve Jobs why iTunes sucks.) One of my cars has a 6 disc changer filled with mixed CD’s I burned, while the other plays mp3 CD’s.

The one sticking point has always been my home audio system. I wanted to be able to play my digital music without having to burn it to CD’s. It seemed like a wasted step and certainly limited the way I could access and play the music I wanted to hear. And then came the first wave of wireless media players - home audio components that accessed your computer over your wi-fi network. Score! Or so I thought…

My first entry to this was the D-Link DSM 320. I installed the software on my PC. Got the player configured on my network. And then started importing the music library into the “database”. It choked on the size of the library. I scaled back and decided to just import my list of playlists. It had a nice feature that imported all the listed songs when you imported a playlist. That worked fine until I added the playlist that pushed me back over the limit. They finally released a software update that resolved that. Connectivity, though, was always a 50-50 proposition at best, and when they released firmware that would have fixed that, my unit refused to upgrade and D-link’s tech support couldn’t help.

Then I saw the Go Video Wireless Media/DVD player, which seemed pretty cool during the month that it worked. Then it refused to connect to the network (and GoVideo has no real support) At least it played DVD’s for another few months - just enough for the warranty to run out.

It was time to give up. If I wanted digital music (and video, etc) on my home entertainment system, there was only one reliable way to get it there. I bought a cheap low-profile PC (kind of like this one) that would fit in the console like an audio component - upgraded the sound and video cards, plugged the video into the dvi input of my HDTV, audio into the receiver, and FINALLY got what I wanted. Plus, now I have high-speed internet on the home theater system and can surf the web and show streaming video on my HDTV. And some of it (like ABC’s HD streams of Lost) actually look great on the big screen. But we’ll get to that…