Apple went iPod crazy on Tuesday, and released an updated Nano, a new Touch, a larger (and cheaper) Classic, and Shuffles in all new (for them) colors.
The tech blogs have all managed to beat this news into the ground already, so I’m not going to dive into the details, but what I am going to wonder aloud about is this: Why did it take Apple so long to release an iPod in a rainbow of colors? (Or Nano-Chromatic in Apple speak.)
While Apple was busy doling out doses of iPod five flavors at a time, ColorWare managed to make an entire business out of taking your iPod and adding color to it, and they even charge an extra fee to do so.
It’s obvious that the demand for colors has always existed, as evidenced by Apple’s decision to release their products in various (limited) colors along the way, and the mere existence of ColorWave, so why hasn’t Apple jumped on this bandwagon before?
Twitter’s popularity just continues to grow, but if you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, then check out Lost Art Of Blogging’s guide, “Twitter: Why It’s So Great And How To Effectively Use It”.
Basically a primer for everything you could want to know about the service, it covers Why You Should Use Twitter, Using Twitter Effectively, and Some Nifty Twitter Tools in extremely thorough detail.
With the launch of Apple’s Air, they’re basically telling the world that wires are soon going to be a thing of the past.
If you’re already ready to jump on that wireless bandwagon, then perhaps it’s time to do a bit of modding.
By adding a Bluetooth dongle to your 4G iPod (you’ll need a steady hand and some decent soldering skills), you can create an iPod with internal Bluetooth capabilities.
(It also converts your iPod over to flash memory, so it’s a bit of a two-for-one deal.)
The New York Times put together a great piece on the ‘unstoppable’ trend of fixies, or fixed geared bicycles. Designed for the track, these bikes, favorited for years by messengers and hipsters, have no breaks and no gears, and are stopped by an artful combination of reversing the pedals, skidding, or skip stopping. Their purity is their appeal, as the fixed gear bike has become both a fashion statement and a demonstration of skill. With the New York Times covering it though, I think that the fixies are going to have to come out of their underground hiding and into the spotlight as more and more people jump on the single speed bandwagon.
If you’ve been dying to get your blog/social network on, but MySpace and Facebook just don’t do it for you, Vox may be your savior. A new and simple blogging platform from Six Apart, Vox is a new site that’s aiming to give you an outlet to the world (or something like that). Interesting features include the ability to share video, pictures, and anything you can grab from YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Amazon, etc., 150 stock designs so you can’t clutter everything up MySpace style (king of Web 1.0), privacy controls so you can only stalk those you know (ala Facebook), and easy following of what your friends and family are saying (ala anything Web 2.0). Having just come out of beta, Vox is sure to be the social networking bandwagon of choice for the next few weeks, so jump on it soon, you never know when one of these things is going to take off.
