iPod Superstitions

February 2nd, 2006

Apple The iPod Video has taken up permanent residence in my jacket pocket, and I’m always finding new things in it to amuse myself with. The other day I set it on “shuffle play” and it came up with a strangely appropriate series of songs, something along the lines of Byrds, XTC, Beatles, Elliot Smith that made me think the iPod is somehow able to group songs by tempo and genre on the fly based on the time of day, the mood you’re in, and what bus you’re on. Ah, maybe that would be a fun peripheral for Griffin to work on: some kind of heartbeat or temperature monitor that plugs into an iPod, and chooses songs of a certain tempo based on how stressed out the person is.

As for the video functionality, I have to say the novelty has worn off for me on that front. It’s pretty hard to maintain attention on a tiny screen for any videos longer than 2 minutes, and the amount of time it takes me to encode a video for the iPod is prohibitive. The other annoyance is that using the iPod screen for any length of time really eats up the battery.

So for the time being, I still find I use the iPod most for listening to podcasts. On that front, I’m hooked. For me the appeal is the time-shifting and the feeling of “ownership” in that you manage the files rather than just waiting for something to come on the air (as in radio). Those two simple things add a lot of value to the content.

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