The big news today is that Amazon has released a new cloud-based music service, Amazon Cloud Player. The service gives any Amazon customer a free 5GB Internet locker for storing music. Amazon provides a free uploader and both Web-based and Android clients. Files are securely stored on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Amazon Cloud […]

Science & Sons has created a bizarre old-school style iPod dock that offers to replace the typical cheesy iPod¬†speakers with a souped-up gramophone. The Phonophonics II delivers 55db directly from your iPod, acoustically amplifying the output of your portable media player’s earbuds. Here’s their info on the strange device: Through passive amplification alone, These unique […]

Early reviews are in on the Microsoft Zune, which debuts today. The consensus is….the Zune zucks. The Zune has benefited from a tremendous amount of buzz. Unfortunately, it appears that Microsoft’s second attempt at an iPod/iTunes killer suffers seriously in comparision to its 5th generation competition. Engadget has a blow-by-blow walkthrough of installing the Zune […]

Steven Levy’s The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness is a big, iPod-styled book that’s part thoughtful take on the history and impact of the iPod, and part unfortunate fanboy raving. The Perfect Thing has benefited from the hype surrounding the iPod, and the publisher has tried to tap into that […]

Podcast Solutions, by Michael Geoghegan and Dan Klass, is a comprehensive introduction to podcasting. The book is bylined “The Complete Guide to Podcasting,” and does a good job of delivering on this promise. A powerhouse of podcasting talent is behind the book. The authors, Geoghegan and Klass, are podcasters that pioneered the production of podcasts […]

We’ve been testing a Griffin SmartDeck recently, looking for a more convenient way to listen to podcasts and other digital audio in the car. We’ve tried FM tuners and always found them lacking in sound quality and power. While regular cassette adapters do a decent job at piping the audio output of iPods to car […]