Hasta La Gadget!

Clickfree, the outfit responsible for breathing new life into the notion of automatic backups, has just introduced what may very well be its most interesting and useful product yet. The Transformer for iPod / iPhone is a dual-purpose device, giving users the ability to backup multimedia from their PCs onto any remaining space on their iPod or iPhone as well as providing an easy way to retrieve content from those devices should your PC’s hard drive ever decide to call it a day life. Per usual, no software installation is required, and the adapter plays nice with Vista, XP and OS X 10.5 or later. In related news, the company is also introducing its Transformer SE next month, which will ship in a piano black finish and function with any external USB hard drive to deliver a fully automated backup. If you’re willing to pay the price for peace of mind, you can get your order in today at $49.99 and $89.99, respectively.

Continue reading Clickfree Transformer for iPod / iPhone makes auto backups, music retrieval painless

Filed under: Peripherals, Storage

Clickfree Transformer for iPod / iPhone makes auto backups, music retrieval painless originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zune HD, Microsoft’s answer to Apple iPod Touch, is likely to launch in less than a month and it promises to be much cheaper than its rival.

Amazon, which has started taking pre-orders for the device, has listed the 16 GB Zune HD player for $220 and the 32 GB version for $290. Compare that to $275  for the 16 GB iPod Touch and $370 for the 32 GB version. Microsoft is yet to confirm the pricing for Zune HD or the launch date.

Microsoft’s move will give Zune a real shot at catching up to its competitor. Since its launch in 2006, Zune has been struggling to make a dent in the iPod’s massive market share. According to research firm NPD, in the first half of the year Zune’s market share was about 2 percent compared to about 70 percent for the iPod.

But, clearly, Microsoft hasn’t given up on this battle. In May, the company announced a new version of the Zune media player called Zune HD. Zune HD has a 3.3-inch capacitive OLED screen with multi-touch functionality, Wi-Fi, HD radio and an internet browser. The device will also have HD video output capability.

We got some hands on time with the device last week and our first impressions have been good. Zune HD’s crisp OLED screen and easy multi-touch interface has the potential to turn the player into a viable competitor to the iPod Touch.

Add to this the competitive pricing vs. the Touch, and it is likely to be Zune’s best chance for a comeback.

See Also:

• Hands-On With the Zune HD
• Zune HD Official: Multi-Touch, OLED and… Radio?
• 80GB Zune Reviewed, Verdict: One Small Step for Media Players, One …

Photo: Dylan Tweney / Wired.com

Laird Hamilton is as tech savvy as surfers get, using jet skis, kites and hydrofoils to have more fun on the waves. Here are his first experiences with waterproof music, and his discovery of H2O Audio earphones and iPod cases:

The thing about the water is that a lot of times you have other people out so having music to listen to is a way to block out people’s questions. Kidding aside, it’s one way to be in your own little world.

I use music in my regimen when it involves anything with long distances—if I’m doing a really long crossing, or something that’s going to take me a while, music is a good distraction. It’s a way to kinda let time go by.

Then I found that surfing with the right song creates a whole other situation that you don’t have when you’re not listening to the music. It’s almost like you use a different part of your brain than you normally would without music. Sometimes I feel like things slow down, and I have more time to do maneuvers and to observe what’s happening. (I’m not sure if there’s any scientific research on that.)

Obviously, when waves are at 80 feet and our lives are on the line, we’re not listening to music. We need to hear what’s going on and, being put in a demanding situation, we need to be able to communicate. But we do it a lot on our foil boards—those hydrofoil boards that we ride—and again, with the right song, it’s a little bit like a movie with a soundtrack. Music just really turns it into a whole different experience.

Before H2O Audio and the iPod, we had music. We were hungry in the early days, so we had the Walkman. They made a little case for a Walkman, with some earphones. We’ve been using music in surfing and paddling since it first became available in any form.

Laird Hamilton has been a surfing hero since the 1980s, solidifying his reputation as the king of big wave surfing when he conquered Tahiti’s Teahupo’o Reef at its most perilous in August 2000. As an innovator, he pioneered many new activities including kitesurfing, tow-in surfing and hydrofoil boarding. He’s on the board of directors at H2O Audio, makers of pro-level waterproof iPhone and iPod cases, and has his own signature line of Surge waterproof earphones, proceeds of which are donated to the Beautiful Son foundation for autism education.

Apple’s got a lot of problems when it comes to overheating iPod batteries — not only is the situation potentially dangerous, every move Cupertino makes is subject to sensational misinterpretation. Take today’s Times UK story this morning about 11-year-old Ellie Stanborough, whose iPod touch blew itself up last month: when her father Ken contacted Apple for a refund, it seems he got a little bit of a runaround, but was eventually sent a settlement agreement offering a full refund if the family agreed to keep the deal confidential. That’s actually totally standard practice when companies settle out-of-warranty claims, but since the agreement was written by lawyers, it contained a bunch of vaguely threatening language about how breaking confidentiality might result in Apple relentlessly suing everyone until Liverpool itself goes bankrupt and the populace is forced to resort to cannibalism and network television. Cue hysterical media coverage.

Now, it’s no secret that lithium-ion batteries like those used in the iPod have a long history of overheating and exploding, and Apple’s certainly had large-scale problems with defective cells — the first-gen iPod nano has been recalled in Korea and Japan, for example. It’s also obvious that the sheer number of iPods sold means there are more exploding iPods than anything else — and while we’re sure some accountant at Apple has a spreadsheet showing the exact failure rate is acceptable, all we’ve got right now is story after story of these things blowing up with zero context. So here’s our suggestion to Apple: maybe instead of having lawyers draft individual settlement agreements full of impenetrable and scary legalese for each and every jilted iPod owner out there, why not simply fess up to the problem, let people know exactly how common it is and how to avoid it, and provide a dead-simple replacement option for people who’ve had their iPods go up in smoke? That would put everyone at ease, and make these types of stories much less likely to blow up in a media feeding frenzy. Or, you know, do nothing because overwhelming market share inevitably leads to arrogant laziness — your call.

[Via TUAW]

Exploding iPod blows up in Apple’s face originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This hot looking block of metal and circuitry is a high-end home-theater and audio dock for the iPod family. The Onkyo ND-S1 will take the bits stored on the music player and perform its own digital to analog conversion before piping the pristine signal off to the stereo setup of your choice.

Don’t laugh. While processing a crappy MP3 is a waste of time and money, lossless formats or even full-on wav and aiff files can benefit from some 16bit, 48kHz love, and you can fit a decent amount of them onto, say, a 32GB iPod Touch. The dock will also hook up to a computer via USB and allow you to sync your iPod with iTunes, as well as grabbing music from that same iTunes library and performing it’s magic. Hooking this thing up to a Mac Mini as a dedicated music box may be overkill, but hey — we’re talking about audiophiles here, the kind of people who can spend hundreds of dollars on mains cable.

The dock also comes with a remote control, and work’s with any iPod except the iPhone. Price is as yet undecided, but it will be on sale in the fall.

Product page [Onkyo via Akihabara News]