ipods
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Dyslexic cops get iPod accommodation
Dyslexic police officers in Liverpool, England will soon be given iPods as training aids. Student police in training classes will use the iPods to view images of road signs and listen to 900+ hours of material from the police force's official training manual. 900+ hours!!?? According to my calculations, this should take the dyslexic police cadets 22 weeks or more to listen to. This assumes they do nothing else during their 8-hour shifts although I suppose you could continue listening to lectures during potty breaks. A police spokesman described the training-with-iPod scheme as "really worthwhile as it accommodates the needs of those officers with hidden disabilities such as dyslexia who would find it difficult to digest such a vast amount of information in written format." I may be way off base here, but I can't imagine listening to, let alone digesting, 900+ hours worth of training material, dyslexia or no.Special spell check thanks to Jon Grimshaw
College students shunning free music subscription services
It's the rare college student who will turn down free anything -- free food, free booze, and free love are all top priorities for the modern scholar -- so we were more than a little surprised to learn that those online music subscriptions being offered gratis by a number of colleges haven't really taken off like one would assume. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the services from Napster and company have proven so unpopular that many schools are dropping the program altogether after only a year or two, although the RIAA claims that the number of participating campuses will actually increase "pretty significantly" this fall. Even if that's true, it's not clear why students at newly-subscribed schools would behave any differently than ones who already have access to the free tunes and still choose alternative distribution methods -- most notably the iTunes music store and the still-popular P2P networks. Ultimately it seems to be the services' many restrictions that are turning off the college crowd -- tracks can't always be burned to disc or transferred to a DAP, and they also disappear after four years -- and the fact that students today treasure their iPods even more than their precious cans of beer only makes non-FairPlay content that much more undesirable.[Via TechDirt]
Get laid off, give back the iPod says National Semiconductor
Remember a few weeks ago we wrote about National Semiconductor raking in the dough and handing out iPods to all their employees? Well, it looks like those iPods weren't a reward after all, but rather company equipment. National Semiconductor laid off 35 factory workers, which is odd given their huge profits but welcome to the 21st Century I suppose. Anyway, not only did these people lose their jobs but on the way out National Semiconductor said, 'Ah, yes and we'll be needing those iPods back, thanks!'That's right, the iPods, according to the company, weren't gifts but rather company hardware. Sadly, many employees didn't know that and gave the iPods away, or sold them. Worry not laid off folks, you can just pay National Semiconductor $300 and they'll call it even.Thanks, Anne.
Hospital server crashes under weight of music downloads
Don't look now, but the same folks that brought us the evils of podslurping, bluesnarfing and cellphone ID theft are at it again. The culprit this time: devious iPod users who stuff their workplace servers with downloaded music and videos. According to the Sun, a paragon of journalistic expertise, a UK hospital's server was brought to its knees by employees who filled it with so much music that there was no room left for crucial patient data. As one patient told the paper: "It’s a disgrace. How can they sit around downloading music when they should be looking after patients?" We couldn't agree more. We suggest that, in the future, hospital staff should only download music while looking after patients. And share the files with them as well. Nothing like a bit of Gnarls Barkley to brighten up the ward.[Via Network Endpoint Security News]
TUAW Podcast the 8th
It's that time again! We've put together our eighth podcast, and in this edition Jan Kabili, Damien Barrett and Dave Caolo bring you some of our best posts from last week, in-depth details on Apple Computer vs. Apple Corps, a couple April fools jokes, new Apple stores and some interesting iPod accessories. It's all hosted by me, David Chartier, and is available in a variety of formats and channels: enhanced AAC MP3 our iTMS podcast and vidcast link our own RSS feed of podcasts Please let us know what you think of the new format in the comments.Enjoy!
BrokenPod.com Will Buy Your Broken iPod
Got a broken iPod and don't know what to do with it? You could sell it on eBay and hope for the best, or pay to have it repaired. Or you could sell it to Brokenpod.com, a clearinghouse that'll buy your broken iPod in almost any condition. Dead HD? Smashed screen? Click wheel that won't turn? No problem. Did your iPod attempt suicide by jumping into your toilet? No problem.I imagine what Brokenpod.com does is strip the broken iPods for parts and then reassembles broken iPods into working iPods. Even if you get only a little bit of money for your broken iPod, it's better than filling the landfill.We've not tried Brokenpod.com as a service and would be interested in any feedback from readers. I believe this is a new company/service and a quick search turns up very little about the company. As always, caveat emptor.Update: Their website seems to have gone dark. No idea why. Perhaps they also receieved a letter from Apple Legal about the use of "Pod" in their name.
Subway maps on your iPod photo
People are very clever, and iPod Subway Maps is yet another example of this cleverness. At the moment maps are available for NYC, Boston, and Hong Kong, with the promise of more coming soon.To think that at one point the iPod was just a music player.
