I’m experiencing somewhat of a musical renassance on old albums that I haven’t listened to in while. It was brought on by a purchase of my Ipod Touch. I can tell you that this is on the best gizmos I’ve had in a while.
I’m digging into old music and old mp3s. 500+ songs on my Ipod and it isn’t even a 1/3rd of the way full yet. Finally a useful mp3 player. I had tried everything – CD players which read data cds full of mp3s, but I found myself skipping multiple tracks. I paid $25 for a mp3 player shaped like a tape, which cosequentally could be used in my car’s tape player. And it worked about as well as what a $25 mp3 player would work (read not very well). No way to fast forward through songs. You were pretty much stuck with whatever songs were in your player.
The iTunes store is pretty much useless, in that you can’t easily convert music files to an mp3 file to play outside of iTunes. Apple is scared of lawsuits which caused them not to allow this and wireless song transfers between iPods (which I’m told MS Zunes have the ability to do). If I do buy mp3s, I’m sticking to Amazon.com, if only for being able to have more control on what program plays it.
It’s video podcasting ability is useful. I regularly watch last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 during my lunch break. It reminds me of how much “to the point” AC360 truly is. Somehow I wish there would be someway to watch last night’s Seinfeld episode, but anything outside of news (read entertainment) you have to pay for.
Tonight’s guest speaker at church mentioned that his church regularly does Podcasts and he didn’t know if we did the same thing. I wanted to flash on the big screen “WE DO HAVE PODCASTS!” – Something I have been doing for a few months before I got an iPod. I now know how useful this can be, especially to reach those who are unable or unwilling to attend worship services. Podcasts may only be popular with the younger than 40 crowd. The rest might not even understand the concept.