Birthday Week continues: my big gift comes early

I guess mostly as a result of my whining about it (because I knew what I was going to get) and partly because my actual birthday is on a night Annette is teaching, I got her and Will to give me my big birthday gift, an iPod Touch. Sweet! (Actually, I tried to post this from my new pod/touch yesterday, but I got tired of trying to make it work, so I’m posting this from a regular computer. But I’m still back dating the post).

For those not in the know, the pod/touch is basically the same as an iPhone but without the phone: that is, it’s an iPod, you can watch videos, and, assuming you have a wireless connection, you can track your stocks (my vast portfolio, of course), you can buy stuff from iTunes, check your mail, and sort of surf the web with Safari. When the iPhone first came out, my first reaction was “I don’t need a phone, but if I had something that had the rest of this stuff, that’d be cool.” Well, here ya go.

Anyway, I haven’t taken it out “in the wild” yet, so I don’t know how well it will respond/connect to wifi networks in coffee shops and stuff. I guess it’ll work fine. The email app works great, and the google sites I use all the time (reader, news, etc.) have iPod/Phone/Touch -specific versions, which is nice. And now there’s a whole bunch of web sites specifically made for the iPod/Phone/Touch, which is a potentially interesting topic of “Writing for the World Wide Web” this spring. I finally figured out how to use HandBrake to rip a DVD to an iPod/Phone/Touch format, meaning I can watch Spirited Away on a tiny screen in fantastic resolution. This is cool, but I am not sure I can watch a 2 hour movie like this– David Lynch probably has a point.

Oh yeah– it plays music too.

Anyway, mucho thanks to Annette and Will!

2 Replies to “Birthday Week continues: my big gift comes early”

  1. Been using mine for a little over a month and the WiFi works pretty well. The experience is usually dependent on the provider (sign-in screens and such), but the connection itself is reliable. Now, if we only had that county-wide wireless in place…

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