A 14-year-old girl was given a new iPod by her parents, but once she opened the box she only found rocks.  No, it wasn't meant to be a joke; The parents bought the "iPod" at Target and tried to return the item.

It turns out that this iPod was replaced with rocks somewhere before the sale. Like any consumer would, the family went to the Target store where the "iPod" was purchased in order to replace the non-music-playing rocks. Apparently, Target's return policy for customers using their Target cards is to issue store credit only—despite the family asking for their money back, it was rocks or store credit, period. Unfortunately, the store in Fort Worth had no other iPods. The employees did, however, call around to other area Target stores and found one that had the product in Grand Prairie, 20 miles away.

The Grand Prairie store's employees, perhaps unforgivingly after hearing the sob story, insisted that the new iPod had to be purchased before opening it. The family finally agreed, purchased the iPod, and opened in in front of Target employees. Again, the box that should have contained an iPod contained rocks. The woman once again asked for her money back, but again was denied. She then, according to the article, had her daughter pick out other items in order to use the store credit.

So far, Target hasn't been apologetic—its employees were following store policy and the company is "looking" into the matter. It seems likely that both stores get their merchandise from the same distribution warehouse, and that is most likely where the problem lies.

Kill your iPod (part II).

When it comes to audiophiles all is but lost.

With the advent of MP3, the idea of lossless audio seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears. Enter: FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec, it compresses waveforms by finding similarities (like bzip), not by changing the the waveform itself (mp3 et. al.).

When it comes to playing FLAC on a portable, a HD based one is the only way to go because of the increased size of FLAC files -- roughly 1/2 the size of the original uncompressed stream. FLAC players are listed on the FLAC website, but as far as I see it there are only two choices for gapless MP3 and FLAC playback:

• Rio Karma -- purchase from Karma Limbo, his are pre-hacked with upgrades
• a Rockbox enabled device such as iRiver, or iPod

Everyone has or eventually will experience the dreaded click.... click... click... noise of their ipod's hard drive when its eventual death has come to be. I recently discovered by 1. Simply opening your ipod 2. Disconnecting your drive ,  3. Turning the ipod back on and letting it boot until it gives you an error 4. Turning off the ipod 5. reconnecting the drive and 6. Turning the ipod back on will fix it....

I have no idea why this works but i have had 100% success with 3 ipods; 4g; 3G; and ipod mini

Try it.. let me know how you fare
and by the way this voids your warranty

Sam

Apple made a deal with 6 airlines (United, Continental, Delta, Air France, Emirates and KLM) to add an iPod connection to the seat-back displays so passengers have the capability of watching movies stored on their iPods through the duration of their flights.  Passengers will also be able to charge their iPods through this connection.

Expect to see this happen mid-2007.

Well, after all of the mounting fines that would inevitably have piled up in my house if the copyright agency saw my computer, I am now happy to declare that I will soon no longer be a criminal in the eyes of Australian Law.

Yes, for the past 40 years, Australia has not had a fair-use copying clause in our laws - the type of law that allows US Citizens to format-shift their music (CD-MP3), or backup their software.  Well, they're finally amending the laws, and now, I can breathe easily when it comes to listening to my music.

Here's the portion that the Slashdot article has lifted:

"Once the new laws are passed, 'format shifting' of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it. Under the current regime, millions of households a day are breaking the law when they tape a show and watch it at another time."

What if Microsoft came out with their own version of the iPod?  What would their packaging look like?  Would it have a clean look like Apple packaging? 

Check out this hilarious parody on Microsoft iPod packaging. 

Some people will sue for anything.  Now, it's for the fact that iPods can damage people's ears when played loudly.  From the article:

The iPod players are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss," according to the complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Louisiana. The suit, which Patterson wants certified as a class-action, seeks compensation for unspecified damages and upgrades that will make iPods safer. Patterson's suit said he bought an iPod last year, but does not specify whether he suffered hearing loss from the device.

I was browsing the web, looking for some cool news, and I came accross this. Apparently, you can now order iPods pre-loading from this company with engraving, pictures, music, and video from you wedding in both his and her models. This got me thinking. If people are willing to make iPods a part of their weddings, then what is next for the little media device? It seems that as time goes on, iPods are becoming a necessity, rather than a cool gadget that only a few people have. It seems to me as though everything Apple releases is now "cool," "hip," or "tredny." Now I have nothing against Apple at all, and the only reason I don't have an iBook or PowerBook is because I don't want to buy all of my software again for the mac, as all of my licenses for high-end programs (i.e.

Okay, so iTunes might be the most successful music downloading service, but they probably aren't making as many sales as they could be. Right now, there's isn't any real reason, for most people, to buy music instead of just downloading it from a P2P network. What Apple needs to do is offer something that say, Limewire, cannot. For instance, they could incorporate a way for the all songs downloaded from iTunes to have the lyrical text embedded within the file. Then once it was loaded on the iPod, it could have the ability to scroll the lyrics across, along with the music, karaoke style.

Now you might just be thinking, "Well those files would just get on the P2P networks anyway, and people wouldn't buy them," but you'd be wrong. The lyrics would be digitally embedded into the file, similarly to the way DRM is. Then, if the file were to be ripped to an MP3, along with losing the DRM, the lyrics would be lost also, since it wouldn't be audible data.

If Apple were simply to implement these into iTunes and the iPod, it would give a reason for people to actually buy their music, other than the whole legal thing.

Sometimes you find sites that really are quite strange. Such as this: SmashMyiPod.com.

From the site:

The Plan
After we collect $400 in donations, we will take that money to a local Apple Store. We will purchase the iPod, open it right inside the store, and destroy it right on the spot. The whole thing will be shot on film, and displayed on this site. This is only a social experiment, for the entertainment of the donors, and visitors of this site

Wtf?