Eat Your Carrots

Oh My God, We Own An iPod

I suppose it was inevitable that we'd get one eventually. I say "we", actually it's wife's, I got her one as a treat as she's been on about them for ages. It's a shuffle - I'd heard and read that they are small, but I wasn't really prepared for just how small they are. Minute is the word for it. How do they fit a battery, memory and all the associated circuitry into such a small space. It's a marvel of modern technology and it even sounds good too. So now I'm jealous, I guess I'm going to have to get myself one!

Digital Photo Frame

I got a healthy little end-of-year bonus from work so as well as "investing for the future" and all those boring but essential things that you have to do with money, I also splashed some on a Philips Digital Photo Frame.

It's an interesting and feature packed little beast. Looking like a stylish 7x5 inch photo frame it can display digital pictures from its own internal memory (which has space for 70 or so pictures) or from SD cards. You can load pictures into its memory from an SD card or USB or DirectView enabled cameras. The frame automatically re-sizes the pictures on the card/in memory to be the optimal size for the frame (720x480), which also reduces the amount of memory each picture requires.

It can be set to come on and go off at pre-programmed times and the length of time each picture is displayed for can be set for anything from 5 seconds to a week. Pictures can be displayed in random order or in a pre-programmed sequence. It also has buttons discretely positioned on the back so that you can manually go through the pictures. It runs off mains power (the cable is very discrete) or built in li-on battery (which gives a massive 40 minutes of running time!). Needless to say the mains option is the only real option!

How much? Some would say too much, and I expect devices like this will come down in price significantly in coming years - and get bigger too. But I'm happy to be an early-adopter.

Storage Solution

NAS is the buzzword of the moment - that's Network Attached Storage to you and I. If you're running a home network and you need disk space to share files between users (photos, mp3s, excel spreadsheets etc) or if you just want somewhere to act as a convenient and instantly accessible backup medium, or even if you just need more space, this could be just what you're looking for.
NAS allows you add hard drives to your network without having to have them inside a PC. And it's not like a USB external drive either - those too require that the PC they're attached to to be powered up in order to access them. With NAS you can access the drives from any PC independently of any other PC being on or off.
The Netgear solution is ideally priced for home use at under £70 (your hard drives are extra, BTW). This may sound expensive, but it's only a £70 overhead and that may be worth the convenience and security that it offers. And don't forget, other NAS solutions are coming in at several hundred pounds a pop.

We're testing one out at work right now, and it may be coming to a home near you soon.

Creative Zen Nano Plus

I've been quite impressed with this little beastie, the Creative Zen Nano Plus (and at this point I'm wondering how Apple called their latest iPod "Nano" when the product name is already in use...).

It's kind of at the same level in the grand scheme as the iPod shuffle, and what it might lack in iPod style, it more than makes up for in features. One of the most obvious of those is a display so you can see what you're listening to and from which you can also select one of the many and varied play modes.

In addition to playing MP3 and WMA files, it also has an FM radio, should you wish to listen to it (It's actually very clear for stations with a strong signal) and you can record the radio directly to MP3 on the device. Actually, the player has a line-in socket, and you can record to MP3 on it from any device with a line-out! Not an awful lot of use to me now, but may have been in the past when I wanted to digitise all my vinyl collection. Oh, and you can also talk into it, like a dictaphone.

Other things I like about it are that you can just drag & drop files onto it - no need to use proprietary software like you do with my Rio and my Phone, and you can organise the songs into folders if you want, to make it easier to move them off/on the player. The absolute biggest, most loveliest feature of all though is that it runs off a nice standard AAA battery. No need to have to take my PC with me on holiday so that I can recharge the player via the USB port, or alternatively to buy an overpriced auxiliary charger. Heaven.

At about 2.5 by 1.3 inches it's minute, and weighs next to nothing. The sound quality from its own headphones is amazing. At first I just used my existing headphones, cos they are what I always use, and it sounded "OK" (as good as my Rio, or listening to iTunes off a PC). When I used the Creative headphones though it was a complete transformation. So much more bass and overall clarity. Maybe I need to upgrade my standard headphones.

All in all, style apart, I think it has the iPod Shuffle well beaten. Not that that will matter to an awful lot of people. To some, style (or perceived style) is all that matters :-S

Creative Zen Nano Plus - 9/10

PanoramicPhotoPhonePics

My phone (Sony W800i) has a whole host of features that I'll probably never use, some of which are totally useless, some of which are totally overkill and some of which are really rather good. One such feature that I hadn't fully explored yet was the panoramic picture mode. You take three adjacent pictures (the camera provides a template of the previous picture so you can line it up nicely) and it stitches them together. Amazing - my "real" camera doesn't even do that, I have to use Photoshop and hope that it gets the joins right. I have to say that although Photoshop does do a good job, it doesn't do as good a job as this.

This was taken last night at the Stadium of Light where Sunderland got thrashed 3-0 by Arsenal. Well, at least I have a good photo.