iPod Archive

A couple of years ago we reported on the launch of Pac-man for iGoogle. Today we’ve learned that Pac-man is now available for the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I wonder what the gameplay is like seeing as you have to hit tiny buttons on the iPhone screen. The game costs $5.99.

Want to feel old? Read this line from Jonathan Kromrey, general manager for Apple Games for Namco Networks, “With tricks and traps, special items and battles against giant ghost-bosses, this isn’t your parents’ PAC-MAN.” Luckily the “old” version of Pac-Man is also available.

Without looking, can you name the orange ghost?

Pacman is great, but where is that hottie Ms. Pac-man? Useless bit of info: I won a Ms. Pac-man tourney in Atlantic City when I was a wee little kid.

This month we announced a giveaway for an Apple iPod Shuffle. We just picked the winner and they have been notified. Apologies if you didn’t receive a winning email but thanks for sending in all of the links to other blogs you read and enjoy.

I’ve put together a list of some of the submitted blogs – I hope you find some new blogs to enjoy - I know I have.

• Hookedonwords
• demogirl
• Chip Chick
• Vintage Indie
• Crooks and Liars
• Right Wing News
• Dumb Little Man
• hilife 2b
• Gear Patrol
• LoHud Yankees Blog
• Springwise
• PSFK
• SpicyTasty
• Debt Free Adventures
• Boston Dirt Dogs
• very short list
• pretty much amazing
• Pop Candy
• Food Wishes
• Not Always Right
• About Harvest
• Accidental Mommies
• Cider Press Hill
• The Wander Girl
• Joystiq
• Workin on my Fitness
• Gotham Gal
• I Heart Talk Radio
• Let’s Be Friends
• Recipe Star
• Carrie Jones
• Bad PR Pitches
• The Energy Collective
• CollegeWeb Guy
• Sandruck Family Blog
• Bank Deals
• Dark Roasted Blend
• Girl on the Brink
• Appon’s Thai Food
• Wormtown Taxi
• foodgawker
• Advertolog
• Positivity Blog
• Dumb Little Man

*update* Only one more day to enter! *update*

This morning I participated in a feedback session and the company gave me a new iPod Shuffle — 4GB model. This thing is tiny – seriously tiny - like 3 chicklets are bigger than this iPod. This is the one that talks but does it listen? I already have an iPod Nano so I have no need for this device. I thought maybe I could use it to “woo” a potential Mrs. Stern, but so far it hasn’t worked. So my loss is your gain!

I am going to give away the iPod Shuffle to one lucky CN reader. Many companies and bloggers require you to spam the freak out of your friends on Twitter, post all over the net about how great they are just so you can get an entry. We will have none of that here! No sir!

To enter: send an email to (”myfirstname” – at – centernetworks.com) note the iPod Shuffle Giveaway and include two blogs you enjoy reading outside the tech sector. They can be food blogs, cat blogs, transit blogs, bacon blogs..whatever you enjoy. I will create a master list of the blogs and post it on CN. I love checking out new blogs outside the tech sector and I hope you will as well.

The winner will be selected in a random drawing on May 15th. Note that anyone listed on the Twitter default list is not eligible to participate. Thanks for reading CN, I appreciate it!

A year ago I reviewed the first episode of NBC tech drama Chuck. Overall the writers have done an excellent job in bringing in geek technology without making it appear fake. From dropping a wikipedia here and a router there, it’s a fun little show.

However in this week’s episode, a comment was made by Chuck’s sidekick Morgan that clearly had me wondering. I’ve embedded the clip below (30 seconds). Morgan (and clearly NBC as the creator of the show) didn’t get the memo from Diggnation founder Kevin Rose. You see Diggnation is sponsored by the Zune, the Microsoft music player. If Kevin and Revision3 are taking the $$ from Microsoft for the Zune, you know that it is a damn fine quality product and should not be joked with. Let’s hope that next week Chuck will check the current lineup of sponsors for Diggnation and properly handle them if the need arises inside of the episode.

There is a rumor that has been circulating that Apple is going to be introducing a music subscription service like Rhapsody. I don’t know if it is true, but hope that it is. I love music subscription services, and am a current subscriber to Rhapsody, but I would switch to Apple in a minute so I could use my neat iPod with it.

But what triggered me wanting to write about this was not the rumor, but the reaction to the rumor by certain quarters. Specifically, whenever you read about subscription services, you always read vehement and angry comments from people that don’t like the idea of subscriptions. It is certainly fine to not want it for yourself. But what is odd to me is the anger that said people have at the idea that I might want something different.

It’s fascinating that this response always comes from the "free" music crowd, and yet I am confident, if they had a magic wand, they would make such services illegal, or so socially or politically unacceptable that they would not be offered.

This vehemence strikes me as strange because clearly I should have the right to buy something the way I want and a vendor should have the right to sell it to me in the way that s/he wants.

In short, it strikes me that the free music crowd is really more a religious movement than one based in logic and reason. It is very similar to the way that certain fundamentalist religious groups demonize people for different beliefs. Here the free music community demonizes subscription services because, by definition, subscriptions must use DRM, which is "evil". And the irrational zealous passion brought to bear is exactly analogous to the behavior of every out of control religious group in human history. Ok, they haven’t gotten to burning people at the stake, but you know what I mean.

The point is, even if you have the wacky view that all music or intellectual property should be free, the idea that you should consider business and interaction models, and technologies like DRM that don’t match your world view to be "evil", is, to me, bizarre. This is particularly true when the DRM *enables* a, compelling, at least for some, business model such as subscriptions.

As I see it, this movement would be more appropriately lead by a religious figure like Pat Robertson, or John Hagee, or Richard Stallman, or… oh wait, it is!

This article was authored by Hank Williams who is a New York-based entrepreneur who explores the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet at Why Does Everything Suck?.

Macy’s department stores is announcing that they will be pushing out their electronics vending machines nearly chain-wide. They have been testing the machines in a few stores over the past year and apparently they have done very well. I’ve seen these machines in a variety of airports over the past couple of years as well. 

Macy’s says the machines are loaded with, "products including iPods (Touch, Classic, Nano and Shuffle); Canon 7MP and 8MP digital cameras; Samsung 7MP digital camera and 1GB Camcorder; MyVu Personal Media Viewers; Sony, V-MODA, Bang and Olufsen and Harman Kardon headphones; and mobile accessories by Belkin. Products range from $14.99 to $349.99." My guess is that pricing is list and isn’t discounted like most online merchants – but for impulse purchases, price is usually not a factor.

Returns appear to be handled by mail – no returns in-store. It also looks like there’s no customer service or ability to play with the device before purchase. Of course with most customer service going down the drain, does it even matter anymore?

These machines are the new gum and candy rack at the checkout. "I wasn’t thinking of buying a new iPod today but it’s right there, why not pick one up?" And since it’s a pain in the arse to return, I’ll just keep it.

I am still waiting for these machines to show up at Starbucks to deliver your beverage – just enter what you want and it sends it right out to you – I get that Starbucks is supposed to be the classy and high-end coffee shop, but we all know that image is gone.

Update: These machines would have even more of a chance of succeeding if they the products came charged – buy an iPod and it’s ready to go immediately. Or a camcorder, etc. – that would be killer.

Earlier this year we reviewed PimpMyNews which allows you to create an audio feed of your favorite feeds. Another new startup has entered the text-to-audio feed space, BlogBard.

BlogBard lets you pull in your feeds from Google Reader and Bloglines and then listen to them live. You can also select to create a downloadable iTunes version.

I am a fan of these audio services as they allow you to multi-task. With the computerized voice basically getting everything right in my tests, these tools could help bring something new to the feed game.

Both PimpMyNews and BlogBard could be huge hits if they could figure out a way to record the author’s voice and use that instead of the computerized voice. While the computerized voice is much better than it has ever been, using the author’s voice would simply rock.

The only question I have is: If these services are monetizing my content, shouldn’t I receive a cut?

Update: BlogBard provided the following regarding their business model, “Our service(both the widget and the destination site) are ad-free(we are not monetizing it). We will be offering rev. share to the content creater once we figure out a way to monetize our service.”

Here is the live BlogBard widget: