The Wonder of iPods and Technology that Sucks

This Christmas I acquired my first iPod. I know I am moving a little slow over here. iPods have been out for quite awhile and today there are numerous variations. I guess I am just set in my ways. Perhaps I like running back and forth to my car with CDs in hand for my various trips through the day and night.

I had gotten a Sony devise- another MP3 player last Christmas and I got stuck on their request for me to install yet another media player on my PC. I never progressed past that point. I think there are currently five versions of media players right now on the machine. another was not needed. Besides, it was just not believable to me. I seemed so fragile and I was uncertain how I would select a song or artist. So it sits in my office unused.

the iPod though was quite a different result. The days following Christmas were largely spent loading all my CD, and there was a bunch, into my iTunes. So if nothing else, it got to move most of my collection, (the listenable component) into iTunes. Now the part that i knew, but now witnessed, was that I could take all those tunes and move them into my iPod. It was Amazing!

That tuned out to be 1700 songs. Who knew I had that much music! I had not pondered before that how many songs or music I had. Nor had my wife, when she bought me the thing as a Christmas gift. She got me an iPod Nano, which holds only – only – 2000 songs. Sadly, I will exceed that sometime soon and will either need to truncate my collection or move onto a bigger device.

I was and am amazed that now I can carry in my pocket my entire collection of music. And with that knowledge and capability, I am now inspired to scour the earth for music that I have since lost. Bands like Blackfoot, UFO and even Deep Purple or Zeppelin – stuff that I know but that have been pushed to the periphery.Things I once had on vinyl and now want and need in a digital format. New stuff that I have had samplings of but now want to add. Bands like Radiohead that I hear a snippet of but just are a step or two away from me reaching out and getting. This new little device which fits in my pocket simply inspires!

Now here is where my saga begins. For those of you who know me, I listen to my music in the car. Even though I work from home I still generally hop in my car to go somewhere and when I do I am carrying some CD to pop in for the trip. Whether it is a mid-day trip to Dunkin Donuts or a trip into the city at night to see Do You See the Dark or Statues of Liberty, it is always with music in the CD Player.

Well, my decision to buy an iPod was calculated. I knew where and how I listened to music and knew that if I were to get an iPod I would have to figure out how to get it connected into my car stereo. I did a little research on the web and among friends and the verdict seemed to be that it was no serious issue to connect it by simply using the FM radio. I thought it was a cool solution and told by several that it worked. Looking back, I am afraid I was cherry picking my intel.

The idea behind the FM radio solution is simple. You plug this device into your car cigarette lighter, and your iPod sits on top of it. It locates an unused frequency in the FM band and broadcast a small signal that only my FM radio, which is a foot away an pick up. Yes I have now become an FM Broadcaster! (Stay tuned for more to on this theme!)

So it is a very cool tech-savvy solution. But it does not work. It is not able to find an open frequency. The music fades and it has every pitfall of the FM band-the fading, the static. Sadly the solution is not listenable. I will be in the middle of some piece of music and it fades. So what I am realizing is that this new very cool piece of technology ties into into certain ways of listening. Car listening is not quite there yet. No doubt it will be figured out-I have no choice. I do want my music library in my car.

More on this to come. . .