I’ve just acquired an iPod touch and I’m in love.

One small issue, though. I’ve added a bundle of addresses in the past few weeks using the touch, but only yesterday did I realise that they could be placed in groups if you were IN the group already when you started adding the new entry. So there’s a whole load of ungrouped entries in my (frighteningly big) address book.

The logical thing would be to make a smart group for stuff that, say, isn’t in a dumb group. But I couldn’t see a smart group option for that. Any bright ideas?

Now that Steve has announced there’s an iPhone/iPod Touch SDK coming in February, what’s at the top of your application wish list?

I would like to poll the masses on how to create really smart playlists in iTunes for use on flash-memory based iPods. How can you set up the playlist so that you select songs from your library and replace them upon syncing after listening to a given track. Making the smart playlists is easy- however I can’t get the songs to replace upon syncing.

Merlin has gone on about the power of Quicksilver's Append To... action and simple text files to keep track of all kinds of data. I decided to drink the Kool-Aid and give it a try for my "on-the-go" contexts. To make it really useful, I set up my Mac to automatically sync my lists to the Notes folder on my iPod every time it gets plugged in.  read more »

Microsoft changes tune on selling DRM-free songs

Exciting news on the digital music front. Microsoft plans to follow Apple’s plan to sell DRM-free tracks from EMI to its extant army of Zune enthusiasts. Welcome to the social:

“The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple,” said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, in an e-mail to the IDG News Service today. She said Microsoft has been talking with EMI and other record labels “for some time now” about offering unprotected music on its Zune players in an effort to meet the needs of its customers.

Way to innovate, Redmond. Once the period of EMI’s exclusive deal with Apple has ended, this should make both Zune owners very happy.

[via: Boing Boing: Microsoft dropping DRM from Zune Music Store]

Since the new TV can handle video up to HD’s 720p resolution, there’s been a lot of speculation about whether the iTunes store will eventually start selling HD content, such as TV shows and movies. You can bet that the desire for that quality of presentation is theoretically out there (at least it is for this HD TV owner). The problem, as many folks have discussed at length, is that the file size for HD movies, in particular, may be prohibitively large for the garden-variety home broadband user.

As Greg Keene notes, “With simple math, we can extrapolate that a 2-hour movie would be about 3.9 GB.” That’s not only a substantially lengthy download for, say, a residential DSL subscriber, it also represents the investment of over 10% of the available space on the Apple TV’s drive (as well as, it should be noted, an equivalent chunk of space back on your Mac or PC’s disk).  read more »

FM3 BUDDHA MACHINE

I’ve been hearing about the $25 Buddha Machine for a while (I recall Leo mentioning it once) and was tempted enough to go ahead and order my own today over on Forced Exposure (probably not least because of the amazing exploded drawing they use as a logo).

From the FAQ (which comes from a Pop Matters review):

The Buddha Machine is a little plastic box that plays music.

Specifically, FM3 constructed nine drones, varying from two seconds to 42 seconds, which repeat endlessly in the listener’s ear until the “track” is switched to the next drone (or the two AA batteries run out).

Sean notes that the manufacturers will also let you download uncompressed versions of the 9 included drones for free, so you could presumably emulate some of the functionality on your iPod. Friendly.

Anybody out there got one of these? How you enjoying it?