Posts tagged "Reviews"

Being a satisfied iPod touch owner, I've used it a lot of times to go jogging and listen to some music in the meantime (and to keep track of time using the standard iPod alarm clock). A couple of months ago I bought a very cheap Nike+iPod sensor but didn't have a chance to use it... and anyway, it was way too cold to go out running!
Today I finally had the time (and incredible courage) to test it.

The iPod touch can directly connect to the sensor, since the receiver is already integrated (I guess it uses bluetooth) so there's no need to get the whole set (which you need if you have an iPod nano). Just get the sensor, which is really really cheap (like 12? or something).

Nike+iPod

Speaking of cheap, I didn't buy the expensive Nike+ shoes of course but still use the same ultra-cheap running shoes as always. The Nike+ shoes provide an apposite slot where you can put the sensor while running. For "normal" shoes, there are a couple of straps on Amazon that should do the same thing, but I figured that putting the sensor behind the shoe strings would be pretty much the same.

The sensor firmly in place. Ignore the ugly silvery shoes.

And in fact, it worked: just stick the sensor in a point where the strings cross twice and you shouldn't risk losing the precious electronic gadget. After my first test run the sensor apparently had moved a bit, but wasn't about to fall out. Even if that happens, the Nike+iPod should warn you when it loses contact with the sensor and you'll be able to go back and hunt for the thing...

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I have been using a second generation iPod Touch for almost 9 months now and, while being completely satisfied with the player (I'm a bit tempted by the iPhone 3GS, even), the earbuds it comes with are simply terrible.

The iPod earbuds are standard earphones, but have quite low volume (when traveling by train I often couldn't hear most of the songs I was listening to, which gets even worse for podcasts or videos). They also disperse a lot of the sound outside the listener's ear, which forces the people sitting next to you to listen to everything you're shuffling through your iPod (something I hate being exposed to and hate to do onto others). The earbuds also tend to dislodge from the ear quite easily, especially when walking or jogging. And finally, after having used my pair of earbuds to exercise for a couple of months, one of the earbuds started to play at a much lower volume (probably because of the sweat).

Time to throw them away, I decided... So I took a lot of time to decide which model of earphone to get and finally bought the Sennheiser CX-300 II in-ear phones.

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Last week I finally had enough time to install Impulse, the digital delivery solution from Stardock, and buy their newest space RTS game: "Sins of a Solar Empire".

I had already tried the former digital delivery client by Stardock, Stardock Central, to get "Galactic Civilizations II" and knew about their wonderful no-DRM, no copy protection, constant updates and great quality policy.

Well, Impulse delivers the same experience. The old login I used with Stardock Central still worked and gave me access to the games I had already bought. In fact, a couple of minutes after installing Impulse, it was already updating my copy of GalCiv2. While the updating and installing interface is pretty nice, the actual shop browsing happens through a wrapped browser interface. Anyway, after placing the order via web interface, Impulse reloads your user stats and displays the newly bought game in the "My Games" tab.

Downloading the game is very fast and installing takes only a couple of minutes (remember to set Impulse's preferences to "ask for prompt" before installing, or it will put the game in the standard C:\Program Files folder).

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I'm not a big fan of Apple.

But some of their products are simply awesome.

A month ago, Sammy Larbi from CodeOdor.com sponsored the "Learn something new" contest. I decided to submit the DMX Lightshow project I have been working on and... I won! I chose an 8GB iPod touch and received it a couple of days before leaving on holidays.

The iPod is simply a wonderful piece of technology, perfectly put together as only Apple apparently is capable of doing. Its touch interface is very functional and fun to use: scrolling through a list of songs, a list of pictures or a website is always a pleasure.

In the last days I also started loading some TV shows on the iPod in order to watch them on the train or curled up in bed before going to sleep. Very enjoyable.

The only weak point of the whole experience is iTunes: the Windows version is painfully slow. Also, having organized my huge music library with Media Player using almost exclusively WMA files, I now have to slowly convert everything to AAC just to be able to put on the iPod. Video conversion is quite tricky too (iTunes doesn't seem to be able to do any video conversion) and I learnt a couple of things that I will post in the next days.

All in all, I'd totally recommend it. The device is almost perfect and I'm even starting to get tempted by the iPhone. I hope, for my shrinking bank account's sake, to be able to resist temptation... Again, thank you very much Sammy for the wonderful present!

I finally managed to play the first and original "Prince of Persia" game to its end (that is, more or less 20 years after it was first published). It's a simple, brilliant, very well made and very frustating old game.

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