So, we weren't going to get each other big gifts, my wife and I.
Naturally, she got me one ...
So, now an iPod Touch, which will hold eight million songs plus books and all like that. Go blind trying to read on such a tiny screen, but it's comforting to know that I can have something to read in an emergency. Plus a level, and an electronic badge and a guitar tuner and chord finder, and a flashlight and ...
Great to be living here in the future, ain't it?
7 comments:
I bought one a year or so ago, mainly as a baby-pacification device.
One of its main functions (for me, that is) is as a video player. I'll shoot some video on my camera and then use Handbrake (a freeware desktop program) to re-encode the video to a format suitable for the ipod. Easy-peasy.
Some of the more enduring freeware apps I have are:
Black Jack - ...the card game
Word Wrap - A word-jumble game
Flashlight - a blank screen, but nice to have when you don't have a real flashlight.
FourFree - a connect-four type game.
I bought iXpenseIt for a few bucks last year. It's a very nice app that helps you keep track of what you're spending day-to-day.
I have "Master of Pamor" on mine, and I must admit it is nearly impossible to read on it. The font is clear, but tiny. Reminds me of a cartoon I saw that lampooned trying to read on such a device. Teenager is sprawled on the couch to read. The screen presentation of his device is:
Call me Ish...
next page >
It's the iPhone -- without the phone and camera, and it will let me check email at wi-fi spots, plus some bare-bones webbery, so it's a nice toy. I can carry some reading material around, a dictionary, and plug it into my car's jack for music. With hearing aids, the earphones aren't particularly useful.
I'm not a video gamer, so I won't fill it up with those.
I'm not going to do much reading on it, and before I get an e-reader, I'm waiting to see what Mac's new not-gonna-happen touchpad tablet looks like.
Even if you don't care for "video games," check out Labyrinth for the sheer novelty of it. Remember the game with the two knobs that tilted the table to guide the steel ball through the maze? Same thing, except there are a wild array of mazes. I love the fact that they got the sound effects right. Oh, and the "settings" feature has a two-spirit level function.
As far as an e-book reader goes, check out Stanza. I find it very readable. A flip of your thumb turns the pages, so even though you only have a paragraph or two on each page, it's easy to keep flipping. If you adjust the font size (the "pinch" move), it re-renders the page for you and the rest of the book is at that size. Landscape reading is supported.
Have fun.
Yeah, I've already got the readers for Kindle, B&N, eReader, and Stanza, as well as Classics, which has the best page-turner EFX of all -- the page actually looks like a page turning. The print on the readers is actually not too bad, but that tiny screen is hard on the eyes. Look up after half an anour, and my distance vision gets real fuzzy.
I like my iPod Touch--another Christmas present. For e-reading, the Stanza app appears to be the best. Font adjustment is there but I still need to learn how to do it.
I love my iPod Touch, but would trade it for a pair of spetsdod in a sec. Man's gotta have priorities.
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