Monday, February 13, 2006

Odds & Ends

What I’m listening to: The Best of Bootie 2005, a collection of the best mash-ups up the last year. It’s all good stuff, but pay special attention to “Badd to Me” (Ying Yang Twins vs. the Cure), “Sgt. Pepper’s Paradise” (The Beatles vs. Guns N’ Roses), and “Super Holla Tricka” (Beastie Boys vs. Gwen Stefani vs. A. Skillz & Krafty Kutz). By the way, anyone know the origin of this novel use of “versus” to mean “crossed with”? Thanks to Julian for the link. I love free content!

This made me chuckle: Russell Roberts on the alleged decline of American manufacturing. “The worriers like to complain that we don't make anything anymore. America is being hollowed out. Soon we're going to be left doing one another's laundry. Boy, will we be poor then.” Heh. Read the whole post for an excellent point about the measurement of manufacturing (hint: it’s about the outputs, not the inputs).

A new product I’d like to see: A retro-style pick-up truck. It would look just like this...


...except, you know, with seat belts, air bags, CD player, MP3 dock, and easily available replacement parts. But it would look the same, and that would rock. And no, I’m not talking about this ugly piece o’ crap...


...because that’s just wrong.

A product feature I’d like to see: The Alarm Clock with Preemptive Snooze Bar. Often I will wake up before my alarm (I tend drift in and out of sleep a lot) and realize I’m definitely going to need that extra 15 minutes of sleep, which will be most enjoyable as the end of a nice uninterrupted 45-minute stretch. But I can’t hit the snooze bar until the alarm goes off. Hence the need for the Preemptive Snooze Bar: hit it any time during the night, and it will postpone your alarm by 15 minutes. Hit it twice and you get 30.

Another product feature I’d like to see: A “jump to artist” or “jump to album” command on the iPod. When I’ve got the iPod on random shuffle, I will occasionally (pretty often, actually) hear a song and think, “Hey, I’d like to hear another one by that guy” or “Ooh, I want to hear the next song on that album.” I should be able to push a button (or maybe two buttons at once) and jump immediately to the artist or album list. I figure this wouldn’t even require a hardware modification, just a tweak to the iPod software. If someone at Apple reads this blog, I could be downloading the updated software next week!

2 comments:

Amy said...

The iPod command I want is one that will allow me to choose the next song I want to hear without changing the current song. I want to be able to, while listening to one song, pick out a second song and tell the iPod to make that the next song in the playlist, rather than having to wait until my current song is over and then choosing the next song.

Glen Whitman said...

Amy -- you can kinda do that by using the On-the-Go Playlist. Clear the list and then put in one song. Start playing the list. While the song is playing, you can add more songs to the queue, and the iPod will play them automatically when the current song finishes. (If you're lining up more than one song and you want them played in order, be sure to toggle Shuffle to "Off" in your Settings first.)