Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Idea for iPod car chargers and FM transmitters.

Now to a much less serious matter than my previous post, Whilst coming home today, I had an idea for an ipod accessory; because world knows that's EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED!

I don't know about you, but with my music collection I like to use the "My Rating" function of iTunes and subsequently, my iPod. It's a great feature; it helps you cull your music collection to exactly what you like listening to and when you feel like it, listening to stuff you haven't in ages. It's great for playlists too.

The only way you can access this very useful function on an iPod is whilst listening to the song, click the middle button 3 times, and then twiddle in a circular fashion about with the inexact scrollwheel about how many stars your rating it and either waiting for it to timeout, or pressing the centre button again.

So, this is not something I would not recommend doing whilst driving as I have done previously (I know, bad nerd! No cookie!), it's not exactly the safest thing in the world to do.

As I don't want to be wrapped around a tree because of my iPod, I was thinking in traffic on the drive home:
There has to be an easy, safe way to do this.

Well, Ive thought of one. There's basically only one way to have hands free access anything. that's with your voice (feet are in use!).

I hear your groaning through the Internet "But, Angry Nerd, Voice activated anything sucks, it never gets anything right!". You're right! the majority of it does; however there would only ever be SIX combination for it to register.

There's only so many ways that you can say zero, one, two, three, four or five, in so many accents, in english (depending on technical limitations, you could make regional models), so I figure it could be done pretty easily, it's not like with a mobile phone, trying to understand the various pronunciations and subtleties of peoples names.

0-5, not asking for much.

How 'bout it Apple?

or Belkin/Griffin?

Another point I'd like to make is for FM Transmitters.

They're annoying, they get interference from airconditioners, the engine running just about anything. As far as I know this is for FCC compliance (I'm in Australia, but... yeah.) or they just plain out suck. I actually went to the trouble to get a reasonably powerful transmitter, and that worked fine, but it isn't exactly portable.

solution? if you're stuck, sure, use the fm transmitter.

but would it kill you to add a line out?

It's not right to use the headphone jack, can't you just add in a line out jack to these products, so if we so choose, it can be connected easily, without any interference to whatever device we like.

Use these ideas please! if you do, drop me a line telling me about it :).

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