512 Pixels

I listen to a lot of podcasts, mainly in my car, or while riding my bike. While Instacast HD is awesome, using my iPad mini in either of these locations is not.

After digging out an old HP-branded iPod, I discovered it’s clickwheel had gone to the great parts bin in the sky.

So, after ridiculing the iPod nano on my podcast, this weekend, I bought a black one. (The other models, with their bright backs and white glass look ridiculous to me. At least with the black mode, the glass kinda fades in to the metal when you aren’t staring at it.)

I re-subscribed to the 15 or so shows I keep up with, and am syncing them to my Nano via a cable.

Just like we did in 2006:

This isn’t a great setup. While I can live with iPod nano’s goofy iOS-like interface, I’ve already forgotten to sync my iPod to my laptop at the end of the day a couple of times. I’ve set a reminder on my computer, so hopefully I won’t have that issue in the future.

Speaking of the iPod nano, I suppose I should share my thoughts on the device.

The hardware is pretty impressive. The glass front is flat, and where it meets the rounded aluminum back is nice and tight. The lightning connector feels great (as it does on other devices), and the giant volume rocker and play/pause button on the side of the device feels good too.

Battery life seems awesome, and I assume the Bluetooth works as advertised.

Unlike the last iPod nano, this generation is easy to use with one hand. While the interface is a little weird, it makes more sense than it did before on the watch-style player.

For my uses the Nano is perfect. It’s small, has enough space for my podcasts and a decent sub-set of music collection. At $149, it was a no brainer after I realized using my iPad mini for podcasts on the go was just plain silly.

The design is still striking.

That’s one hell of a release name there, Apple.

Here are the answers you need for this form:

1. The 512 Podcast
2. Stephen Hackett
3. Any episode of The 512 Podcast
4. “When Stephen Hackett learned how to use Skype on the air.”
5. The 512 Podcast
6. Not worth answering
7. Anyone who has been on my show
8. The 512 Podcast
9. Again, not worth the time
10. Meh
11. “Anything that means Stephen Hackett could win something.”

TUAW has some cool information on the friction-stir welding Apple is using on the new, yet-to-be-shipped-OMG-WHY iMacs.

Emil Protalinski at The Next Web:

What do kids aged six to 12 want for Christmas this holiday season? Is it the highly-anticipated Nintendo Wii U? Sure, but much like everyone else, they want an Apple iPad more.

In fact, out of the top five products out there that kids want, four of them are from Apple: the iPad, the iPod touch, the iPad mini, and the iPhone. It makes sense for the phone product to be in last place, since many kids at that age simply don’t make that many calls, though I’m sure a few of them already know how to send a text.

One quarterly results call to rule them all…

Sendy is a self hosted email newsletter application that delivers your emails via Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).

Compared to hosted newsletter services, Sendy is an app you can install on your own server. That means, you don’t have to pay monthly fees just to maintain your account. As Sendy uses Amazon SES as the sending engine, deliverability is high at a very low cost.

Sendy uses multi-threading to deliver your emails to Amazon SES, Amazon in turn enable your emails to pass SPF & Sender ID policy checks enforced by many ISPs & DKIM-sign all outgoing emails to ensure high deliverablity rate.

The features you get with Sendy are what you’re familiar with other hosted services, like lists & subscriber management, giving your client access, beautiful reports, custom fields, autoresponders and so on.

Find out more about Sendy or get your copy at sendy.co.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Ouch:

Look, the Surface is not as awful as I’m making it sound. But in no way is it good. And for this price, in this market, it needs to be. And really, it needs to be great because Microsoft is once again playing catchup. I’m sure the Surface will improve over time — and I suspect the Surface with Windows 8 Pro will be a much more useable machine — but only because it has nowhere to go from here but up.

The problem is that the competition is constantly improving as well. In this price range, the iPad destroys the Surface. And then there are several tablets priced well below the Surface that are also a lot better and feature far more robust ecosystems.

So here I am, $650 lighter, hoping Microsoft can somehow improve this thing via several more daily software updates. I’m not holding my breath. Instead, I think it’s time for a robust drop test — right into the garbage can.

While initially unhappy with the device, he’s changed his mind:

So, to wrap up: despite myself, despite my initial impressions and despite my expectations, I love my iPad mini and I find it’s really working well for me. I’m a much heavier iOS user than most people and it has handled everything I’ve thrown at it. I have no doubt that it will work perfectly for a huge number of people. I remain a bit sceptical about pupils using it all day every day in a 1:1 situation in schools. For that application, I still think a 9.7" iPad will be easier and more comfortable to use.

Still, it’s great to have options.

There’s a subtle shift after 2007, but I can’t put my finger on what caused it…

In July, I launched System Extension, a magazine-like counterpart to 512 Pixels. It’s been a moderate success, but as this is the week for such news, I’m announcing today that I’m putting the project on ice.

It’s been a lot of fun covering oddball stuff for the magazine, but everyone is better served to have that content on the site itself. (In fact, my Pippin article was slated to be in this month’s edition.

It was a fun experiment, and to those of you who downloaded System Extension, thank you.

This holiday season, give something that really matters — life.