By Jo Best, 20 March 2007 08:00
NEWS
5. Polish your bowling
Technology is now even inveigling its way into the fusty world of cricket. According to reports, the England team have been given clips of their opponents' batting and bowling to be played on video iPods to help prepare for matches during the Cricket World Cup.
Reuters reports that team members have long been used to studying such footage on PCs but the decision to put clips on iPods is a recent one. Apparently the gadget-laden cricketers have had footage put on their games consoles too.
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6. Run Linux
Both Linux and Apple products bring out the fanboy in geeks the world over. Now one band of souls is working on uniting them in an iPod running on Linux. The LinuxiPod project has been running for years and has successfully installed Linux on several generations of iPod.
And if all that were not enough to warm the cockles of the techiest techie, the iPod Linux lot have also managed to install playable if not high spec versions of Doom on iPods.
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Comments
There are 10 comments. Join the discussion
1. Jeremy Wickins
I take it many of these uses relate equally to non-Apple MP3 players?
2. anonymous
iPODs like Sony's are NOT MP3 players, they can only store MP3 files. In order to play them they have to be converted to a proprietary format.
They are also not the only devices that will allow you to carry out all these functions.
How about a bootable USB drive?
3. Rob Nicholson
Strange how people think Apple invented this market whereas organisers and palms have been around for years doing it.
The power of marketing and image I guess...
4. anonymous
WOW, an mp3 player can be used as portable storage. I'm underwhelmed.
BTW Non-Apple players will normally be better at this than ipods as they don't require iTunes.
5. MusicFan
The best use i can think of for an IPod is............actually i cant think of one!
Coffee mat at best.
6. anonymous
I am amazed that propping up a wonky table by using one of the thin little iPod beasties hasn't made it to the top 10!
7. Rory Choudhuri
Ref Anonymous' comment>>iPODs like Sony's are NOT MP3 players, they can only store MP3 files. In order to play them they have to be converted to a proprietary format.
Not true. iPods can play mp3 files quite happily.
8. Ken Westin
THis is the anti-theft app mentioned in the article:
http://www.gadgettrak.com
9. anonymous
iPods do play MP3 files. No conversion necessary. They also play AAC (another open format) and many other formats. Only the protected form of AAC (FairPlay) is proprietary. From iPod tech specs:
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV
Source: http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html
10. Colin English
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but using an iPod as a flight data recorder? If the plane crashes, I can't imagine that the iPod is likely to survive, so what's the point? That's why black-box (actually orange) flight recorders are built so ruggedly.