iPodland

I just bought myself an iPod video. The new 30 gb is pretty sleek, although I guess technically it's the same size as the old 30gb video. The beautiful thing is they have improved and changed the video stuff, because the Pirates movie I bought from the iTunes movie store plays perfectly on the little thing. The slickness and interoperability is everything you expect out of the downloadable music.

While technically Amazon's Unbox has better selection, the iTunes music store has much more going for it:
- Users feel like they own the music/movies. DRM is unobstrusive.
- The items you download work perfectly on the iPod (of course).
- iTunes is available for Mac and Windows. (Sorry Linux users, maybe you should do as I did, and get a Mac?)
- You can copy the music/videos and play on up to 5 computers.

Right now only Disney's movies are on iTMS, but it's a matter of time until the other major labels realize how much better things are.

Of course, most of this is plan as day to practically everyone - except of course the purveyer of Unbox.

The other cool thing I learned about is that I can check GMail from my cell. Any cell can visit m.gmail.com and you can log in and view your email. Aside from slow cell phone load times (why are all cell sites so slow?) the UI is very minimalistic and works well. I can read email, compose email, and otherwise meddle with it. The biggest problems are:
- Cell phone is slow to load. This isn't strictly Gmail's fault, all sites are like this.
- Typing in messages sucks. Hard as texting.

While I do like the look of those blackberries, I'm not sure I really need one. But I do like gadgets and wireless access. Maybe I should see if TMobile will upgrade my PEBL's firmware to the newer one that has EDGE, because the one I have now does not. Without EDGE the GPRS speed is about 5kB/sec, with EDGE it should be more like 30 kB/sec.

This is mostly rambling, but unless there are requests, that's all you get for now!