But it sure did look cool.

I was bent on getting the Tik-tok and iPod Nano to use as a watch since the very first day I came across the Kickstarter project. I didn’t care if it would make sense as a watch – I thought it looked awesome.

So, I did it. I backed the Kickstarter project and picked up an iPod Nano via Quibids (actually, my wife Eliza handled this bit) and within a few months I had my very own iPod Nano watch.

And for a while it worked great. The complaints I had seen online about having to wait a moment to see the clock face, it being a little bulky, etc – never bothered me. I got at least one compliment per day on my watch and I really enjoyed using the clock, the radio, pedometer, and iPod features.

There is only one problem with the iPod Nano watch – it is fragile. iPod Nanos are built well but the entire face is glass. You’d have to expect, even as a guy with a desk-job such as myself, that somewhere along the line you’re going to hit the watch off of a few things. Over the few months that I had the watch I had a few scares where I had hit the watch against something and I thought for sure I’d shattered it. But it held up.

Until Tuesday.

Until Tuesday I hadn’t had a single scratch on the iPod Nano. Tuesday was a very busy day for me and after I got back home from work I was a little frazzled and doing things a little too quickly. I was making simple mistakes doing some of the most mundane tasks because my mind was shorting out a little. One thing I did was I had forgot my phone in the car and when I went to get it I hit my wrist on the railing of my front porch. The iPod Nano ejected from the Tik-tok and launched across the driveway. By the time I had picked it up it looked like this…

I’d like to think that I can continue to use it but I do not think that I will. And, since the price of getting another iPod Nano is about as much to find a decent, sturdy watch that is what I’ll more than likely do. My next watch will be one that I can take with me on vacation, underwater, in the rain, and – won’t have a face that can be ejected onto pavement and shatter.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to email them to me.

Erica Sudan has made a nice little utility called AirPlayer (look for the download link in the list at the bottom of the page) that makes it dead simple to use your Mac as an AirPlay destination device. Sort of like turning your Mac into a TV with an AppleTV attached.

I just used the YouTube application on my iPad and played the video back on my Mac using this utility and it works just fine. Simple too.

/via Lifehacker.

Here is Veronica Belmont on Tekzilla for the tip.

For those of you not interested in watching the :51 second video, all you need to do is click anywhere inside the graph area and the values below the media types will change.  Pretty slick.

Source: Tekzilla Daily Tip – iTunes – Hidden Bar Graph Views.

From the “An oldie but a goodie” department.

In March of 2005 I saved myself $30 by not buying an iPod dock and building my own out of the box that the iPod came in. I remember this getting on tons of sites and spreading pretty quickly.

“I thought it was a fun project, and it didn’t take me that long to complete.”

Looking back, I should do more of these types of things. I have always enjoyed fiddling with art, paper products, tools, and anything else to build my own fun things. Perhaps I should get back into doing something like this once per month and feature it here on my site.

Source: iPod box dock on The uber geeks.

Here is a short video tour of my current office setup. It consists of a Macbook, a Dell 21-inch widescreen monitor, some external hard drives, and a few iPods all on a desk from IKEA. I’ve also got my art desk (which I need to use much more often than I am currently). And don’t forget, my new office used to be filled with blue elephants.

If you can’t do video – perhaps you can take a few snapshots and post those. Whatever works best!

[tags]office, desk, ikea, viddler, 9rules, video, tour, macintosh, apple, macbook, dell, monitor, ipod, external hard drive, watercolor, art, colin devroe[/tags]
[slug]office-tour-video[/slug]

Recently I’ve had a lot of family members, friends, and even people I’ve never met before tell me that they were “thinking of switching” to the Macintosh platform or, in their words “gettin’ a Mac”. Obviously we’re seeing switcher stories pop up all over the place, even some guys at Microsoft said they wanted to jump ship.

I really think that the main reason that more people have not switched to the Mac faster was due to misinformation. A lot of people didn’t even know that Apple made computers let alone how much better the experience was on one when compared to a computer running Windows. Most of the people I’ve spoken to, that are going to make the switch very soon, are doing so because they’ve owned an iPod and have enjoyed that experience. Or, they’ve seen my computers and really desire to be able to do some of the same things I am able to do without giving it a second thought.

I think that some of the consumers are starting to finally see the truth in the entire Mac vs. PC war that has raged on for far too long. It isn’t a question of being better or worse, it is a question of actually working and being easy to do.

The war is over.

[tags]apple, Microsoft, macintosh, windows, ipod, mac, conversion, thoughts[/tags]
[slug]conversion-rate[/slug]

[tags]ipod, shuffle, apple, software[/tags]

[tags]zune, microsoft, ipod, hebrew, language[/tags]