By David Gewirtz
We're not big fans of the iPod photo (or iPod Photo, depending on which week you're visiting Apple's Web site). Oh, sure, we like the iPod for its sleek lines, music capacity, and the chance to see Steve Jobs model those spiffy turtlenecks. But as a photographic display device, the iPod photo is just a poor cousin to PDAs like the Dell Axim X50v.
But just because the iPod photo is a poor image display device doesn't mean it isn't getting use. In fact, it's a wildly popular device. And, with wild popularity comes wild and wacky "hacks" that change how the device is used. In this article, we seek out some of the weirder and wackier hacks and spotlight them for your twisted amusement.
The iPod digital stereoscope
A stereoscope was a device popular back at the turn of the 20th Century. It consisted of two eyepieces and two pictures, as shown in Figure A. Because your eyes were slightly separated, a good stereoscopic image would appear somewhat 3-D.
FIGURE A
Here's a drawing of an old stereoscope. (click for larger image)
Fast forward to 2005, when an Australian stereoscope expert named Paul Bourke decided to tinker with the iPod photo. As you can see in Figure B, he's married an old stereoscope from 1868 and two iPod photos. We're particularly impressed with the craftsmanship of the styrofoam cutouts.
FIGURE B
And now, the updated stereoscope, complete with iPods. (click for larger image)
For more information on this hack, visit http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/stereographics/ipodphoto.
What can you connect to your iPod photo?
Phillip Torrone writes for O'Reilly's very cool MAKE magazine. He seems to be enamored with an accessory for the iPod, the iPod connector. This device allows you to connect your camera to your iPod and download images off the camera to the iPod's 60GB hard drive. This is cool and an actually solid justification for getting an iPod photo.
Ah, but Mr. Torrone seems a curious sort and wanted to know just how many different things he could connect to his iPod. As shown in Figure C, he's attempting to see if he can talk between his iPod and a PlayStation Portable. He's also trying to charge the PSP from the iPod.
FIGURE C
Is there going to be iPod<->PSP love? (click for larger image)
Apparently, he gets a charge out of charging his iPod with his iPod. He also connected his iPod Shuffle to his iPod photo, in a sort of incestuous iPod-on-iPod power-sharing scene. For more weirdness, visit http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/ipod_photo_conn.html.
Has Apple blocked iPod porn?
Yeah, you knew it was going to happen. If you can display pictures on something, someone's going to try to display those pictures. Well, apparently both Wired's Leander Kahney and Tokyo blogger Keith Finch are particularly curious about this. Finch, through Kahney, claims the iPod somehow randomly screws up how his photos are displayed, so that his "special" pictures wind up being interspersed with his regular, socially acceptable pictures during an iPod slide show.
In a hint of crop-circle mania, Finch seems to think Apple's doing this on purpose. It's strange, it's weird, and it's perfect for this article. Read Kahney's short report (with juicy links) at http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/cultofmac/index.blog?entry_id=540166.
Yeah, we couldn't make this stuff up if we tried.
iPod body armor
There's a Japanese guy out there with some serious machine shop skills. While I don't read Japanese, I can run pages through the Google translator and it seems our friend has a nasty commute:
Because I have lived in Kanto, pressure of that horrible commuter train has been experienced. When you take the position at inside of car of car and make a mistake, the pipe for the handrail eats to the abdomen. When exactly there is a iPod there, there is no one it is aegagropila, probably will be. But, because the stainless steel case of the iPod 1mm rank is a thickness, it accompanies and to frame does how, just it hit to something, it is probably will be?
Having access to a machine shop, our commuter friend decided to tackle the problem and built some body armor for his iPod, as you can see in Figure D.
FIGURE D
This guy has talent -- and possibly too much free time. (click for larger image)
We can't help but be impressed. Even though you might not understand the language, each picture speaks volumes about this gentleman's talent with tools. To see more of this project, visit http://homepage.mac.com/sideriver/cubesite/ipodcase/ipodcase.html.
Movies on your iPod photo
Because there's not enough for the Motion Picture Association of America to freak out about, Phillip Torrone is back, this time in the virtual pages of Engadget, writing about how to play movies on your iPod photo, as shown in Figure E.
FIGURE E
You just can't escape Star Wars these days. (click for larger image)
While there's no doubt the device can store the movies and certainly can play back the sound with reasonable fidelity, we have to wonder just why you'd torture yourself to watch the darned thing. That said, Torrone has figured out how to do it. What makes this truly amusing is that since the iPod can't play movies, what Torrone has managed to do is figure out how to transvert a movie into lots of teeny-weeny little pictures. To play the movie, you have to move your finger along the scroll wheel, in sort of a 21st Century equivalent of a hand-cranked magic lantern.
There's just nothing we can say. Nothing. But if you'd like to do this, you can find more about it at http://www.engadget.com/entry/3756421320807387.
Linux on your iPod
When it comes to people with way too much time on their hands, no one group qualifies more than Linux hackers. And, if there's a device, it's got some storage, RAM, and a processor, it's gonna run Linux. It's a law or something.
Since the iPod certainly qualifies as a device, has some RAM, a hard drive, and a processor, you knew sooner or later it'd run Linux, as shown in Figure F. And that, of course, is why there's the iPodLinux Project.
FIGURE F
If it processes, it must run Linux. (click for larger image)
If you'd like to run Linux on your iPod, take a run over to http://www.ipodlinux.org.
PowerPoint on your iPod
We can think of nothing more exciting than watching a PowerPoint presentation on an iPod. The nice Canadians at ZappTek apparently feel the same way, so they've created a $17.95 piece of software called iPresent It that will let you present "it" (meaning your PowerPoint presentation) right on the screen of your iPod.
Eww.
Making matters more interesting, iPresent It only works if you've got a Mac. Somehow, that fits. You can get your copy at http://www.zapptek.com/ipresent-it.
That's about all we can handle right now. Here's a pile of links. Go now. Have fun. If you see any other weird iPod or photography hacks (and they must be really, really wierd), let us know at editor@connectedphotographer.com.