Today, HP put their iPod on sale. This long awaited product is licensed from Apple, and is very similar in appearance to the current, 4th generation iPod. HP has also released "Tattoos," which is an ink jet media that you can print on and then apply as a cover to your iPod.
The iPod continues to be a remarkable product with remarkable sales strength. It has spawned literally thousands of add-on products. Some of the most popular add-ons are small, portable speakers that usually have a dock of some kind for the iPod, creating a mini-stereo system.
Duke, which has given iPods to all 1600 freshman, has apparently created a lot of animosity among the rest of the students who did NOT get iPods.
Longtime readers know that I think the iPod represents the next generation of computing devices. Ten years from now, desktop and all-in-one computers will seem quaint; we'll all have a pocket size device that allows us to carry all our files, work, music, and pictures wherever we go--oh, wait, the iPod does that now.
Lost in the dizzying success of the iPod as a platform for music is the fact that the iPod is a fully programmable computer that comes out of the box ready to use as a calendar, an address book, and a file system (it also comes with some games). Load your desktop files into the capacious iPod, and then plug it into any Mac anywhere in the world, and you have your entire work life ready to use. Once you get back to your home desktop machine, plug it in again and it will automatically sync up all those files.