My Ipod Nano got the ole broken screen defect. Being the handy man I am I decided to order a kit from ebay and replace the screen myself. I have more degrees in electrical/electronic engineering than I can shake a stick at and I consider myself somewhat talented at fixing things.

Everything was going beautifully until I tried to attach the ribbon cable to the main board. I broke the little connector on the main board. I got frustrated at this point and gave up.

My advice. If your Ipod breaks send it in for a repair.

I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical when Apple unveiled the new Ipod Nano. I thought they lost the people that like to use the Nano for exercising.

A friend just bought the new Nano and I have to admit it’s cool as hell. It seems to be as thin and lightweight as the older Nano, though I didn’t have one to compare directly. I placed it in my front pocket and I really couldn’t feel it was there. It would make a nice little unit for exercise.

The games that come with it are pretty fun too.

I’m no Ipod fanboy, but I have to give apple credit for this slick mp3 player.

I noticed the new commercials which says the iphone will be available June 29. I personally thing the price point is a little hight for the masses to embrace.

I am not one of those that automatically bash anything Apple or Mac. But I have to say I am sick of Steve Jobs pictures. He always looks very pompous in a “I’m WAY too cool for you” way.

I came across a gadget that at first had me scratching my head. It’s a USB turntale that makes recording vinyl records to CD easier. It’s made by Ion Audio and can be bought at online stores such as zzounds.com for about $150.

At first I could not imagine owning any piece of vinyl that was not available on CD or Itunes. However this summer I attended a square dance (don’t ask). The “caller” was using vinyl 45’s. he even had modern hits like “Cotton Eyed Joe”. I asked why he isn’t using CD’s and where does he buy his vinyl. Apparently Square dance records is one of the genres that kind of got overlooked by CD’s. As far as getting new songs on vinyl there is a resource in Oklahoma that sells modern songs on 45.

According to reviews people really love this turntable. It simply connects to your PC via the USB port. The turntable comes with software to convert your old vinyl collection directly to CD or MP3. At this point it’s a snap to get it onto an Ipod.

Time to get all your Polka albums onto CD ! What’s next ? An USB 8 Track player ?

I had recently installed Photoshop Elements. The next day I plugged in the Ipod and Photoshop Elements automatically opened up to try to find pictures on the Ipod.

I really don’t want this to happen. The reason it happens is that Photoshop Elements sees the Ipod as a card reader or a USB device.
In the preferences for Elements click on “Camera or Card Reader”. Uncheck the box that says “Autolaunch Adobe Photo Downloader On Device Connect”. Then click ok.

Today apple announced the “Apple iPhone”. This story reported that Apple could not call it the iPhone since Cisco was using that brand name to market their IP phones. We’ll see is there any lawsuits.

I will be the first to admit I am not an Apple fanboy but the iPhone looks very cool indeed. The iPhone runs OSX, integrates with Itunes, had a has a 2 MegaPixel digital camera. The price is $499 for a 4Gb model.

I’m waiting to see if Apple ever releases the rumored iPod Video and will it similar to the form of the iPhone. There has been much debate if a touch screen is the right way to go for an iPod Video. And of course it would probably have to be hard drive based since 4G is rather small for a video device.

6 months ago I had 3 Ipod users in my household. There were two Nanos and one Ipod Video. I installed I tunes 6 and was hoping that each user on Windows XP could mangae their own Ipod and playlist. Needless to say it didn’t go very well and I pulled my hair out.

This Christmas we updated one of the Ipods to an Ipod 5.5 30G, which requires Itunes 7. I waited till I had a few days of free time to attempt the upgrade based on my past experience. I backed up all three playlists for each user and then crossed my fingers as I installed Itunes 7.

I’m happy to say it all worked perfectly !

All three users sharing the same Windows XP computer can manage their Ipods.