The picture on the website gives you some idea of what it’s like, but the thing I didn’t really take in was quite how small it is. It’s the same height as a busines card and thinner than the iPod shuffle. The display is also much better than I expected – I could see that it was smaller than the iPod Photo’s but had thought that it would feel squashed and be hard to read. However, the text is clear and even the album art is recognizable. I could be wrong about this but it seems the resoulution is higher than on a Photo which may have something to do it.

As I listen to it on my desk – I am continuously picking it up and playing with it – it really is one of those gadgets that seems somehow ahead of it’s time. They have taken all the features from the regular iPod and shrunk them to a quarter the size. Kudos to the Apple enginneers for a) squishing all those electronics into such a small design, and b) not letting slip to the public what they were working on all this time. News of this on the horizon would have hammered sales of the shuffle and mini….

There has been a lot of talk recently about how Apple’s honeymoon cannot last, and that there will be a backlash of consumers defecting to players from other manfacturers who don’t tie themsleves to such closed platforms. That may be true eventually but for the time being Apple are not going anywhere especially if they continue to innovate and produce players like this. Tempted?

Download it here.

Getting started with Shareaza

Here are some helpful links to get you started if you are new to P2P software. The Shareaza website contains a step-by-step tutorial to get you started with Shareaza. You can also view the Shareaza Quick Guide 3.2, an animated guide to the software that runs in your browser (a downloadable version is also available).

Shareaza Firewall Configuration

If you use a router and/or are behind a firewall you will need to configure it to have Shareaza work correctly. You need you have to open only one port for Shareaza – configure port 6346 for both tcp/udp. To find out how to configure your router please visit portforward.com. Shareaza website also contains some troubleshooting information if you are having problems. Once your firewall is configured you can test that it is working correctly by visiting this website.

Shareaza and Windows XP SP2

Windows XP SP2 introduced a limit on the number of simultaneous connections that can be made to the Interent, which unfortunately affects Shareaza’s performance – more info here. To solve the problem you need to download and install the patch available here.

Note – this problem affects all P2P software and not just Shareaza.

If you still can’t connect to the network…

Shareaza Wiki has an article to help you with this. If you need more help the two best places to look are the Shareaza Forums and the Shareaza Wiki.

You need to have an account to use the service. After picking a username and signing up, you should install the Audioscrobbler Plugin for your media player (iTunes, Winamp etc..) which sends the name of every song you play on your computer to Last.fm. Over time, this list of songs grows larger and larger – you can see your personal listening charts on your userpage. Last.fm automatically finds people with a similar taste, and generates music recommendations for you.

Based on these recommendations, you can then listen to a personalised radio station tailored towards your musical taste. To do this download the Last.fm Player. In fact, you don’t need the Audioscrobbler plugin if you have installed the player – you can create a custom radio station based on the artists you like on the Radio page – but you will get better recommendations over time if you use it.

There are dozens of other entertaining and useful aspects of Last.fm, but you’ll have to sign up and explore them for yourself.

To get an idea of how this works view my profile by clicking here. If any of you sign up let me know the address of your profile page by posting it in the comments section.

After installing a software plugin, your computer sends the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler Server. With this information, the system then builds you a ‘Musical Profile’, from which it then calculates which people are most similar to you, based on shared musical taste, so you can take a look at what your peers are listening to.

If you are interested in trying it out (it’s free) here is what you need:

1. Register to get your own username and profile.
2. Download a plugin for your music player, and enter your login details.
3. Listen to some tunes :-)

The great thing about this system is that it is designed to be completely unobtrusive – once you have set it up it will work silently in the background monitoring the songs you listen to and sending the stats to the website. To get a better idea of how it all works you can see my statistics by clicking here.

I have also installed a special plugin on my blog that will display the last 10 songs I have played (look in the sidebar on the right).

Let me know what you think.

ADDENDUM: PC iPod uers might be interested in the AudioPod Plugin (best used in conjunction with Katapult to automatically launch AudioPod when your iPod is connected to your PC.)