Thursday, October 11, 2007

i Gadgets (cont........)




Mini Travel Speakers



These foldaway Mini Travel Speakers are the bees knees in mobile sound. Bigger than the knees of bees of course, and altogether structurally different we'd imagine, but nevertheless really very, very good. Why bees knees were ever intended to be a measure of goodness someone will no doubt tell us now we've been foolish enough to bring the whole topic up, we'll keep you posted. Drifting off the point somewhat, back to these brilliant and compact Mini Travel Speakers. They come in the ubiquitous chic white, or in an incredibly realistic and original wood grain look that looks awesome, and really feels like sanded wood.





They fold away into a compact cube (well almost a cube), and when folded out have a slot-in tray for holding your MP3 player. Powered by four AAA batteries they have a jack cable that plugs into your player, and when on the move stows away into a very neat groove. They look great, sound great, have no connection with bees whatsoever, and make for the best priced and best sounding compact travel speakers we've ever seen.






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USB Turntable Vinyl to MP3



The ION USB deck turns the past into the future. A remarkably rapid march of time has seen the media for music transformed from vinyl to tape to CD and now to MP3. In the headlong rush there's a lot of music that's been left behind, which is where this brilliant piece of kit comes in. Whether you've a stack of old 45s, 33s or even 78s (gawd bless you), you can now convert them to MP3s with this USB Turntable.Obviously it works like any regular turntable, but plug a USB cable into the back of it and then into your computer, and with the software provided you can convert your vinyl into WAV, WMV and MP3s. You can even plug a tape deck into an auxiliary port and convert your old cassettes.







The software makes the transition easy to manage, and is also bundled with a trial version of Bias Soundsoap 2 for cleaning and restoring crackly tracks. It was so nice to get out some of our old vinyls that we hadn't listened to in years, and then pop them into our iPods to take around with us. The conversion of an album is done all in one go, you simply split up the tracks and name them, and you can even record them at double speed to save time and the software will convert them back to 'real' time. It was such a joy to dust off our vinyl and bring it back to life after all these years - we ended up listening to albums we hadn't heard in years.The ION USB turntable includes Audacity software for Mac/PC for recording as well as a trial of Bias Soundsoap 2 for cleaning and restoring vinyl.This product is compatible with any software that supports USB audio input sound cards - simply plug it into a spare USB port - it requires no special drivers for Windows (98,2000,XP) or Mac (OS9 and above).




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iPod Nano




There is something irrevocably wonderful about the iPod Nano. At IWOOT we've always resisted selling lots of name brands, as just having a sexy brand name doesn't make it a good product, but we couldn't resist this one. The iPod Nano is so damn small we're not even sure where to begin.
Imagine a business card. Now make it thick enough to take a standard headphones jack... and that's it! Let it sink in that this diminutive device holds up to 500 songs which is nearly fifty full-length CD's worth, and it has all the features you would expect from an iPod. Astonishingly good sound, a full colour screen (and storage for 25,000 pictures), easy access to your music with the "Click Wheel", Podcasts, audio books, full integration with iTunes, Calendar and Contacts, World Clocks, Stopwatch, Games and loads more. We're not even mentioning all the standard MP3 player features like the equalizer, shuffle play mode, the ability to create play lists and rate your tunes on the fly (although it seems we just did). And it is fully compatible with most of the iPod accessories out there.Thinner than a catwalk model, marginally more fashionable and with considerably more features, the iPod Nano isn't just any old MP3 player, it's The Supermodel.

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