The days of hitting a play button and sitting back to hear a song the same way it sounded the last time are coming to a close — for interested parties, anyway. Shapemix, which Apple recently approved for the iPad section of the iTunes app store, lets aspiring DJs and armchair music producers get underneath the hood of over 100 free tracks to add four high-quality, real-time effects, rearrange musical phrases, and record their tweaks into an entirely new version that can be shared with other users.

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Having your own disc collection scratched is devastating. I can’t sympathize more with those of you who have had their White Album damaged by a mangy younger sibling or those of you who have had their Miller’s Crossing disc ruined by a past room mate.

How outlandish is it to expect a disc to be returned intact and working? I know how truly upsetting having one’s disc damaged is. The reason that the scratched disc is more upsetting than other things broken is that the scratch, and ultimately the end of the disc, sometimes goes unnoticed for a while.

Therefore you let your friend borrow your full collection of the O.C discs. Now, unknown to you, one of those 16 discs returned is marred beyond restore. You’ll discover that the disc is ruined and ultimately an O.C season is ruined, as the show is largely serialized, until you choose to sit down and watch all four of those seasons.

It will not happen until you’ve grown apart from said friend and are ill in bed with sinus problem or something like that. When you discover the ruined disc you choose to call the former friend. Her number is disconnected and you wish her just the worst. Your next move is the most risky and most far-fetched: the DVD scratch remover.

You’ve seen this advertised before therefore you bundle up, have a pull from the cough and sinus decongestant, and visit the store. After buying the DVD scratch remover you sit at your tiny desk and place the disc in the machine and follow the directions. You look at the supposedly fixed disc and it does look shinier and new, but does it work?

You throw it into your DVD player and press play button and you hear the Phantom Planet music you’ve been longing for. Thank you disc scratch remover! You had your anxieties regarding this all, you had your doubts regarding this former friend and start to hope she has merely changed her number and the most terrible of fates has not found her.

You start to understand that life is not so horrible after all, I mean life isn’t that bad in Orange County, therefore how could it be that bad in Madison, Wisconsin? You take another pull from your cough and sinus decongestant and fall into a peaceful preparative slumber.

iLife [OLDER VERSION]

iLife provides four multimedia applications in one package: iTunes for managing music, iPhoto for digital photography, iMovie for editing digital video, and iDVD for creating your own DVDs. They are all integrated so that they work together seamlessly. Play, download, import, and do more with Apple’s premiere digital music player iTunes 3. It gives you instant access to your music library and playlists from within the other applications in iLife, just as they are in iTunes. And you can quickly sample your music too–a play button is included so you won’t have to launch iTunes just to find that perfect track. Do more with your digital photos with iPhoto 2. Organize, edit, share, and even set photos to music. Use the Retouch wand tool to make blemishes disappear like magic. And get access to your photo albums directly from iMovie and iDVD, and bring in music for your slideshows from iTunes. The latest version of the digital video software that helped Mac users create a million movies

Rating: (out of 3 reviews)

List Price: $ 49.00

Price: $ 36.00

The subject of Jeff’s bad cell phone luck has come up several times on The 404 Podcast already, but we’re coming back to it once again because he just received his NINTH Palm Pre from the good folks at Sprint, who are now offering a “trade nine, get one free frozen yogurt” stamp card in his honor.

We’d love to promise that this will be his last, but judging from the laundry list of parts that broke on the other eight units, it’s not looking good. The best we can hope for is that number nine won’t spontaneously combust before Jeff can cash in for a HTC Evo 4G…that is, unless Lenovo announces a ThinkPalm phone first.

Big thanks to Cheryl, aka The Official 404 Grandmother, for recommending this inspiring story about a 99-year-old woman in Oregon who’s rediscovered the joys of reading and writing poetry thanks to the zoom feature on her brand new Apple iPad. We’ve been vocalizing our frustration at the technological ineptitude of our elders for the past two weeks now, so it’s about time someone sets it straight!

Virginia Campbell was born in 1910 and a tough fight with glaucoma recently left her struggling to read fine print until her family bought her an iPad. As a result, pinch-to-zoom is her new best friend, even inspiring her to write a short poem that we’re proud to read over the air. Campbell had this to say to a reporter: “You’re never too old to take advantage of something that will help you.” +3!

We’ve also got a semi-SFW story about a kind-hearted film star that saved a man from a 20-year prison sentence in Puerto Rico, but you’ll have to download today’s episode to get the full story, because we want to address complaints about the iTunes feed.

We do our best to put the show on iTunes as soon as possible, but if you can’t wait to hear an episode, you can always visit this blog and click the “play” button down below to hear the audio podcast. Or, if you’re especially Web savvy, you can right click on “download,” copy the URL and edit the numbers to the current date. Thanks for being patient with us, and have a great weekend everyone!

EPISODE 566

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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

The Cowon S9 mp3 player is another great option if you are looking for an audio playback device which is portable and cheaper than $200. With a price of $198, the Cowon S9 mp3 player is available with 8 GB of internal storage memory but you can go with the 16 GB version you have to pay $240.

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With only 7.2 ounces in weight, this Cowon S9 mp3 player is extremely light and super portable and due to the 3.75 x 4.25 inches in dimensions, this mo3 player can fit into any pocket, no matter how tight your jeans are. Even if the player looks fragile, it is scratch resistant. The 3.3 inch display has a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels and it is one of the best screens you will ever see on an mp3 player. The colors are superb, sharp and vibrant and the contrast levels are excellent. Even the viewing angles are above average.

On the bottom side of the Cowon S9 mp3 player you will notice the power switch, the headphones jacks plus the USB jack which is commonly found on cell phones rather than mp3 players. On the top edge of this player you will spot a play button, together with a track skip switch plus the volume switch. The main menu is considered to be quite spacious and you will spot a lot of extra details which are awesome. On the bottom of the screen you will notice a control strip which was implemented for space reasons. This Cowon S9 mp3 player can handle quite a list of audio and video formats and it has great addition features like an FM Radio, an included Bluetooth, voice and radio recording capabilities and even a text reader plus a Flash media player, which are not common things that you find on a mp3 player. When it comes to listening to audio files, this mp3 player can read MO3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, APE and WAV files formats.



The file formats supported for video playback are MPEG4, XviD, DivX and WMV. If you are interested in viewing some photos on your Cowon S9 mp3 player, there is a special photo viewer. The text viewer will even allow you to zoom for better reading and you can choose between different background colors and even bookmark different files. All the recording manners supported by this player have great sound quality. the battery performance of this Cowon S9 mp3 player is like nothing you have ever seen before. The player manages to stay on for 36 continuous hours of audio playback and up to 11 hours on video playback. This performance is absolutely amazing and this is something you do not normally see even on the top notch mp3 players which can currently be found on the market. Even if the Cowon claimed battery life was supposed to last for 55 hours of audio playback, we are very happy with the results that came from the tests. It seems that the Cowon S9 mp3 player can really deliver quality for an excellent price.

Short Version: You want to listen to Fergie in the kitchen. Don’t worry, I understand. Fergie and cooking eggs just go together well. If you’ll be piping Fergie off an iPhone or iPod, you’ll probably want a compatible speaker system.

Like anything in the audio world, the price tag on dedicated speaker systems for the iPhone or iPod can be surprisingly cheap ($30-40 bucks), or mind-blowingly expensive ($500+, like the Bose SoundDock 10). Most tend to work their way into a comfort zone of $129-$159.99 – and at an MSRP of $149.99, that’s exactly where you’ll find the Klipsch iGroove SXT. Originally released in 2007, the SXT has just been re-released with improved sound quality and compatibility with the latest iPhones and iPods. It’s not perfect, but with dual 2.5-inch subwoofers, it packs a good amount of boom for your buck.

Features:

• Dual 2.5-inch woofers in ported enclosure and dual 0.75-inch horn-loaded tweeters
• Features 3.5-mm auxiliary input
• Remote Control

Pros:

• The sound quality matches the price perfectly. It’s not going to blow away $200+ systems – but of any speaker I’ve heard under $150, this one takes the cake
• It looks great
• S-Video output for video/slideshow playback on compatible iPods

Cons:

• No volume indicator
• No FM radio

Review:

There I was in the kitchen, still rockin’ my pajama pants from the night before. Half a dozen eggs were left in the carton, the pan was just beginning to smoke, and the Klipsch SXT was just begging for me to hit the play button. I shot the go-ahead signal across the room with the remote control right as the first egg splashed down.

Listen up ya’ll, cause this is it. The beat that I’m banging is de-lic-ious.

Yep! I was listening to Fergie. Do I like Fergie? Oh hells nah. In fact, she drives me absolutely bat shit insane – but that’s exactly why I’d picked her for this test. If a stereo could make Fergie’s sinus-backed voice sound good, I’d give it a thumbs up. And sure enough, Fergie sounded pretty damn good. The sound was filling the room better than I’d expected out of the tiny box, with a decent amount of bass pounding out of the dual 2.5″ subs.

I dug around for a few speaker systems for the sake of comparison, and, from a sound quality standpoint, the Klipsch SXT seems to fit exactly where they’ve priced it. It blows away the $80-$90 iHome clock radios we had laying around the office, and sounds quite a bit better than the almost identically priced JBL On Stage 200ID. It fell a bit short against the JBL On Stage 400 series — but considering that that 400 series costs nearly $100 more, that’s pretty much what was expected.

Dedicated iPod speakers tend to be ugly chunks of black plastic, but that’s not the case here. The SXT is essentially one big glorious speaker grill, accented with a bit of silver plastic around the edges. It manages to be color neutral without looking cheap, so it ought to fit well in just about any room you throw it in.

Snap back to the kitchen – pajama pants, eggs, etc. No one was home (and thus, no one was around to make fun of my music selection) – might as well crank it up, right? I hit the volume up button – it got louder. I hit it again – it got louder again. So far, so good. The volume level was hurts-so-good loud at this point, but there wasn’t even a hint of distortion yet. I hit the button again and… nothing. I’d capped out the volume, but had no way of knowing as there isn’t any sort of volume indicator.

There also isn’t any FM radio. Considering that most people would presumably use this in rooms where they don’t otherwise have an audio system — and that it’s almost standard amongst lower-end systems — this is a bit disappointing. Alas, FM radio almost always gets abandoned once the price tag goes up, presumably because FM radio is the last thing you want (besides AM radio) when you want to be pushing quality sound.

If you’re looking for an iPod/iPhone speaker set that smokes the sub-$100 sets and the majority of stuff available around the same $150 price tag, the Klipsch iGroove SXT ought to fit the bill.

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