paper graffiti

The day I’ve been waiting for is here! I can practically taste the new iPods in the air. Let’s see what Steve Jobs and his tight tight jeans have in store for us today:

- Ringtones in iTunes: 500,000 songs in the iTunes library are available to be made into ringtones for the price of 99 cents OVER the price of the song. You can buy a song for 99 cents, then pay the additional 99 cents to make it a ringtone. Why not just use the handy 3rd party software that does it for free? Still, a feature I’m sure many less-than-technically-inclined people will take advantage of. It’s cheaper than buying it from your cell provider, most of the time.

- ENTIRE IPOD LINE REVAMPED!!!!: Now that I’m done peeing myself, I’ll recap as Steve goes along (I have live.gizmodo.com auto-refreshing in another tab…)

• New shuffles: Same look, different colors, and a red one for Product|RED supporting Africa. Still $79. Shawn will be upset…he wants the UT orange one! Maybe he can get it on clearance.
• New nanos: People apparently want to watch video on the nano like on the “old” iPhone. Yes, it’s SO old. Ancient! It’s all metal, much wider than the original nano, but maybe not taller. Still thin. Still clickwheel. It looks kind of short and squat, with a 2″ (diagonal) screen, supporting the same resolution as the current iPod video. This has been the rumor going around, but I like the real thing more than the mockups I’ve seen. It will feature Coverflow and a new UI. Comes bundled with some free games, including Sudoku (awesome!). 24 hours of audio play, 5 hours of video play. Nice! 4GB silver version for $149, 8GB in all colors for $199, and it will work with the iPod+Nike kit. Not what I’m looking for in a new iPod, but I like it way more than I thought I would. Good job, Steveo.
• New iPods: The old iPod is now dubbed the iPod Classic. Even slimmer than before with a new all-metal design. 80GB and 160GB (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) The 160GB will still be thinner than the old 80GB, but thicker than the new 80GB. Same enhanced UI as the new nanos. 80GB has 30 hours of audio play, 5 hours of video play, 160 has 40 hours of audio play, 7 hours of video play. $249 for the 80GB and $349 for the 160GB, available today! Nice price points.
• NEW iPod–The iPod TOUCH! This is what I have been waiting for!! It’s essentially an iPhone without the phone part, including the multi-touch, the interaction with the screen, cover flow, video, etc. It’s only 8mm thin with the same screen size as the iPhone. AND IT HAS WI-FI! OMGWTFBBQ. It has Safari, just like the iPhone. HOT HOT HOT. (And if they don’t tell us the pricing/capacity soon I’m going to cut someone.) It also has YouTube, but I wasn’t that impressed by it on the iPhone…I bet it’s way better on the Wi-Fi, as I’ve only seen it on AT&T’s crappy EDGE network. Access all the iPhone-enabled sites with the browser. Battery life: 22 hours audio, 5 hours video. And, the bad news…8GB for $299 and 16GB for $399, in stores later this month. I’m pretty bummed now. I really wanted this interface with the iPod Classic storage capacity.

- ONE MORE THING: The iTunes Wi-Fi Store on the iPod Touch. Fully-featured just like iTunes. You can buy complete albums, with album art and everything. It’s also coming to the iPhone, along with a partnership with Starbucks. When you have Wi-Fi on and get near a Starbucks, you can easily buy the music playing and see the last 10 songs in their playlist to buy those too. That’s kind of awesome, because Starbucks usually plays good music. Users will get free access to the iTunes Store while in Starbucks. Thanks, corporate giants!

- ONE OTHER THING: They’re dropping the iPhone prices to $399 for the 8GB and getting rid of the 4GB iPhone. I might be tempted if they were totally unlockable.

I’m really torn. REALLY torn. I wanted the iPod Touch interface in the worst way, but it doesn’t have the capacity I want. To me, the iPhone interface and Wi-Fi are not worth the cost increase and the lack of storage. I’m not planning on paying $400 for a new iPod. If I was going to go down to 8GB, I would get the new iPod nano, because it’s HOT and $200 is a great price point. However, it’s only 4GB bigger than my current 1st generation iPod nano.

I think I will end up with the new iPod Classic. I’m a bit disappointed that the Classic is not offered in any of the metal colors of the nano, only black & silver. BUT that’s not a dealbreaker. Honestly? I really want the new nano AND the Classic. I know, I’m a sick, sick fangirl. I guess it’s off to the Apple Store to drool and dream!

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Joss Whedon is at the helm of the Wonder Woman movie. That’s the best news I’ve had since I heard rumors he might be tapped to take over X3, which caused my inner fangirl to throw a party.

Joss sez:

“What I love most about icons is finding out what’s behind them, exploring the price of their power…There is a woman behind the legend who is very fascinating, very uncompromising and in her own way almost vulnerable. She’s someone who doesn’t belong in this world, and since everyone I know feels that way about themselves, the character clicked for me.”

This is what I love about all of Joss’ strong female characters (at least until Marti Noxon gets ahold of them), and especially Buffy. Buffy was in this position that was supposed to be done a certain way–alone. She was supposed to not have a life, friends, family, etc. because that’s just the way the Slayer gig was created. But she took that–the “price of her power”–and transmuted it into something else. She made her life work around it, and eventually that changed the effectiveness of her job as the Slayer for the better. Then later on, it changed the job of the Slayer completely. Buffy was never going to be just a normal girl, but we loved her for that.

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This is going to be such a busy weekend! So, in the interest of probably not blogging this weekend, I hope everyone has a very Happy Halloween. I might just post pictures of my fabulous Halloween costume (a punk rock Hogwarts student, yes I KNOW I’m a big nerd, but thanks for agreeing) if everyone plays nice while I’m gone.

For all you folk in Dallas County, today is the LAST DAY OF EARLY VOTING! Do you really want to be waiting in line on November 2? I didn’t think so. Here’s the skinny:

EARLY VOTING FOR DALLAS CO.

West Dallas Multipurpose Center

Vote early, vote often, make your voice heard. I don’t care who you vote for as long as you VOTE. Well, that’s not 100% true but you get the sentiment, right?

I hope I manage not to bore myself to death today. Work has been a bit slow this week. I did something scary and sent my resume to our big boss when he told us about this new media production company he’s started with our old production guy for all our events. They’re not hiring until after the first of the year, because that’s when the space will be finished (full-on studio!), but he seemed interested in my resume and I told him I just wanted to make my interest known right away. Here’s hoping something good comes of it!!

I managed to remember my 40’s hairstyling skillz so I can do my friend’s hair for Halloween. I was quite proud of how it looked after our trial run last night. It was a very girly night–hairstyling followed by shopping.

One of our servers just went down, so it’s back to work for me. *sigh*

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Wizard People, Dear Reader by Brad Neely is the weirdest yet potentially coolest thing I have seen in a long time. I am reserving judgment until I can listen to it…hooray for Internet downloads!

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This absolutely cracks me up! Buffy Season 6: A Recap (in Short) Wow, I just can’t get enough of mocking the last two seasons.

Also, the Angel Season Finale? Joss, that’s it. We are OFFICIALLY BROKEN UP!

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