Wifi music player?
I'd love a Wifi-enabled music player (Dave Winer talked about that). Jeff Sandquist and I were talking about this yesterday. We both find that the night before a trip we're trying to download stuff to our music players (yeah, I have an iPod). Often we forget cause the night before is usually busy packing and doing other things.
But I told him something else.
Let's say you have a 60GB iPod. Well, I only have a gig of music. I'm not a music freak. I only have 125 CDs and I rarely buy music off of services.
But I love listening to podcasts. So, here's what I want.
I want a little service that sits on my music device that just fills it up with a bunch of random podcasts. Things that, when I'm stuck in a plane for 10 hours (I was supposed to be on one today coming from Reboot in Copenhagen, but cancelled that because of my mom) I'll have tons of things to listen to. Most will be crap. I know that. But my device would let me listen to a minute or two of hundreds of podcasts and move on.
If I kept a program, it'd download more like it next time. So, let's say I kept TWiT (This Week in Tech, one of the more popular technology podcasts) well, it'd know I probably am a geek and would download more technology podcasts.
Or, if I kept a Harry Potter podcast (my son likes those) it'd think I was into movies and would download podcasts about other movies. Maybe that wouldn't be accurate, but who cares?
Oh, and if I manually download stuff, it'd automatically delete its stuff to make room.
Doesn't that sound interesting?
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June 2nd, 2006 at 9:24 am
Yeah. It sounds like a Tivo style content management system for iTunes.
But given even your restricted use of the iPod hard drive, arent you afraid if you delegate control to that, you start getting content that you dont find interesting ?
Its all very well not having the time to investigate and subscribe - and having a Tivo-like service to do it for you. But delegating such content-choice to computer systems, whilst time-efficient, does actually reduce your “browsing” of different categories just on the offchance.
Even with iTunes, I’ll still go into Record Stores, just to see what else is kicking around. A computer screen still hasnt the capability to give me the same metaphor as Tower Records in London - not without a *huge* display…
—* Bill
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:41 am
Playstation Portable has at least the beginnings of what you’re looking for. With the latest firmware update, they actually download podcasts properly, and they’ve got built-in wifi. Perhaps an app that sits on top of the PSP and does some of the suggestion and preference work you’re talking about would be the shortest route.
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:50 am
No, I’m not scared about that at all. I want content that I don’t find interesting. Why? Cause I don’t know that I won’t find it interesting until I listen to it and at least 1 out of 100 things WILL be interesting to me.
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:54 am
Sounds interesting. What would be more interesting is a device that would enable people to easily create software like that.
So if you have a weekend, you could easily hack together something that did just what you described.
A windows mobile device may work, but I have no experience developing on that platform so I can’t really say. I once loaded an SDK a few years ago, and it seemed really hard to use.
Or I guess if they made OQO’s smaller and better then you could just make something in windows.
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:58 am
Adam: Windows Mobile definitely could do it, although the average device that Windows Mobile is in only has 64mb of RAM (my phone has been upgraded to 1GB, though, and I’d DEFINITELY love such a service on it!)
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:03 am
It doesn’t have all the whizz bang automatic stuff you’d like, but a Sony PSP with the latest firmware has a built in podcatcher that runs over WiFi, and you can either stream the podcast or save it to a Memory Stick (1gb around $30, sizes up to 4gb as I type). Plus Windows Media Player picks it up as a music device (but not PlaysForSure) when you hook it up via USB-MiniUSB to your PC. Battery life for music is around 9-10 hours, so in the iPod range.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:23 am
Robert: Check this out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820163159
(4 gig SD card for $109)
So if your mobile device has an SD slot…
I think they make CompactFlash in 8gig now too.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:41 am
Well a 1% return on investment of your most precious currency - time - stinks.
I don’t believe that there is randomness - if you’re not choosing the content, somebody will be choosing for you. And their motivation (earballs) may be different from yours (discovery).
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 am
That’s the N91 right there. 4GB hard disk music phone with WiFi.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:51 am
I have Netgear MP101 around the house to provide WiFi MP3 to my MP3 music repository. I can even access that same repository from work over the mt-daapt protocol using an ssh client to provide the pipe. See http://www.shokk.com/blog/articles/2006/02/06/getting-ipods-and-itunes-everywhere
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:13 am
Or get one here for $95 and then send in the $15 rebate if you want to make it $80:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=82502-19
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:16 am
This could be developed much further, I think. A device, with the ability to download podcasts as you describe, as well as automatically pull RSS feeds down (possibly even those not on your reading list, using a service similar to Share Your OPML to find similar feeds) as well as maybe a Pandora-type load of music suggestions which are free to listen to a couple of times but then DRM self destruct, would be very popular and useful. Microsoft could help push OEMs along with this by including it in their Mobile Media Center software.
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
If you have a smartphone/PDA with WiFi you’re almost done! Just add software ;)
It would be quite easy to make an app that wakes up when WiFi is available and starts downloading. It could then update a playlist in Media Player with new podcasts.
The only limiting factor is memory. Soon though smartphones will come with hard drives… I can’t wait!
June 2nd, 2006 at 12:56 pm
The problem here isn’t so much content or how you manage to filter the good stuff from the pile - but battery life.
If you think your color-screened video iPod already hasn’t much battery life, add the power consumption of WiFi, and you’ll be running around with a mini-UPS to feed more life into the thing every hour.
There is a Bluetooth service for streaming high (well, highish) quality stereo audio between devices, called A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), and there are already a good number of Bluetooth stereo headphones out there. But the devices aren’t coming. Why? battery life - and Bluetooth takes a fraction of the power WiFi does.
We don’t need bigger color screens, or larger storage space on portable music players - we need efficient management and larger battery capacity. Then we can add the wizzbang features - such as what you describe in your post.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Is someone from the WMP11 team on this thread???
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Robert,
All this techo yardie-yada is one thing… 125 CDs?
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:42 pm
I recently attended the Mesh 2006 conference in Toronto and one of the statements made about ubiquitous WiFi is that it could be the end of Satellite radio. Imagine if you had the device you describe, but not just in a handheld device, but also in your car stereo. You pull into your garage, and using WiFi, it downloads the content to your car. The “filter” is the software functionality you describe. It could be a ‘bot’ running on your PC searching for the content you like. Then distributes it to your handheld, and your car.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:42 pm
…that sounded really judgmental and wasn’t meant to be; I’m more in (shock and) awe of such a finely honed music collection, they must be a pretty good 125.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:43 pm
There are devices shipping in Europe with all that, Wifi, UPnP, bluetooth, 3G. Nokia is putting that to their Nseries devices and they also showed in past event podcasting client with subscriptions. They also promised battery life to be well beyond most MP3 players. At least I was impressed :O
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Ned: I’m not big into music, I’ve been buying CDs since the early 1980s (I remember when Tower Records only had about 300 CDs for sale). I far prefer podcasts and various indie music. My son, however, buys a lot more music than I do.
June 5th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
A wifi music player would be so awesome… BBC Radio 2 anywhere there is a connection… w00t!
June 15th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
[...] This means, wireless everywhere. This is not some future science fiction, but reality in the next 5 to 10 years. It is already happening in San Francisco and Phillidelphia.Now imagine for a minute, if all handheld and portable devices had WiFi capability. From your MP3 player, to your cell phone to your car stereo. Now that you have the hardware, you need the content. Robert Scoble posted an entry in his blog about the sort of filter he would like to see for retrieving content. It could retrieve random information and post it to his iPod. Then as he listens to the information it would track what you liked and remember to download like content the next time. There are music services that do this today. The Pandora project uses math to analyze songs and groups them together. You choose some artists or songs. It presents those and others that fit the same style. Last.FM uses community preferences. If a lot of people who picked your artist or song, also picked these other songs, then it puts those into your playlist. [...]