uses for the ipod photo

so the ipod photo came out, and some people (including myself) were thinking that's all-right, but not that great. so i can show my holiday snaps to people on their tv. w00t.

but then something started happening: hackers got involved.

rumors started spreading on the internets about interesting stuff to do on the photo. phil torrone over at engadget put photos along with his podcast so you can have some visual cues as you're listening to it. then he exported the trailer for star wars episode 3 to individual jpeg frames and kinda made a movie that you could "play" with the photo. i didn't see it, but i imagine you have to keep the wheel-turning steady otherwise the audio and video would get out of sync.



this guy noted that the entire back-catalog of the new yorker cartoons is out on cd, and he suggested putting them on the ipod photo. someone posted on the forum that the format of the new yorker cartoon would make it nigh-impossible to view on the photo. the new yorker is generally a one-panel comic, but something like calvin and hobbes you could break down into individual panels, and view them like that.





then at work yesterday i was thinking about the ipod photo, and i remembered some audiobooks i had called "soundwalks", little audio tours of nyc (and now paris) that you're meant to listen to as you wander down the streets they talk about. they were fantastic even for me, and i'm not in new york. i was thinking that the ipod photo would be particularly suited to this. as you're walking down the street, instead of hearing "now look at that building on the left, next to the barber's, with the arched window..." blah blah blah, you hear "now look at this building." and a photo of it would flash up. "it was owned by this man (flash photo of man), whose son (flash photo) went on to become..." etc etc.

in that scenario, audio with photos would be even more appropriate than video. there are a lot of things that only require breif visual cues, rather than rich cinematography. it's a hell of a lot easier to create a string of pictures than it is to edit video. i see the ipod photo going on to become more of a "story" device, something like a book. the ipod could be used to present powerpoint-style presentations, ie someone talking and explaining things, with a few dot points, graphs and images to go along with it.



the more i think about it, the more i would like an ipod photo. at first i thought "$135 extra for a colour screen? screw that". but now i want one, because i know that stuff like this is just going to keep coming.

notice all the pictures in this post? wouldn't it be cool if this was a podcast, and you were looking at them on your ipod photo?