Countdown to the next iPod, updated

In the words of Mike Myers, I’m as giddy as a little guuuuurl.

Apple apparently just sent out media invites for the unveiling of their new iPod next week.

NPD surveyed 11,000 U.S. consumers older than age 13 earlier this year, and found that only 6.6 percent of respondents purchased a television show or movie online during the past six months. It’s not clear how many folks are watching videos on their iPods as opposed to on their computers or TVs via Apple TV, but mobile video is still very much a niche experience at this point.

That’s what Apple could be hoping to change on Wednesday. The most persistent rumors over the past couple of months have involved a redesign of both the current iPod video player as well as the smaller iPod Nano to provide a better viewing experience.

Only the fifth-generation iPod supports video playback at the moment, but it uses a 2.5-inch screen that after the launch of the iPhone looks impossibly small. Several Apple-oriented sites, as well as a few financial analysts, have gone on record predicting Apple will release an iPod with the same 3.5-inch widescreen display found on the iPhone but without the phone hardware.

Many also expect Apple to have a new version of the iPod Nano that supports video playback. It’s not clear at all how this might be accomplished while preserving the diminutive size of the iPod Nano.

We’ll see on Wednesday.

In the meantime, if you live in New York City (and you know who you are), where the subway is plastered with ads warning about iPod theft, help is at hand.

Managing e-mail via Firefox

Found via Digg:

These 20+ Firefox Plugins For Managing Email look pretty good — I’ll probably download the Webmail one for sure — but nowadays, I’m trying to keep a better eye on Firefox bloat, since it becomes a huge memory hog when there are too many plug-ins added. (Foxytunes is one of the worst offenders, since you have to have it running as well as iTunes.)

Countdown to the next iPod

My current 30 GB iPod — a Christmas 2005 gift — is now on its last legs. The battery life is pretty much untouched, but it is periodically not recognizing touches to the scroll wheel or sending anything through the audio connection. It’s not a critical problem yet, so I’m able to hold out for the presumed widescreen iPod Video coming out at some point this year or early next year.

Engadget seems to think it’s going to be announced in September or October. Here’s hoping.

I’m in ur computer, diagramming ur sentence

It takes a special breed of geeky to appreciate this, but the grammar of LOLcats has been broken down. That’s right: There’s a right way and a wrong way to talk kitty pidgin.

To be honest, I’ve always expected that cats would talk a certain way if they could speak a human language. I imagine it would rely a lot more on “I” and “me” than “you,” “us” or “we.”

Podcast Awards

You say you’re looking for good podcasts, but don’t know where to look?

The Podcast Awards is an OK starting place. I listen to the Grammar Girl podcast, which is nominated for two awards, watch Tiki Bar TV, and listen to Marketplace, This Week in Tech and Science Friday. I plan on checking out a fair number of the other nominees as well.