iDumbo is going iDeaf

iDesign for iTrendies

I was just beginning to settle down into the notion that one of the best things about the iPod might be because those things do not have iJumbo headphones.

In the pre-iPod days, there were many with their collections of CDs carted about for playback in their portable CD players who had headphones that make you think elephant ears were small.

Nothing wrong with that, however, when you got on the bus or train the drone of the vehicle engines could not drown out that frustrating monotonous note that you heard without being able to piece together the whole music.

It was like there was not enough to give you the persistence of hearing to help you concentrate on other things.

Subconsciously to annoying knowledgeable reaction you find that the noise is more a distraction because of the disorder, a complete nuisance at that.

The quest for the MP3 grail

Now, I belong to the pre-iPod generation when looking for a solution involved good research rather than following the latest fad or trend.

I had acquired motivational speaking material from those 7-ways ideas to faith affirmation talk that you get from Pentecostal circles.

The MP3 could be played back on my computer at home or work, but not on my CD player – so the research began for a player that could play back MP3 files – that was in 2001.

Not only did I want one that could playback but it should be able to read MP3 tags – these being labels that allow information input of track name, track number, album, artist, and genre and so on.

In the process I got the MP3BookHelper application which allows prodigious amounts of tagging and tagging formats including the renaming of files to the tag information.

Then I had to get an MP3 merger that allows fragments of related and consecutive MP3 material to be merged into one contiguous file.

TotalRecorder allowed me to record streaming audio to audio files with the MP3 format using the Lame converter.

Before long I had a library of MP3 files for which a CD based MP3 player would not suffice having the limit of 640 to 700 megabytes.

I needed a multi-gigabyte MP3 player and in the end, I got the Creative DAP Jukebox also known as the Creative Nomad, the more recent offering is NOMAD Jukebox Zen which can handle 20 or 60GB.

This had 6GB of space, could handle all audio file formats, could read all MP3 tags, manageable on both device and from computer.

There was a community of users who provided tools, accessories and ideas about how to get the best out of my jukebox, in fact, I though it was quite hip to see a female passenger with a jukebox only a few months after I got mine.

iJuggernaut of music

Before you knew it, out came the Apple juggernaut and the history of MP3 players was re-written.

So, everyone who seems to be carrying their music has a plastic-looking “ergonomic” device with a set of usually-white ear-plug headphones, it has become so common, it is common.

So, twice today, having thought the design of the headphones had the avoidance of social nuisance built in; I was completely wrong.

Having an iPod with iDesign headphones does not stop iDiots from keeping the volume at a reasonable level for their hearing.

The generation of young trendy people who have sown for the future a guarantee of being hard of hearing leading to deafness early in middle-age are many and sad, besides generally lacking in good social and community skills.

There is no telling iDumbo that iPods are really for personal entertainment; they should keep the volume down.