Operation Gadget

Category: Portable Audio

  • Apple Acquires Beats Electronics for $3 Billion

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteApple Inc. is acquiring Beats Electronics for $3 billion, culminating a deal that became a persistent rumor three weeks ago. Congratulations to Apple. If nothing else, this changes the perception among investors that Apple is not willing to pull the trigger on expensive acquistions. It’s clear to me that Apple will,…

  • Hockey Night in Canada Theme May Not Be Used by The CBC Next Season

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteBack in April, I wrote How to Create iPhone Ringtones from TV Show Soundtracks Using Audio Hijack Pro and GarageBand ’08 and created a The Hockey Night in Canada Theme ringtone for my iPhone as an example. For those U.S.-based hockey junkies in our readership who haven’t heard, several Canadian news…

  • iTunes Agent Lets You Manage Music on Third-Party MP3 Players, PSP, or Phones

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteJonathan Greene pointed out iTunes Agent in his Twitter feed. iTunes Agent is an Open Source Windows application that extends iTunes to allow it to work with third-party MP3 players and mobile phones. According to the website: iTunes is a great music player and organizer. Unfortunately iTunes is made to only…

  • Smart Playlists Suffer Because of Logical Limitations

    Reading Time: 2 minutesOne of the best techniques for using an iPhone with a large iTunes library is to use Smart Playlists to automatically select tracks from your library according to logical rules. I discussed this in Use Smart Playlists for Endless Combinations of Christmas Music. I wanted to provide an update because I see…

  • BlueLounge SpaceStation Organizes Cables for Laptop Users

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe BlueLounge SpaceStation is a desk organizer for laptop users that acts as a USB hub for all peripheral devices. BlueLounge SpaceStation [ Photo courtesy of the manufacturer. ] The photo I’ve chosen shows the bottom of the SpaceStation. The rubber feet set the SpaceStation 5mm above the surface of the desk. This…

  • Apple Gets Big Bang for Its R&D Buck

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe Wall Street Journal Business Technology Blog reports that Apple spent $844 million on research and development in 2007, significantly less than competitors Microsoft, IBM, H-P, Sun, and AMD. This is interesting because everybody and their brother has been touting Apple as a uniquely innovative company. I think Apple succeeds so…

  • Check Out Alltop Podcasts

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteAlltop just launched a new podcasts category. You can find it at: http://podcasts.alltop.com/ It looks like they are initially focusing on NPR and business-related podcasts, as opposed to the technology podcasts that I am typically subscribed to. After looking at Alltop Podcasts, I subscribed to: The Web 2.0 Show Startup Story…

  • How to Create iPhone Ringtones from TV Show Soundtracks Using Audio Hijack Pro and GarageBand ’08

    Reading Time: 3 minutesThe other day I was looking forward to watching NHL playoff games, and started thinking about how much fun it would be to watch Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC instead of Versus. I went over to CBC.ca and watched the HNIC Playoff Preview Show on the CBC Sports Video Player.…

  • How to Listen to PDF Documents on Your iPhone or iPod

    Reading Time: 2 minutesEarlier today, I needed to come up to speed quickly on IBM WebSphere MQ, a complex piece of enterprise software so I could discuss it with a senior manager at a potential consulting client. The easiest way to do this was to read an introductory whitepaper on Websphere MQ that would provide…