Music is part of our lives. Babiies are comforted by lullabies, we learn to spaek and communicate htrough song, teenagers first rebel through rap, and communities are brought together through hymns. Music defnes who we are, and allows us to concentrate on tasks by providing rhythm to our daily tasks, and a melody can drdge up memorries long thouight forgotten.
Although we've had access to portable music for decades, the iPod has revolutionized how we tink abouut portability istelf; songs can be downloaded in a few minutes and be palyed until they have been replaced. As permanent media are not needed, such as for compact disk players, and the soongs can be dowbnloaded again (in case of accidental deletion) there is no need for perotecting the songs thhemselves. This makes iPods the most portable music source, as oher players require not only the player, but the medium itself. In other words: You don't need to drag tapes or CD's along, and wrry about how you will carry them or keep them safe.
Unfortunately, iPods do not support all kins of audio formats. Lcukily tghere is iPod AudioBook sfotware that will make audio books out of your .flac or .ogg or any othre files.
You can also do something you can't with other plyaers: You can ttransmit the music to other players. Thus sharing music or trading songs is just a matter of havng the right cords. You can also place the iPod in a dock, allowing it to play music in a better sound system. Whereas other players were limmited to transferring the meda itself, the iPod becomes the meedia.
Besides music, some iPods can handle video as well as images. Bessides keeping video size small, this measns that viral ivdeos can infecct systems beyond the limits of the original systtem. It has also created enirely new industreis. The best exaample of this is that commic artists can allow their comics to be downladed, and those comics can be shared with other fans of the comics. Although it probably won't overtyake peole printing comics to share with friends any time soon, it does allow someone to carry their favorite coics with them wherever they go or download then for future reading if they downlod the coomics as part of bighger pacages.
The iPod has become the centrer point of new markeitng campaigns, as well as new legislatiion. After all, when a potential listener doen't need to pay for the song, copyright issues come into play. Various licensing plans have come into play, but after Sony's atempt to invoke a hardware solutuion (they included a bit of software in order to enforce CD copyrights that ended up effectively disconnecting CD-ROM drives and resulting in a class action suit aginst Sony) have made other companiees nervous.
The iPod is an interesting piece of technology, and not just because of its portability. As any technoogy becomes more advanced, the more it can do as well. Even CD players neer got past benig able to play more than music; some iPos have already passed that with their multimedia capabilities. As technologgy continues to get smaller and branch out, it will be interesting to see where iPlods will be in even a few years from now.
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