Repurposing Old Tablets and Smart Devices

While I'm on the subject of iPods, I thought I'd share a few tips on repurposing old smart tech. I have a ton of older devices; tablets, e-readers, mobile devices, you name it, I have it, and I find they can come in handy around the house. You can trade them in when you're upgrading, but you're usually lucky to get 20 bucks for them, and if they're in reasonable shape, that's a bad deal.

 You're much better served repurposing them to play a role in your IoT (Internet of Things), or "smart house". Old iPads and tablets are a great addition to your kitchen or family room and can serve as calendars, notepads, cookbooks, security camera monitors, music players, or all of the above. My old iPad Air is still in great condition and is an invaluable addition to our kitchen counter. Look up a recipe, quickly respond to a text, check your calendar while you're on the phone and add or update an appointment, you can even see who's creepin' 'round your back door. So many uses. You can mount them on a wall, or just use them in a free-standing cradle, there are a plethora of tablet mounts and cradles on the market, something for every situation.

Same with old mobile phones or iPod Touch devices, they make fantastic smart remotes for your TV's and entertainment centers. My iPod Touch is the primary controller for my Man Town A/V setup. It has my provider's app on it which has a Cable TV remote function, interactive program guide and access to my DVR library. It also has an Apple TV remote app, my iTunes library, and it connects to my A/V receiver via Bluetooth, so my complete music library is always available through my big boy stereo. Plus, it's got a keypad and Siri, which makes searching the guide grids a piece of cake. It also has internet access via Wi-Fi so I can keep track of news and scores. Forget those pricey universal remotes, this puppy does it all. Pro tip: you can also use old mobile phones for the same purpose as long as they have Wi-Fi. Just cuz they no longer have dial tone does not make them useless; they'll still upgrade and be capable of downloading apps via Wi-Fi.

Old iPods or MP3 players can be useful as well, paired with non-smart music systems. I have a Sony HD table radio and a Bose Wave that are both still excellent sounding devices, but both lack any smart features. Rather than upgrade them and trash a perfectly good music system, I use my old 3rd gen nano with them. From an aesthetic and haptic point of view, the 3rd gen Nano, or iPod fatty, as I call it, is my favorite iPod; what it lacks in functionality it more than makes up for in rizz. It's got that old school click wheel and iconic early iPod chrome backplate, it's a sexy little beast. Unfortunately, it no longer holds a charge for sh!t, but it works just fine nestled in a 30-pin dock, which both radios have. It expands the radios functionality, and it's a design statement; it says, "Music lives here". It also says, "We're old", but meh, I could care less. I wear that like a badge of honor.

Anyways, the possibilities are endless, you're limited only by your imagination. Plus, you're keeping it green by keeping things out of our ever-growing electronic waste piles, or the land fill. Double bonus.

So, repurpose those old devices when you can, old tech needs love too.

Gigaware In-line Control With HD Radio For iPhone

As soon as I pull the trigger on the Griffin Navigate I talked about in the previous post, I find this: the Gigaware In-line Control with HD radio for iPhone. It allows remote control of your iPhone or Touch, and when used in conjunction with the Gigaware HD Radio app it doubles as an HD tuner.

Sounds great in theory, but I’m cool with the Navigate for now. The Gigaware costs a whopping $79.99 and it doesn’t have an LCD screen like the lower priced Navigate. The app only works on devices running iPhone OS 3 to boot, and I still haven’t made that jump on my Touch. That also means that it wouldn’t work with my 3rd gen Nano, and that’s the device I like to carry around when I’m traveling light. Plus the few user reviews available list poor HD reception and noise distortion as major issues.

So, as nice as it would be to have HD Radio on my iPod, this isn’t the device for me, at least not yet. I’ll wait ‘til the reviews and the price get better.

Not Such Deep Thoughts, Part V

Once again, I’ve been too swamped to post much of anything lately, and all kinds of random thoughts are beginning to back up in my head. Time to purge all the temporary files and get this system cleaned up.


I really dig the new 5th gen Nano. The larger screen, video camera, FM tuner, microphone and pedometer are all cool additions, plus its battery life has been improved. Great job, Apple. Think you could find it in your heart of hearts to add a built in microphone to the Touch? And maybe an FM tuner while your at it? Oh yeah, and figure out why OS 3 turns it into a battery hog? Please?

Oops, my bad. I just realized that Apple can’t add a microphone to the touch. What with Wi-Fi on board, and apps like skype available, adding a microphone to the Touch would make it an iPhone without the need for an expensive multiyear contract with a mediocre carrier, and that just wouldn’t fit their plan. Sorry Apple, what was I thinking? I’d still like you to fix the Touch/OS 3 problems, though.



It’s way too soon to be hitting the Patriots panic button yet. Way too soon. Brady will find his rhythm, and the offense will get in sync. A year is a long time to be out of the game. Plus, the defense is only giving up 16-17 points a game, and that’s way better then I expected from them this early in the season, especially with Mayo out on top of everything else. Being 1 and 1 isn’t such a bad start, all things considered. I’ll give them a couple more outings before I let my hand creep any closer to the button.



Speaking of the Patriots, I never told you who the ex Patriot with the cool jazz club was. It’s Antwan Harris, and he owns an establishment called Zydeco Downton in Raleigh, North Carolina. I never got a chance to visit, as my work kept me tied up right until game time on Monday night, but there’s a great Patriots fan club that meets there on game days, the New England Patriots Fans of NC, and the food and music sound pretty good too! There’s also another group I found called CAP (The Capital Area Patriots), that meets at the Backyard Bistro in Raleigh for the games. The Bistro also hosts the Tom O’Brien radio broadcasts, and Red Sox Nation events. Amazing what you can find. I just love the interwebs!

Thanks for the invites guys, and I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it. Really sorry. I ended up hitting the “Sports Bar” next to my hotel, and that was a less than satisfying experience. When I walked in, all 4 people stopped talking and looked up at me with a “who the heck is this” look on their faces. Great TV’s, but no sound, ‘cause the regs were jiving to the jukebox as they chain smoked and ruminated on how there couldn’t be no lez-be-yuns in their wedding party. No suh. Wont right. We’s pretty religious. All I could think of was banjo music, so I just kept my mouth shut and beat a hasty retreat, after I scarfed a quick burger and fries. A mans gotta eat.



Speaking of eating, grits suck. Especially when you think you’re about to dive into a big bowl of oatmeal.



I’m really liking the new WBCN HD stations, especially Free Form BCN (HD3 100.7-3). It’s a reincarnation of BCN in its heyday, and you’re liable to hear anything. If you don’t have HD radio, you can listen online, or stream them on your smaaht phone.



I’m also warming up to the new sports station, 98.5 The Sports Hub. The only problem is, I really want to hear sports talk in the morning after a big game, and although I’ve got nothing against Toucher and Rich, it ain’t sports talk. Come on guys, cut back on the drunken sports fan interviews and give me the real thing. I know you can do it. I still can’t listen to those other chuckleheads in the morning, even though they seem to have dialed it back a notch since you’ve come along, and I need my fix.



There’s not many things that depress me as much as closing down our pool for the season. It feels like I just opened the darned thing, but the nights have gotten way to cold for a pool without a heater, and the leaves are beginning their annual leap to freedom, which means it’s a constant battle to keep it clean. So long old bud, parting is such sweet sorrow. Memories of floating on a raft in the dappled sunlight, as Castiglione serenades me with the game call, will have to hold me til next May.



That is all.

HD Radio

I mentioned in my last post that WBCN will live on in cyberspace and will also be broadcast on 98.5 HD2, and it got me thinking about how great HD radio is.

It offers CD quality sound, no static or interference, a wide variety of programming (in most cases 2 or 3 times the stations you’re receiving now), a data stream (song, artist, traffic, stock info), iPod tagging, and best of all… it’s free.

Most radio stations are now multicasting digital signals along with their standard analog broadcast, giving you 2 or 3 completely different broadcasts simultaneously. Take 98.5 for example. There’s the standard analog broadcast, WBZ-FM, then there’s a digital version of the same that you would pick up on 98.5-1 on your HD radio. But wait, there’s more! There’s also a 98.5-2, which is going to be the new home of WBCN in HD, and if you act now, they’ll even throw in 98.5-3, an HD version of WBZ-AM. Same holds true with WZLX. 100.7-1 is ZLX in HD, and 100.7-2 is Radio Mojo, Boston’s only all blues station. Mojo is my new favorite station, and it makes me wish that all of my radios had HD tuners.

How do they do it, you ask? Well, here’s a pretty good explanation from the people at Ibiquity, who came up with the idea of digital multicasting.

Did I say that it’s free? Doesn’t matter, it bears repeating. It’s F.R.E.E. free! All you need is an HD tuner, and pretty much all of the big players are beginning to incorporate them into their products. Here’s my review of my personal fave of the moment, the Sony XDR-S10HDiP HD Radio With Dock, and I see that Microsoft has built an HD tuner into their latest Zune. Portable HD radio… now that could be a game changer for me. Do you hear that Apple..?

Nope, probably not, but I can dream.

Here’s a listing of what’s available in the Boston area right now, and WBCN has a great listing of what’s to come later this week, after the big shuffle.

So, if you haven’t tried it yet, you should. Great quality audio with no subscription, no wires, no WiFi, no 3G, no strings attached.

It’s the future of radio.

Sony XDR-S10HDiP HD Radio With Dock

This is a great HD table radio with a built in iPod dock, and perhaps the best iPod accessory I’ve come across yet.

I was looking for a replacement for the iHome iH5 that’s been our kitchen radio for the last couple of years. It still worked fine, but since it didn’t support charging on my 2nd gen Touch, and didn’t have a proper insert for supporting it (I hate it when your iPod is all wimbley-wombley in the dock, I always get a vision of snapping the dock connector off while pressing the iPod’s buttons.), I decided to replace it with a nice table radio.

I had made up my mind to go with a radio sans dock, because I was sick of getting accessories that became obsolete every time I upgraded my iPod. I have a universal dock, and I figured I’d just plug it in when I needed it. Then I saw the Sony XDR-S10HDiP HD Radio with dock, and fell in love.

It’s a great sounding AM, FM, HD radio with an integrated iPod dock that supports the new iPhone 3g, Touch 2nd gen and Nano 4th gen charging requirements (as well as all previous models), and it supports Apple’s universal dock adapters, so it will stick with you through all of them changes.

HD radio is fantastic, and free, and most of the Boston area stations are now streaming multicasts, giving you a plethora of crisp, clean, CD quality listening choices. Check out what’s currently available here. My favorite so far is WZLX’s Radio Mojo Blues Channel, but there are so many choices that for the first time ever I filled all 20 presets, and longed for more. Thank goodness it’s also got a scan feature!

Because digital radio can carry information as well as music, the radio gives you station, artist and song information in the display, and allows you to do iTunes tagging. Tagging is a cool feature that lets you “tag” a song you’re listening to by hitting the tag button on the top of the radio while it’s lit. The next time you dock your iPod, the radio transfers all the stored tags to it. When you sync, iTunes uses the information in the digital tags to retrieve the songs for you. How cool is that? It even comes with a full sized remote, so you can tag from the comfort of your chair.

Besides having all the bells and whistles you could ever want, this radio has excellent sound quality, and the clarity of the HD signal makes it all the better. Plus it’s a real looker, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Bring your iPod into an Apple retailer and plug it in for a test drive.

Note: You’ll probably need to use the supplied FM dipole and AM loop antennas for best reception, but it’s worth it. Although you don’t get static on digital radio, it will drop the link intermittently if you’re below 2 bars on the signal strength meter. Get creative; I have the dipole cleverly woven up the back of the baker’s rack it sits on.