What I'm Geeking Out About Today

Hey, this is some sort of regular feature! Every day, I find some new tech to fall in love with. Except, this time, I bought some of it.

Backstory: My roomie and I just redid our whole living room, because we're "adults" now, and don't go to "college" anymore, and in fact are hardly ever "wasted" and "vomiting" on the "floor," like we used to. To reflect our new adult lifestyle, we ditched the ikea, and moved on up to Target!

Yes, that's right, Target. The fanciest furniture store on the planet (imagine I'm wearing a plastic monocle and drinking a martini made with smirnoff and an olive I picked up off the floor to get the proper effect).

Actually, though, turns out Target is a step up from Ikea. You still have to put the furniture together yourself, but its made out of real wood, not a bunch of twigs and rice. Granted, Ikea is a cute bunch of twigs and rice, but still.

So the new room is filled with red and dark wood, giving it a very warm, inviting, and as my mother said, "English," look. My roommate is from England. I just wish I was.

In any case, part of the renovation involved throwing out my Boombox, because it didn't play CDs anymore, and also went against the whole "we don't get wasted and vomit on each other as much as we used to" rule.

So, backstory over, I went looking for a new sound set-up. My options were thusly:

1) Get a new CD player.
2) Get some sort of Bose Sound Dock, or something like that, for my iPod.
3) Get a new DVD player and set up an immersive home theater system, using the speakers and dvd player to also play CDs.

In the course of my search, I realized I'm probably not going to find a home theater system that will both sound good, and be in a price range I can afford. Plus, my TV is about six years old, so its not like I'll have a picture to match my ritzy sound.

Bose Sound Dock, forget about it... It doesn't really match the decor, and I really need something that's going to play stuff other than my iPod. You know, like my Powerbook.

CD Player... Most of these suck. They look like boom boxes. Plus, CD players are pretty much on their way out, being replaced by DVD players and Mp3 units.

So, I was in a bind, until I found this:



Nice design. Wood, so it matches the decor. And very small. Plus, evidently, great sound. So I bought it, right? Wrong. Instead, I bought this:



GREAT design. Red, so it matches even better. And very small. So what it is it?

Well, I'll tell you.

The Tivoli iPal Radio, is, well, a radio. And a speaker. With fantastic sound. And, it has an 1/8 inch plug, to connect to any iPod or other device with an 1/8 inch plug. And it has a rechargable battery that lasts up to 16 hours, on a three hour charge. And, its light and small enough to carry with you, but good enough sound to fill a whole room.

How does this solve my CD problem? It doesn't. But, this neat little device, with the right connectors, will link up to any cd player in existence, or TV, or anything. Plus, its pretty.

Alex wins again!