iCopulate Romances iPods, Executive Pong

mboverload was one of several readers to note that you can purchase aircraft tracking laser today at ThinkGeek. (TG is owned by OSTG, the parent company of Slashdot, so activate all conspiracy theories now). You can also look into the new iPod accessory iCopulate which allows intimacy between mp3 players never before fantasized. And for the suit that has everything, Executve Pong.

Truth stranger than fiction?

[BWJones]

Funny....truly funny and an amusing use of corporate cooperation for a joke . However, I will say this: I am always amazed at the things humans will buy. I will betcha $1000 that if these were actual items for sale, they would sell big time. Of course the government would come down hard on the first item, and with the current administrations moves for more religion in government, they may crack down on the iCopulate as well (little spikey things are a bit too.....titillating for some folks), but that pong thing.... Wow, I can think of more than one dumb jock executive that would dump lots of cash into something like that. :-)

How difficult would this really be to do?

[John_McKee]

I was thinking about it for a minute... This really won't be that difficult to do, in fact, fairly easy using open source software (Namely Linux) and a small general purpose embedded controller...

The database and file structure of the iPod is fairly well documented, so here is the base structure of the project, if some other people want to get one board we could get this done in a matter of weeks from start to finish:

Small Embedded PC with USB host capabilities (I'm thinking something cheap and ARM/XScale based)
Add in HFS+ support in the Kernel (Already been done)
USB Mass storage driver
A few hours worth of specific programing

So, you would have a small box with the embedded controler with a small LCD and a few buttons hooked up the the serial controller of the embedded system along with two USB ports. When you plug two iPods into the ports they are both mounted as USB mass storage devices where you can read the iPod music database file and all the music files. The big problem is, most iPods are going to be too full to properly sync all the music between them, solution; Taking advantage of the fact that Apple now allows you to make on-the-go playlists, you would then be presented two options on the LCD:

1. Copy Playlist
2. Copy entire iPod Useful in the case of say coping a Mini to a 60 gig iPod photo.

Then just check each file to make sure there aren't any duplicates, skip over any files ending in .mp4 and then copy. Update the library of the iPod the files were copied to and you're good to go.

If anyone is interested in making this project happen I would love to help organize it:

To email me take the first initial of my first name and my full last name (From my username, no spaces or underscores) @gmail.com

Anagram shirt..

[nullset]

fake ghostlike photons = fools shop at thinkgeek Thank you anagram finder....