Hello… (tap, tap) is this fuckin’ thing on?!? This is my first official post, and I call it, the IPod Touch = SEXXX!!! Okay, let’s cut the shit and get right into it. This badboy is available, in case you didn’t know, in 8G, 16G, and recently released 32G models. Each one packs a 400MHz processor. Mine’s an 8G, and no, I don’t feel like any less of a man for it. Either way, the space isn’t nearly the coolest thing this IPod has going for it. I’m sure you’re all aware that the Touch has a touch screen interface, and that it’s actually multi-touch sensitive, and if you didn’t know that, well… believe it. ‘Cause it does… so there. Anyways, it’s also got this ass-rawkin’ motion sensor thingy in it called an accelerometer. Interesting side note - before I learned the word “accelerometer” it pleased me to refer to this wondrous device as a “gravitron”, and guess what folks, it pleases me still. So, that’s a little bit about what it’s got. Now let’s talk about what it does.

Naturally, it plays music, and video and all that other basic shit. And it’s packin’ tidy little clock and calendar apps out of the box, just the way you’d expect. But one of its coolest features, (also works out of the box) is the safari web browser that allows you do view really real web pages (including secure sites, like for my online banking!) over a wireless internet connection. Now as for zooming in and out to view said web pages at a comfortable size, all you need to do is pinch open or pinch closed with your fingertips on the screen. Ooooooooooooooooooooh… Now you can also tip the whole unit from its assumed upright position to the right or the left, and the gravitron will rotate the entire screen to suit the change. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah… Sexy isn’t it? Well… take a second to adjust the crotch of your pants and read on. The touch screen is so unbelievably comfortable to use. You turn it on, you try it out, and you’re good at it. It’s just that beautiful. You may notice there’s also an icon right on the home screen for YouTube… (adjust…) and yes, that’s lots of fun too.

Now… my favorite part about the Touch, by far, is the option to “jailbreak” it, and install and try whole worlds of toys, tweaks, tools, games, upgrades, patches, runtimes, wallpapers, themes, and other mind blowing 3^rd party apps on it. First… a quick how to. I’ve jail broken my IPod Touch twice so far. The first time, I did it the incredibly hard way. The second time, the incredibly easy way. Both times, I got identical results. So… I shall tell you the easy way… ‘cause you’ll like it better. Trust me. K, first step is making sure your IPods’ firmware is 1.1.1. If you didn’t purchase your IPod right when they first came out, it probably won’t be. Check under Settings > General > About to find out. If it turns out that you need 1.1.1, use this to get it. http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite….a_Restore.ipsw Save the firmware file to your desktop. Then open iTunes and plug in your pod. Select the pod on the left, and HOLD SHIFT while you click the “Update” button. ITunes will now allow you to select the firmware file to be installed on your iPod touch. Pick the file from your desktop and open it up. There. Welcome to firmware 1.1.1. Now, for the tricky part. The part that’s much easier than the multi step, hour long process my first attempt involved. Open your Safari browser, and go to jailbreakme.com… there… that’s it. Wait the IPod is done doing its shit, and you’re there.

Now that you have the installer icon on your home screen, you can open it up and start adding source sites. Once you add some source addresses, you can use the installer app to scroll through a huge list of categories of packages that are available for you to install. In other words, the more sources you’re able to find, the more unique shit you can get. I’ve got something like 93 sources and there are more out there to be found, I’m sure. And yeah, my installer application now takes like 10 mins to load up all the sources, but there’s a lot of cool shit to be found within. For days I’ve considered typing up a list of the categories and all the packages they contain, but seriously people, it’s a list at least 10,000 items long… and let’s face it… I just don’t have that kind of dedication. But, I’ll gladly tell you about some of the interesting shit that I’ve seen so far. Where shall we start?

Games… gotta love ‘em. And after jailbreakage, this thing’s really packin’. It’s got a Nes emulator. I installed and tried it out for awhile, and it was pretty sweet. ROMs can be acquired in different packs through the installer, or added to your iPod in windows explorer once you’ve plugged it into your computer. The NES emulator actually builds the NES controller on the touch screen, which can be a tad difficult if the touch is being held upright. Flip sideways and the screen and controller will reposition. Oua-la. Much better. I’ve seen other emulators available in the installer, including a PSX emu, and I believe a SNES one as well, although I can’t say I’ve tried either of them just yet. Yeah, yeah, perhaps not entirely practical when you really wanna beat a PSX game… but it sure is candy to watch the touch do it. It’s got a ton of other cool games like chess and stuff. And hey, remember that game you might have played when you were a kid. The one where you have to roll the marble through the wooden labyrinth? Well it’s got that shit too. It also runs crayon physics, which makes for some pretty amazing gaming. P.S. If you don’t know what crayon physics is all about you can check out this YouTube flick. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgRWT0QH-sU Prepare to be fuckin’ amazed.

There are also various sound/music based apps that can be fun to mess with. I’ve got a beat box style drum machine with the ability to change drum kits and programmable patterns that loop at a selectable tempo. I’ve also installed and enjoyed using the guitar tuner app, tunewiki (which displays lyrics for songs in your playlist in real time while the track plays), a variety of different internet radio apps from some of the bigger broadcasting names in online radio, a piano app that’s more for fun than actually composing on, and so on, just to name a few.

Other impressive apps include eBook readers, (with thousands of downloadable eBook packages in the installer that include everything from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, to Harry Potter, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and even older classics like Frankenstein, and collections by Poe), WeDict, a dictionary style app that allows you to customize your quick reference library. (I’ve added a Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus, Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, English Etymology dictionary, a large jargon file dictionary, and an irregular English dictionary, so when I search any word in WeDict, I get the results for that word from each.) I didn’t bother with language dictionaries, but with options to and from English to Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian, I’m sure other people will. There’s even a PDF viewer app. How friggin’ cool is that? Add to that the flashcard packages for languages and the Greek alphabet that are all part of the iStudy setup, and it’s all pretty sweet.

The skins, and themes, and wallpapers and shit are just too numerous for me to even bother to begin to tell you about. They’re like sand in the desert people. The best I can tell you is, try ‘em out.

There’s also a small group of apps that focus on the online IPod Touch community, like wallpaper, which will share your wallpaper to be viewed by any other touches using the program at that moment, while you are able to view theirs. These of course from the good people at iApp-a-day, who’ve made some other very interesting apps as well.

There’s also a lot of other shit that’s a little bit beyond me, to be honest, but it all sounds very cool. Apache web server apps, BitchX IRC clients, DNS command line tools, Ruby web proxy server, ebay watchers, BSD subsystems for linux command line utilities, Pure FTP servers, Open source implementation of LLDP, Wi-Fi stumblers, VNC clients, GNU Wget, AFPd servers, Wi-Fi access point loggers, and a whole lot of other shit that I’m just not sure about yet. But if I find out anything cool about any of these apps, I’ll post something just to let you know what’s worth it.

I should also mention that I’m starting to see a lot of upgrades, patches and plug-ins for the safari browser. I’ve recently installed one that lets you download files in safari. (It tells you what path you’ll find your downloads in once you plug into a computer again.) Apparently there’s another one for OTA downloading and Installation of PXL packages from websites. Cool beans.

Anyways, these are some of the things that I think make owning an IPod Touch a lot of fun. It’s got the internet, it’s got the YouTube, it’s got the apps. There are even magic tricks out there for it. So pick one up and check it out. IPod Touch fuckin’ rules!!! PSP owners… dismissed.