Some More Fun iPod Need-To-Know Stories

Yes, the iPod has been at it again: making waves and creating buzz wherever it chooses to pop up: which is a lot of places these days.
For example, Homeland Security Department employees utilized their government-issued credit cards to purchase the hand-held music and video devices last year, according to an Associated Press report.

The Government Accountability Office Report stated, “Poor training, lax oversight and rampant confusion over what employees are allowed to buy with government-issued credit cards left Homeland Security vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse.”

But the iPod was not alone in those unjustified expenses: booties for rescue dogs, beer-making equipment (hey, wasn’t the iPod rated higher than beer by a survey of college-aged kids?), and designer rain jackets.

Senators told the AP that more than 10,000 Homeland Security employees carry credit cards for business-related expenses. “The spending limit that was raised to $250,000 for emergencies after Hurricane Katrina hit last Aug. 29. Aides said the audit covered expenses during a five-month period before and after the storm.”
The department spent $435 million with the purchase cards in the 2005 budget year, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Tuesday evening to the AP.” But he said only a fraction of the 1.1 million purchases were improper, noting that the department has disciplined about 70 employees.”

Among the expenses investigators described as abusive or questionable: 12 Apple iPod Nanos and 42 iPod Shuffles, priced at $7,000, for Secret Service ``training and data storage.’’ Because the Shuffles cost less than $300, the Secret Service said they were not required to track them to ensure they were used properly.
Knocke, the Homeland Security spokesman, told the AP the department will begin enforcing new spending guidelines in the next several weeks that should eliminate much of the confusion and make sure purchases are strictly supervised. Violators could have their cards taken away, be forced to repay expenses and face disciplinary action, he said.

“We take very seriously our responsibility to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars,’’ Knocke said.

But the Homeland Security Department isn’t the only high-profile name using iPods or iTunes.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Tom Petty recently said, “iTunes is a great idea.”  iPod Observer reported that Mr. Petty “likened iTunes to the early days of pop and Rock-n-Roll when singles were a prime vehicle for selling albums, though he tempered that praise by saying iTunes did not promote the album as an art form.”

The magazine comments came in response to a question from interviewer Neil Strauss after Mr. Petty blamed the recording industry for hurting itself by perpetually raising LP and CD prices during the 1980s and 1990s.

He added, “I think that if they kept the CDs really affordable, there wouldn’t have been the tragic impact from the computers that there was. And that’s a blow that I don’t think [the record labels] are ever going to recover from.”

His fans may also be interested in the fact that he said that this interview might be his last. At least he mentioned iTunes, right?!!

And just when you thought the iPod coluldn’t get any better:iPods, handsets, USB flash drives and other gadgets stand to gain from a new 8Gbit NAND flash memory chip in mass production at Samsung chip factories. Samsung shrank the chips by about 25 per cent from previous designs, and it also increased the amount of songs, videos and other data that can be stored in small devices, it said Wednesday.

Users should see an increase in the amount of data storage capacity in small devices within the next six months thanks to the chip, according to a DIGIT report. “The tricky issue for device makers now is that they will need to use four controller chips in such a drive, twice as many as in an 8GB model. Companies expect to leap that hurdle by the end of this year, meaning users should see 16GB USB flash drives in stores by Christmas.”