Music is part of our lives. Babies are comforted by lullabies, we learn to speak and communicate through song, teenagers first rebel through rap, and communities are brought together through hymns. Music defines who we are, and allows us to concentrate on tasks by providing rhythm to our daily tasks, and a melody can dredge up memories long thought forgotten.



Although we've had access to portable music for decades, the iPod has revolutionized how we think about portability itself; songs can be downloaded in a few minutes and be played until they have been replaced. As permanent media are not needed, such as for compact disk players, and the songs can be downloaded again (in case of accidental deletion) there is no need for protecting the songs themselves. This makes iPods the most portable music source, as other players require not only the player, but the medium itself. In other words: You don't need to drag tapes or CD's along, and worry about how you will carry them or keep them safe.

Unfortunately, iPods do not support all kinds of audio formats. Luckily there is iPod AudioBook software that will make audio books out of your .flac or .ogg or any other files.

You can also do something you can't with other players: You can transmit the music to other players. Thus sharing music or trading songs is just a matter of having the right cords. You can also place the iPod in a dock, allowing it to play music in a better sound system. Whereas other players were limited to transferring the media itself, the iPod becomes the media.

Besides music, some iPods can handle video as well as images. Besides keeping video size small, this means that viral videos can infect systems beyond the limits of the original system. It has also created entirely new industries. The best example of this is that comic artists can allow their comics to be downloaded, and those comics can be shared with other fans of the comics. Although it probably won't overtake people printing comics to share with friends any time soon, it does allow someone to carry their favorite comics with them wherever they go or download then for future reading if they download the comics as part of bigger packages.

The iPod has become the center point of new marketing campaigns, as well as new legislation. After all, when a potential listener doesn't need to pay for the song, copyright issues come into play. Various licensing plans have come into play, but after Sony's attempt to invoke a hardware solution (they included a bit of software in order to enforce CD copyrights that ended up effectively disconnecting CD-ROM drives and resulting in a class action suit against Sony) have made other companies nervous.

The iPod is an interesting piece of technology, and not just because of its portability. As any technology becomes more advanced, the more it can do as well. Even CD players never got past being able to play more than music; some iPods have already passed that with their multimedia capabilities. As technology continues to get smaller and branch out, it will be interesting to see where iPods will be in even a few years from now.