The iPod Nation

Philips’ Wake-up Light is than your traditional alarm clock, it is a “dawn simulator.” It uses light to ease you out of bed gently instead of jolting you with an annoying loud buzz. Their latest version of the Wake-up light includes an iPod dock. Not only does it wake you up, it can charge and play music from your iPod or iPhone, it also includes an FM radio and choices of four natural wake up sounds: a relaxing beep, morning birds in the forest, soft wind chimes or the sounds of the Afican jungle (lions and hyenas?). The light wakes you up by gradually intensifying the light to 300 Lux over a span of 30 minutes before your set wake up time. There is also a “dusk simulation” feature that gradually dims both lights and sound to help you drift off off to sleep. Check out the Wake-up Light HF3490 at the Philips site. Oh and it still includes a good old fashioned snooze button.

-Ray

The main difference between the iPod touch and the iPhone, other then the fact the iPhone is a mobile phone, is the lack of a camera. While a camera with a MP3 player is not that big of a deal, apparently Apple thinks it is a good idea to have one. Rumor is that the next generation of iPods will have a digital camera, sources have revealed a third-party iPhone case that had a slot opening for a possible camera. TechCrunch is also reporting that Apple is purchasing large quantities of the same type of camera sensor used in the iPhone 3GS at about $10 a pop, what could this excess inventory of digital cameras be used for? More than likely the iPod. And from the looks of the leaked iPod case it won’t just be for the iPod Touch but for the iPod Nano as well, and possibly other iPod models. If this is true this will be a pretty big feature to add to the list of already awesome features of the iPod. Hopefully it doesn’t bring the price points of the various iPod models much higher, because the whole reason to buy an iPod is price.

-Ray