Based on popular demand, I’ve decided to update our classic How To video on creating audio books on iTunes. What’s an audio book, you ask?

It’s a special audio file that is organised separately from your music, and has the ability to automatically bookmark itself so that you can always carry on from where you left off, and the ability for you to control the speed of a speaker without distorting his or her voice. In otherwords, an audio file designed specially for long spoken audio!

The launch of a new iPod Shuffle came totally unexpected. There weren’t any rumors about this new device. Perhaps because it is too small already. Macrumors only found out that Apple is launching a new iPod Shuffle when they discovered that the Apple Store has gone down for updates. (A sign that something new is coming up)

The new iPod Shuffle is even smaller than the Gen2 iPod Shuffle, just when we all thought it can’t get any smaller. (1.8 inches by 0.3 inches) Apple achieved this record breaking size by removing almost everything except the clip, on/off switch and a 3.5mm port. Like the previous Shuffle, the 3.5mm port is also use for data transfer and charging. Interesting. Since there is no buttons, you can only control the iPod Shuffle using the 3 control buttons on the earpiece. (Volume up, Volume down and center button) Press the center button once to start playing and press again to pause. Double click to move to the next track. Press and hold to hear the voice over of the track name. Yes, this iPod Shuffle talks to you when you press and hold the middle button. You can even access the playlist on this new iPod Shuffle. Check out the guided tour on Apple website.

The new iPod Shuffle received mixed reactions online. I was checking out the online reaction to the new iPod Shuffle using twitterfall. Most people like the new form factor, but some dislike the fact that all the controls is on the earphone. It means that you have to use a earphone made for iPod Shuffle or you can’t control the volume. But knowing that this is Apple, the iPod Shuffle will still sell like hot cakes.

The 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle is available in Black and Silver colour and comes with 4gb memory (That’s actually a pretty good improvement).It’s selling at S$128 and will ship within 3-5 business days. I doubt we will be able to see it at the IT Show at Suntec tomorrow (today) though.

PS: I personally feel that the girl in the guided tour look more hot than the new iPod Shuffle. Just a personal comment.

Addition from Daniel: One thing to note about the new shuffle is that because its controls are on the earphones, there’s no way you’re going to be able to use your own headphones until some 3rd party company comes up with an “adapter” or “wired remote” like the SmartTalk adapter by Griffin. I guess losing the buttons was more important than letting people use their own earphones.

-Daniel and NTT

[1:05]TDM’s Event Blogout 2009
– [4:42]Sweetcron
– [13:10]Register for Blogout here

[13:50]Nokia Launches Comes with Music service in Singapore

[27:00]Nokia launches the 5800 Express Music phone in Singapore

[32:20]How cellphone work.

[38:00]Byte of the Week : Rockbox

Man who drops pants in Temple, will be laughed at with abandon.
Child must be seen, not heard, Unless child is stuck under a well.
Women must dance before the dark skinned strangers from the south. They bring great bounties for all.
Killing sharks cannot be advised. They bring great pain to one’s left dingleberries.

Stories this week :

[1:45]Jerrick is leaving Singapore for studies..

[3:36]Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event.
– [4:15]New iPod Shuffle
– [8:30]New iPod Classic
– [13:10]New iPod Touch
– [20:20]New iPod Nano
– [23:45]iTunes 8

[36:57]Byte of the Week : Google Alert

The Fanboys,
Fari, Daniel, Jerrick, Ryu (of macryu.com) and NTT

Stories this week:

[1:30]iPhone 3G launch in Singapore.

[22:50]Intel Dev Forum: Inside Nehalem.

[25:50]Kevin Rose’s Apple products rumors.

[31:02]Apple Macbook MagSafe power adapter strain relief issues.

[33:37]Exploding iPod Nanos.

[35:10]Dell latitude E series launch in Singapore

[51:00]Bytes of the Week : Caffeine & Renamer

With honor and valor (blehh)
The Recruit, The Driver, The Desk Jockey

[03:00]Vote for us in the Ping.sg Blog Awards

[04:05]Creative launches the ZEN X-Fi with Wireless LAN

[10:25]The Singapore iTunes Store is live! Sort of…
- Side story: [13:52]SquareEnix’s Song Summoner RPG for the iPod Classic and iPod Nano

[15:00]The International iPhone Launch. What will ours be like?

[20:29]Seagate comes up with new 1.5 terabyte hard drives

[23:31]Xbox 360’s Mid-range console receives further price drops. What is Maxsoft doing with the Wii?!?

[27:31]Konami lodges patent suite against Harmonix, MTV over Rock band

[30:03]Google launches their own Second Life called Lively

[33:00]Byte Of The Week: Evernote: Remember Everything

Don’t forget to catch our bloopers at the end of the episode!

The guys over at Joiku.com created this really ingenious app that I’ve been waiting for someone to make. An application that turns your phone’s inbuilt WiFi into a WiFi hotspot! Simply download the application, run the program, tell it to connect from your 3G connection, and that’s it! You’ve got yourself a mobile WiFi Hotspot!

Now all you have to do is take your iPod Touch and connect it to that connection and you can surf the Internet using the iPod Touch’s mobile Safari browser and surf some real Internet on the go! Not to mention access to that giant library of Web-based apps for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

There are some limitations with the program, which you can read about on their download page. The biggest one, however, is the fact that you cannot rename the SSID of your newly created WiFi Hotspot (it will be called “JoikuSpot”) and the Hotspot is not secured. Meaning ANYONE can use that same hotspot. So unless you have a lot of data (which isn’t difficult to get thanks to today’s cheap mobile broadband plans with insanely loads of data per month), the JoikuSpot isn’t for you.

That said, I hope this helps you make your iPod Touch experience more mobile!

The price of the 32GB model is S$848 and it will ship in 1-2 business days (that means earliest next Tuesday, thanks to the long weekend starting today). If you need a refresh of the other models, the 16GB is S$698 while the 8GB is S$498. Are you going to pay that much just to have that touch interface? Until Apple announces support for the 3rd party applications for the iPod Touch, it’s really just not worth it.

The online Apple store

Posted from a Nokia E61.