The Technophilez

An Atlanta man says his iPod Nano caught fire in his pants. The nearly two year-old iPod caught fire in the pocket of Danny Williams at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where he is employed, according to Williams' mother, Elaine. The flames lasted 15 seconds and fire reached up to his chest, she said in a telephone interview.

Apple Inc. representatives were not immediately available for comment, but the company has since sent a packet to Danny to return the iPod Nano, she said.

Glossy paper in his pocket may have shielded him from getting burned by the fire, Danny Williams said in local news reports. "If TSA had come by and seen me smoking, they could have honestly thought I was a terrorist," Williams is quoted as saying.

The iPod contains a lithium-ion battery, which has a history of catching fire in laptops. Since December 2005 these batteries have been blamed for meltdowns and fires in several computers. Last year several manufacturers, including Apple, Dell Inc., and Lenovo Group Ltd. were forced to recall millions of the batteries.

Shortly after the new iPod Touches hit the streets complaints about a glitch with the screens began popping up on the Web. Those afflicted with the bad iPod Touches report that they play video very darkly, with black shades so exaggerated they resemble an old film negative.

A post on a Web site called Apple-Touch.com actually included videos comparing a flawed iPod Touch playing the same scene side-by-side with an iPhone, which also sports a 3.5-inch screen. The difference in quality and the issue with dark areas in the iPod Touch’s video is obvious.

Some unhappy customers asserted that the flaw resulted from Apple using a poorer quality LCD screen in the iPod Touch relative to the one used in the iPhone. Some exchanged their bad unit for another bad unit. In forums, some customers countered that their new iPod Touches looked perfectly fine.

With accusations flying in every direction, I decided to stop by the Apple Store in Towson Town Center yesterday to have a look at the iPod Touch for myself. The store had four on display. I looked at some video on each one and could detect no hint of the problems I saw depicted on several Web sites. In fact, I thought the video on the iPod Touch looked pretty darn good.

I then moved over to the iPhone table and repeated the exercise (for the record, I played videos stored on the devices, such as the Ratatouille trailer, not YouTube videos). Frankly I could not discern a quality difference between the iPhone and iPod Touch, although I could not study them side by side since all the devices were tethered to their respective display tables.

One of the store employees said the staff there knew of the problem (although they learned of it by reading about it on the Internet; the Mother Ship hadn’t supplied any info yet) but had not seen any defective units, either in the store or brought in by a customer. In fact, he said they checked their entire iPod Touch inventory just to make sure.

On Friday Apple released a press release stating that they have decided not to carry NBC's upcoming season of shows, since the contract would expire during the middle of the television season leaving iTunes buyers in the lurch. They also point out that NBC wanted to raise the price per episode to $4.99. I assume that past seasons' content will remain available until such time that NBC figures out a way to get out of their contract earlier.

“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”

Melodeo Inc. said on Tuesday it plans to help music fans expand use of their iTunes digital music collections beyond their desktop computer and iPod by streaming songs in personal libraries to mobile phones.

Privately held Melodeo, which already delivers Web-based audio clips to phones, said the service -- now in test mode -- would stream songs to cell phones for music fans who provide it with a list of the songs stored in personal libraries that use iTunes, Apple Inc's digital music software.

The idea of the service, which comes ahead of Apple's expected launch this month of its music-playing iPhone, is to let consumers who have digital music libraries listen to digital music on the go without a portable player.

It also lets listeners access songs from their library on more than one personal computer.

Melodeo revenue could be from monthly fees for the service, software download fees, or audio advertisements, said David Dederer, Melodeo's vice president for music services.

But while consumers can buy songs through Apple for 99 cents per song, Melodeo is not selling copies of songs for consumers to store on their phones -- it simply plays songs based on a customer's iTunes list.

This means it can charge low fees as it would only have to pay the same usage fees paid by Web-based radio services, or a tenth of a cent per song play, Dederer said.

"We're doing everything we can to follow the current legal guidelines and standard industry practices where the legal guidelines are not crystal clear," said Dederer, adding that the low price may lead digital music listeners who do not pay for songs they swap with friends to subscribe to the service.

Melodeo expects the first version of the service to launch in six to 12 weeks, according to Dederer, who said he hopes to be able to announce a carrier deal by then.

Melodeo delivers audio clips to customers of wireless service providers such as AT&T Inc. and Alltel Corp..

While the first version of the service is going to be limited to lists from iTunes libraries, future versions will include playlists from other digital music services.

When Steve Jobs announced their deal with EMI Records to sell DRM free music Apple and EMI were lauded for listening to the cry of the music buying community to remove digital rights management from their products. 

With the launch of the service under the iTunes Plus banner it has become clear that while the music files are not crippled by Digital Rights Management(DRM) they are being encoded with the buyer's personal information.  Recently Ars Technica, among others, have identified digital watermarks embedded into the music files that includes the buyer's name and email addresses at the very least.

Apple's iTunes Plus service offers music free of it's Rights Management software but at a premium above the 99 cents it charges for the DRM crippled versions.

EFF, The Electronics Frontier Foundation continues to study the files to see what other information is being embedded in the files. 

As of this writing Apple has not commented on the issue.