Protecting Your Baby

With 50 million sold and counting, Apple's iPod is the aspirin of MP3 players. Whether its iPod/iTunes one-two punch will maintain its market dominance in digital music playback and sales is unsure. But don't bet against them yet.

Apple has made a habit of introducing an iPod update about once a year, just in time for the holiday shopping season. And while all of your music is safe, new iPods have brought you more capacity, color screens, digital image viewing, video capability and lower prices. Supposedly some kind of cell phone or wireless connectivity is on the horizon, but let's not talk about that until September.

But with all of the advancements, there are occasionally new problems. As with the latest 5th generation iPod and the iPod Nano's well reported propensity to scratch. Simply putting it in your pocket with say a wallet or mobile phone can result in a series of frustrating and blurring scratches on the front screen and the gleaming silver back. So just as it is important to protect your iPod from serious falls, it is important to protect it from minor bumps and bruises, because these are gadgets aren't free.

Check out Allsop's Slick Skins as a way to protect the body of your iPod. These work like a cross between a sticker and a vinyl window cling. It wraps around the player protecting the screen, the face and the backside. And whether you want to use a clear Slick Skin to show off your good taste, Allsop offers a series of images to let you personalize your player. Simply put: you can make your iPod look a little different than the other 49,999,999 other iPods out there.

One of the benefits of the iPod is its portability, and your ability to take it on the road, to the lake or white water rafting for that matter. This desire to take your player on your adventures makes sense. That way you can actually listen to Eye of the Tiger while you’re running up the steps of your local library, instead of just humming the tune to yourself.

But if you're going to take your iPod or digital camera or cell phone out into the wild, protect it. Allsop's Splash Pack gives you an airtight place to keep out water, sand, grease or Jell-o. But if you're going to take it swimming, you'll need to get some waterproof headphones.

The Splash Pack will let you listen to your favorite music in any atmosphere, while giving you complete access to the clickwheel so you can adjust the volume, browse around your playlists or showoff your iPhoto collection. You can even take pictures with your digital camera while it's in the Splash Pack.