160GB Classic, 16GB Touch, 8GB iPhone. With Apple gift-card money to burn, I’ve been agonizing over which to get since I left work today. They all pretty much cost the same so that’s not a differentiator.

The iPhone by far has the coolest feature-set. Built-in speaker, built-in camera + everything the Touch has (not to mention that I could use it as a phone if I wasn’t so afraid to break-up with Sprint).

The Touch is almost everything I was hoping for, but it fell pretty far short on space and it doesn’t have Bluetooth syncing or headphones. I was all about it at first ’cause I think the interface is so cool, and then I saw the accessories that the Apple Store proposed…

One of the accessories they show is the “FM Radio Remote”. You plug your earphones into it and you plug it into your ipod. It lets you control your iPod (fast-forward, rewind, volume, etc). This made me start to think about how I will use the iPod most - to listen to tunes. I’m the guy that will need to skip a song or pause often - how easy is that to do on a touch screen? I don’t see any buttons on the side of the thing. So maybe I’ll get that remote too - oh, it’s not compatible with the iPod Touch.

Now that I already started to think about what I use the iPod for most (listening to tunes), I started to doubt how much utility I would really get out of having a web browser on there or a wireless iTunes store. I’m sure they’d be really cool for a second, but I probably wouldn’t use too often. Watching videos? Maybe, but it’s still a relatively small screen compared to my laptop and TV, and not a ton larger then the iPod Classic screen.

I checked out the demos of the iPod Classic interface on Apple’s website. It looks really slick. They did a very nice job with the Coverflow interface, the search interface and even the games. I bet it will prove more durable in the long run as well. The touch screen is still new. Will you have to touch it 5 times to get it to do what you want a year from now?

So the space thing is what really tips the scale for me now. I have over 80GB of music. I’ve owned 5 and 10GB iPod models before and I’ve always had to pick and choose what I take with me. The idea of being able to automatically sync my whole library is very appealing to me and I’m psyched that I have that option.

I’m sure I’ll look at all the iPod Touches on the subway and wish I had one. Just like I wish I had the iPhone. I guess I just need to wait for those devices to be a little more practical.

Apple, if you read this, here’s what would have swayed me to embrace the touch:
- Wireless synch with my iTunes library
- Wireless remote so I can skip songs, change volume or pause the music while moving about
- At least double the current space offerings
- Physical Skip/Volume/Pause buttons on the device

Oh yeah, and I swear this wasn’t part of the decision - I can get the Classic tomorrow!

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So you’re addicted to Facebook? You’re not alone. Say hello to the radiusIM Facebook App. It takes all the cool features of radius and puts them right inside Facebook. The best part is that it automatically adds any of your Facebook friends who also use radiusIM, so you can IM them and see where they are. And you get the added bonus of the widget in your profile.

Be sure to link your existing account when loging in through Facebook so there’s no need to re-enter your AIM/MSN accounts etc. Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Al tener muchos visitantes de habla hispana en nuestra página, decidimos brindar el servicio ahora en Español. Muchas de las cosas están traducidas, pero si ven algo en inglés por favor háganoslo saber. Ahora el mundo de habla hispana puede disfrutar mas de radius!

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We’ve made the map a lot more fun this week by adding the ‘me’ bubble. It makes sharing your location with your friends a whole lot easier. All you have to do is drag and drop it to wherever you want to place yourself. You can also just type in an address by clicking the address link and then click the map at the new location to place yourself there.

Saving your favorite locations is also easier. Just click the globe icon and choose ’save current location.’ The next time you click the globe you’ll see it listed there along with any other locations you choose to save.

Let us know how you like it.

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We’re going to upgrade our network to help us handle more people on the site. Popularity is good thing!

We’ll have to take a little downtime, though. The site will be down on Friday July 6th from 6:00 PM EST to 8:00 PM EST. Sorry for the inconvenience and be sure to check back in after we’re done.

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We got some time on the beach this week courtesy of the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica. We were invited to present radiusIM and we gave our spiel about what we think is important about location and IM on the web.

The crowd was great and we got to meet some interesting new folks and to see some old friends. Thanks to everyone for the support. Next year we’ll carve out some time for surfing.

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The Map Window is where radius brings to life many of its social features. You can always see your radius friends show up as icons inside the map. The people on the grid outside the map are other radius users. Now when you mouse over them, they pop up inside the map as well. It’s a cool way to see who else is around. Remember, though, everyone’s location is ‘blurred’ to keep things fun.

You can always change your location with the my location window. Click on the globe icon above the map to pick your spot.

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A big congratulations to Eric, our AJAX guru. He’s a proud daddy now!

Rumor has it he’s not gotten much sleep. I guess he’d better get used to that :).

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Everything is more fun when your friends are around, especially on radius where you can see where they are hanging out. To help you get your friends on radius we now have a slick friend importer. You can pull in your friends from Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, Myspace and Facebook and with a few clicks you can see who is already a user and invite all the rest.

Just click the ‘Add a Friend’ button in the Friend List or the ‘invite a friend’ link.

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The latest generation of web apps are doing some pretty cool things, everything from movies on demand to washing your car (well…not yet at least).

Radius performs its magic through some pretty sophisticated JavaScript and a little help from one of the latest browsers makes a big difference. If you’re running something on the older side, try upgrading. We prefer the latest Firefox, but IE 7 works great too.

Happy web surfing!

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