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Vulture Bytes: Like Cyber Monday All Year Round

Welcome back to Vulture’s weekly list of the stuff that will help you, technophilic pop-culture swami that you are, consume your entertainment in the most cutting-edge of fashions. This week: iPod watches, movie-quote databases, Altoid amps, a better way to sync music, and a new way to watch video on the iPad.

And, as always, your ideas/pitches/spam about the products, apps, and sites that we should be featuring are welcome.

Rather than wear an actual watch, why not wear an iPod Nano that happens to tell time? TikTok creator Scott Wilson took his idea to Kickstarter, hoping to raise $15,000. As of today, he’s raised more than $500,000. It’s a simple design — between the watchband there’s a holster for your iPod Nano to snap into, making it the faceplate. The units start shipping in late December. When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, find out by glancing at your iPod watch, not some Ryan Seacrest TV show. PRICE: $25 for the entry-level kit; $50 for the high-grade aluminum model.
We have a friend. Let’s call him Doc. Doc is great — but sometimes we have no idea what he’s talking about, because 50 percent of what he says is a movie quote. And every time he drops a line, he hopes that we’ll reciprocate with the next bit of dialogue. But we’re no good with quotes, so we never know what we’re supposed to say after he screams “1.21 gigawatts!Subzin.com would like to help. It’s a website with more movie quotes than we — or even our friend — know what to do with. Search any word or phrase and it will come up with a full index of who said it, when he or she said it, and who replied a moment later. Now, when you ask Doc “What the hell is a gigawatt?” you’ll know what you’re talking about. PRICE: Free.
Think back to that first time you tried an Altoid. It was likely in middle school after a stilted waltz at the Snowball Dance. Despite your mouth being nowhere close to your date’s, she offered an Altoid. You didn’t know whether to be touched or embarrassed. Similarly confound your friends when you whip out a tin of Altoids and reveal that it’s actually a portable speaker. It comes with a cable that plugs into any headphone jack. An added bonus: It’s on Etsy, so you’ll feel like you’re supporting independent Altoids artists when you make the purchase. The only flaw: For some reason, the slogan isn’t “Curiously strong speakers.” PRICE: $30. Comes in multiple flavors.
After we downloaded those new Kanye and Robyn albums we told you about last week (still cheap at $4.99 each), we had to get them into our iPhone. Which meant we had to find our USB cable, remember to put it back in the charger when we were done, and eventually we got more irritable than Kanye on the Today show. If only we had an Android phone. This week, WinAmp released the newest version of its Android app, and it has a wireless sync feature. Put your phone on the same Wi-Fi network as your iTunes library, and WinAmp will sync it for you. No cords. iPhone die-hards take note. We have. PRICE: Free.
All these new gizmos that send the Internet to the TV are just doing the inverse of what SlingPlayer did a few years ago. The little box hooks into your DVR and lets you watch the video on your computer or mobile-phone screen, no matter where your computer or phone happens to be. It’s perfect for travelers and twentysomethings who don’t want to pay for cable but don’t mind mooching off their parents’ subscriptions. Now there’s a way to watch Slingbox video on your iPad, in case you’re the twentysomething who used the $500 you saved on the cable bill to buy a tablet. Downside: When your parents are watching Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, so are you. PRICE: Free, but requires a Slingbox, which start at $180.
Vulture Bytes: Like Cyber Monday All Year Round