Another strange article from Wired News: Feel Free to Jack into My iPod. There seems to be a growing trend in some areas for people to jack into each others iPods. While the general concept has always been around, this is interesting. There has long been a connection between iPod owners. For them to be so bold as to approach strangers with iPods and swap for a few seconds shows the strange appeal and pull of the device.
The article goes on to mention an interesting concept: local broadcasting to other iPods, over something like BlueTooth or 802.11. You could have a setting like "Share what I'm listening to," and other iPods could browse the local area for sharing iPods and listen not only to the song but pickup the ID3 data as well. One suggestion in the article was that the iPod could even remember what was listened to, to try to drive people to the iTunes Music Store or to a physical store to pick up music they've heard from others they've found interesting. Using the iPod's rating mechanism (tap the select button twice, and you get to a rating screen that easily lets you assign a zero to five star rating to a track - that rating syncs back up to iTunes), you could mark which songs you heard that you personally found interesting so that you could find them later.
Between iTunes Music Sharing (rendezvous enabled streaming built into iTunes 4) and iPod Jack Sharing, there is an interesting new social dynamic going on here. Since the personal broadcasting in iTunes shares by streaming to local networks instead of sharing files directly, it's making music sharing over a network more friendly and personal than the anonymity preferred (with good reason) by the big file trading networks. If Apple can continue to capitalize and expand on this, they're very likely to stay at the top of the digital music game for some time to come.