Best of 2008 for iPhone and iPod

With dozens of companies bringing hundreds of new products to market for iPhone and iPod each year, it’s more important than ever to sort out the good from bad and identify the best of the best. During the course of 2008 we’ve hand-tested an untold number of iPod and iPhone related products from manufacturers around the globe, and over the next several pages we share what we believe to be the best products on the market in 2008.



Our awards are separated into categories including speaker systems, alarm clocks, headphones, cases, batteries, broken down into subcategories based on price range and compatibility where appropriate, and finally a few uncategorized products. Here you’ll find a brief listing of this year’s winners in each category; for full product descriptions and the reason each product was selected, along with photos of the winners and a listing of the non-winning finalists in each category, download the year-end double issue of iProng Magazine for free.

Best non-portable high-end speaker system: Logitech Pure-Fi Elite

Best non-portable mid-priced speaker system: Altec Lansing T612

Best non-portable value-priced speaker system: mStation Orb

Best portable high-end speaker system: Griffin Evolve

Best portable mid-priced speaker system: Altec Lansing inMotion MAX

Best portable value-priced speaker system: Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere 2

Best non-portable alarm clock: Altec Lansing Moondance Glow

Best portable alarm clock: iHome iH27 and iP27

Best high-end iPhone headphones: Etymotic ht2

Best mid-priced iPhone headphones: v-moda vibe ii

Best value-priced iPhone headphones: RadTech ProCable

Best high-end iPod headphones: FutureSonics Atrio

Best value-priced iPod headphones: iFrogz EarPollution

Best wireless headphones: Wi-Gear iMuffs MB220

Best iPhone 3G hard plastic case: iFrogz Luxe and RadTech ARC (tie)

Best iPhone 3G soft rubber case: Speck ToughSkin

Best iPhone 3G leather case: Vaja iVolution

Best iPhone 3G element-protectant case: OtterBox Defender

Best iPhone external battery: Mophie JuicePack and FastMac iV (tie)

Best iPod shuffle product: H20 Audio iSH2

Uncategorized winner: Macally PowerLink

Uncategorized winner: Griffin PowerDock

All-American Rejects interview

Three and a half whirlwind years after the release of their sophomore album Move Along, a stretch of time in which “the phone didn’t really stop ringing,” the All-American Rejects are releasing their new album When The World Comes Down today. Founding guitarist Nick Wheeler couldn’t wait to tell me all about the process of creating the album, a process which led the band all across America, what he thinks about the arrival of pro sports in his native Oklahoma, and how the band ended up with its own justin.tv channel…

Move Along was such a successful record for you and catapulted you guys into the mainstream. What’s the ride been like since then? Have you had a chance to stop and breathe?



Not really. I mean we’re not a band to try to capitalize on any kind of success, or in this case we didn’t want to just make Move Along again. We actually wanted to mature and grow as a band, much like we did between the first and second album. Only that time we actually have time to slow down and create, you know? This time, like I always say, the phone didn’t really stop ringing. Over the last two years, aside from writing and recording the new record, we were going out and playing more shows, and some offers we couldn’t refuse came in. And we also got to do some really cool things, like we did five shows with Bon Jovi, two of those were at Madison Square Garden. So it’s been pretty insane, but I think we removed ourselves enough every once in awhile to actually get our heads back on straight and just create something real from deep down, you know, we had to find it. It took awhile, but we finally did man, and we’re fucking proud as hell of this new album.

With the last record you had the songs basically finished before you went into the studio, but this time it was a different story.

We used to go into the studio with notes, you know what I mean? We were over-prepared. All the songs were done, etc. This time around, yeah man, we can’t stay in one place for more than two weeks. So we were ready to get going. It was like, alright, we gotta start thinking about making the record. It was scary but at the same time we were kind of excited to be able to create a little bit on the spot. We certainly had an album’s worth of songs, and we started recording the ones that we liked the best, and most of them made the record. But there was a couple that came about in the studio. One was a song that we had written like two or three years ago, probably three years ago, and we actually never really finished it, kind of shelved it, and we revisited it and it ended up being one of the best songs on the record, it’s the last song, it’s called When The Wind Blows. And there’s another song called Breakin’ that after about four or five months of recording we kind of went nuts, alright, now we’ve gotta get out of here and write a couple more songs. We’re not gonna do it working twelve hours a day, tracking all these other songs. So Tyson and I got on a bus, we had a show in Connecticut and a show in Seattle, and they were two weeks apart, so Tyson and I got on a bus and every night the driver drove us eight hours and dropped us off in Town X. We saw everything from Mount Rushmore to Sandusky, Ohio. So like I said, we got to remove ourselves and just kind of buckle down and really try to be creative.

At one point you were in a cabin in Georgia, then a house in Florida, then an apartment behind the Roxy here in Los Angeles. Were you purposely trying to change up environments?

Yeah, we can’t really stay in one spot for two weeks anymore or we get restless. We love waking up in a new city every day. That’s what we do for a living. It’s great, you know? It’s exciting, and no place really feels like home right now. I mean we go back to Oklahoma and it’s great cause we’ve got a bunch of family and friends, but it’s really hard to just get back to where we were when we started, when we were really hungry. So because we had the means this time, the bigger budget, being on a bigger label, we took advantage and we removed ourselves from everything and everybody, whether it was up in the mountains and the woods in Georgia, or whether it was in some random condo in Vancouver. We were able to do that and just really kind of build a little prison around ourselves where we had nothing to do but stress out about creating. And something about that really brought some cool things.

The first single Gives You Hell is instantly catchy. Was that the clear-cut first single all along?

No, you know we’ve never really been one to pick our first single. We didn’t pick Swing Swing, we didn’t pick Dirty Little Secret. It’s kind of one of those things where we have all these babies and you have to pick a favorite. It’s really hard to pick your favorite child, you know?



That song, Gives You Hell, came about in Vancouver actually, just out of the blue. I was kind of working on the music for one of the other songs, and Tyson was like “Hey, I think I’ve got something funny.” And I was like alright, so we put a verse and a chorus and wow, that’s fucking different. This could be fun. So there we were, half a day later we had already recorded the song in demo version. It was one of those things where it’s quirky, it’s weird, I don’t know if it should be the first single, but everybody at the label and management was like freaking out about it, like oh my God, I think somebody even said that we wrote the songs of our careers. We were like alright, cool, you guys were right on the first two records, so let’s give her a go.

If you had to pick one of the other songs as the first single, which one would you have picked?


I don’t know, that’s a tough one. There’s a song called Damn, Girl that we’re all really excited about. We had a song in a movie, I Wanna was the name of the song, that could have been a good contender for a first single. We’ve played it on the road a couple times and everybody on our crew loved it.



You’re already one of the most famous bands ever from Oklahoma. How do you get treated when you go back to Stillwater?

For awhile there was a little bit of, I don’t know, weirdness just going home, and I didn’t have many friends growing up and being in high school, so like all of the sudden people were treating me a little differently and it was kind of weird. But now it’s been long enough to where I realized the other day when I was at home, I could have gone to college here twice and graduated twice, Stillwater’s a little college town so half the population is rotated every four years. So it’s rotated twice since I’ve been home. So it’s not weird anymore. It’s really nice. It feels good to go home. And actually we just went to Muskogee, Oklahoma, which is the site of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, and they inducted us. So it feels really good going home now, for sure.

You just got the basketball team from Seattle. There aren’t a lot of pro teams in Oklahoma. Does that have you stoked?

It’s really cool. man. I mean, when the Hornets had to relocate after Katrina and they went up to Oklahoma City for I think two seasons or something, dude, everybody was freaking out. They had like the best attendance they had had in years, moving to Oklahoma City. And then when they moved back everybody was bummed and their attendance was really crappy back down in New Orleans, etc., so yeah getting a pro team in Oklahoma, everybody’s really excited about it. I think they’ll do just fine.



It’s kind of funny, on our DVD that we did for the last record, the Tournado, in the documentary me and Chris actually went to a SuperSonics game. We got to sit on the sidelines and we got SuperSonics jerseys with our names on them. So I have those displayed in my house in Oklahoma. I thought it was pretty funny.

I saw some of that on your justin.tv channel. I’ve got some friends who have channels on there, I know how invasive and up close and personal that can be. How did that work out?

I forget how it came about. There’s this guy at the label, Matt, who’s just really in tune with this new technology, and he was showing us all these things we could do, one of which was justin.tv and now the Kite Player that we have on our home page. It started just in the studio, we got to show kids what we do every day. And it was pretty cool seeing kids respond with saying shit like “Wow, I didn’t realize what a process this is, no wonder making an album takes so damn long.” Stuff like that. So it’s like yeah, see, don’t get pissed when we go away for two years.



But it was really cool. We got to show them everything from actual tracking to, you know, Tyson making breakfast upstairs. It kind of lets people in, but you only let them in as much as you want to, and you can still kind of have some some mystique and have a personal life.

iProng Magazine year-end double issue: All-American Rejects, Best iPhone and iPod products of 2008, Saving Abel, Paul Kent of Macworld Expo and more!

Ingrid Michaelson interview

iProng Magazine talks with Ingrid Michaelson about her new album Be OK and more in this interview from our December 16th, 2008 issue…

interview by Natalie Gelman

We caught up with Ingrid while she was touring as part of the Hotel Café tour earlier this Fall. “BE OK,” her new EP, had just been released and she was preparing to go on the road with her band for her first ‘real’ full band tour – complete with a tour bus – as she called it.

Ingrid has come into her own since she self-released “Boys and Girls” in January 2007, gaining exposure through licensing the single “The Way I Am” to Old Navy for a commercial and through key song placements. Lynn Grossman, who owns a music licensing company specializing in independent music, discovered Ingrid on Myspace and got Ingrid’s music placed on Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Since then Lynn became Ingrid’s manager and they chose to keep Ingrid an independent artist and build her fan base as organically as possible.

It’s really important to Ingrid to be accessible to her fans. She posts candidly and regularly on her Myspace blog and Twitters with her fans. “I think it’s really important to connect with people because they are what keeps me afloat, …it’s a whole other element outside of the music to make that personal connection and draw them in.” And who can blame her, today fans are bombarded with so much free music the only thing that cuts through that clutter is the personal connection.

It is just that need to be personal that lead Ingrid to the photo shoot for the album cover. The cover is a close up of Ingrid with “BE OK” written across her face, “I was interested in the idea of not wearing glasses, having it be a very vulnerable looking picture – wearing your sadness or problems right on you, not hiding it but embracing it.” The song, Be OK, is an anthem for anyone going through a tough time and 50% of the proceeds from the single go to the Stand Up to Cancer charity.

The music video for Be OK shows how we all are better off when we are supported by and connected to one another, Ingrid plays her ukulele barefoot on a couch while people slowly gather outside her window and sit down, she gets up and goes outside where they all stand up and pick her up above them slowly passing her along carrying Ingrid and letting her down easily at the very end of the song. On her website there is a video of the song posted that features her fans photos of “Be OK” written on their faces.

Ingrid said she usually doesn’t re-write her songs, “the first time it comes out, that’s it.” She doesn’t have a record label to answer to and has grown to feel even more free to do what she wants to do with her music. You can really hear her looser, delicate phrasing on the live solo voice/ukulele or voice/piano tracks on the CD. My personal favorite is Ingrid’s cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Originally performed as an encore when she opened for Dave Matthews Band at Madison Square Garden earlier this year, Dave was moved by the performance because that was one of the first songs he heard LeRoi Moore perform. LeRoi was in the hospital at that time and Ingrid didn’t ever get to meet him, but she included it on the EP as a tribute.

The vulnerability Ingrid exhibits on the album is one of its most defining and meaningful qualities. “I like the idea of being fearless, to a degree, lyrically and melodically.” That enables the songs to be specific in a way that captivates listeners. It’s like listening to your best friend or sister tell you her fears and let you know how to get through it yourself.

Ingrid was really excited to go out on tour with her band when we spoke. She has been playing with most of the people in her band since before she broke with The Way I Am.


I also asked her what she would be doing if she hadn’t gotten an email from Lynn Grossman two years ago: “I don’t know if I would have gotten picked up by a label or probably still working with children’s theater – its always an option for me if it all falls through.” I doubt it will fall through for Ingrid.

Her next album is set to be released in the Fall of 2009. Definitely pick up a copy of the EP, if it isn’t on your holiday wish list it should be – the breezy music will clear your head of all the holiday music you’re already tired of and help you kick off 2009! If you are looking for new holiday songs, Ingrid and Sara Bareilles wrote “Winter Song” for the Hotel Café Winter Songs CD and Ingrid released “Snowfall” as part of the Barnes and Noble “Sunday Music 5: Holiday” collection.

Learn more at IngridMichaelson.com.