SwiMP3
A few of you guys have asked me what I'm using to listen to This American Life while I swim, so here's some information.
That's a picture of the "SwiMP3 v2" from Finis. The picture (from the Finis website) doesn't represent the actual size of the player, but it's pretty close. It only weighs 2 ounces, believe it or not, and it's waterproof.
The SwiMP3 supports MP3 and WMA files, the capacity is 256MB, and a media player is pre-loaded. The player functions are basic--turn on/off, increase/decrease volume, next/previous track--but when I'm swimming, it's all I need.
What makes this player unique is that there's nothing to put in your ears--the speakers rely on conduction through the bones in your skull. So you just put one speaker on each side of your face, under the goggle strap, and you can hear the music. It's fantastic, because the sound quality is quite good, and you don't have to constantly screw with earphones--the goggles keep the speakers in place, and I don't even notice them on my face.
In terms of the interface when you're not in the pool, there's a cable to connect the player to your computer via USB. That's how you charge it, and it's also how you move files to and from the player (it just shows up as a storage device in Explorer).
It's $199, which isn't cheap, but it's pretty amazing to be listening to music (or, in my case, TAL) while you swim. Anyway, if you want to check it out, go here.
If I don't get a case of This American Life tendonitis, I'm going to be in very good shape in another few weeks.
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