Posted 08/22/2008 at 12:39:46pm

I have to admit, the device, in concept is pretty darn cool.  It was really pretty cool to have the abilty to sync up w/ my Yahoo account and play Launchcast Radio... the flaw is that the Launchcast Radio didn't really provide me with mixes of music that I really cared for, but occasionally I would hear a song that I liked and with my subscription, I could just say "Get this song" and it would download and be available to play on-demand... That was the only really cool part, but since Yahoo Music is going bye-bye, it leaves me with quite a dud, especially given the shoddy battery life (like 5 hours tops with an ever-draining standby mode). 

Is there anyway anyone (someone much smarter than me obviously) to hack the firmware of this device kinda like we can do with our Linksys Routers w/ Tomato or DD-WRT?  It seems like such a waste of landfill space if someone could hack it to do the following instead:

- CONNECT TO PANDORA!!! 
- Support friggon MP4 video
- Support RSS-Podcast feeds - I'm so sick of having to download my shows and hook up the player to transfer them (which only works 1/2 the time w/o having to reboot the device, which ALSO takes like 30 seconds to boot).  If wi-fi's built in, why not provide a podcast aggregator.  A news reader and mini browser would be cool, but I'm asking a lot!
- Change the "friends" module to actually allow for IM.

I will retire my Sansa Connect into a some sort of time capsule for now and work on getting something that I'll be happier with.  With all the features I described it's pointing towards an iPhone, but I'm not sure I feel like shelling out the near $150 a month to have the AT&T service.  I'm in a verizon dominated area and not many of my contacts are "In-network" so I need a beefy minute plan and the data plan... ugh... decisions, decisions...

Anyway... just my 2 cents.