During his regular evening walk, software executive Steve Crandall often nods a polite greeting to other iPod users he passes: He easily spots the distinctive white earbuds threaded from pocket to ears.
But while quietly enjoying some chamber music one evening in August, Crandall's polite nodding protocol was rudely shattered.
Crandall was boldly approached by another iPod user, a 30ish woman bopping enthusiastically to some high-energy tune.
"She walked right up to me and got within my comfort field," Crandall stammered. "I was taken aback. She pulled out the earbuds on her iPod and indicated the jack with her eyes."
Warily unplugging his own earbuds, Crandall gingerly plugged them into the woman's iPod, and was greeted by a rush of techno.
"We listened for about 30 seconds," Crandall said. "No words were exchanged. We nodded and walked off."
The following evening, Crandall saw the woman again. This time, she was sharing her iPod with another iPod regular Crandall had spotted on his walks.
Within a couple of days, Crandall had performed the iPod sharing ritual with all the other four or five regulars he sees on his walks. Since August, they've listened to each other's music dozens of times.
"It's very strange," he said. "It's almost like you're being a DJ for the other person.... It's very gratifying if you see someone dancing around to the music you're listening to. It's a great feeling to see other people enjoying your music, and my tastes are fairly bizarre."
Crandall, the 51-year-old CTO of Omenti Research, lives in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, a "nice, middle-class small town." He is into indigenous music from northern Europe, like the tribal folk music of the Sami.
But he's been turned on to techno and other unfamiliar types of music he's heard on his acquaintances' iPods, especially the one owned by the 30ish woman.
"She listens to techno and trance and things like that," he said. "Things I'm completely disconnected from. Stuff I'd never listen to unless someone is guiding me.... It's interesting. I've probably bought half a dozen CDs based on what I've heard. It's like finding a new radio station."
In fact, Crandall has taken to carrying pen and paper to jot down titles he likes. The others do the same.
Generally, no one speaks, but "it's a very friendly sort of thing," Crandall said. "It's kind of nice to keep it very private."
Since posting a couple of notes about his experiences on his blog, Crandall has received several responses from others who also have shared their iPods with strangers.
"I tried this at Oberlin today, and the five people I passed all reciprocated," someone called Cindy noted in a comment. "This is new to me, but I found some great music I've never heard. Then again, Oberlin is a great place for finding music."
Crandall said he has received other reports – not published on his blog – that iPod jack sharing has since taken off at Oberlin College, and is also practiced in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, another college town.
It is so common in Cambridge, someone has printed a T-shirt that says, "Feel free to jack into my plug," Crandall said. Crandall said he's also been told the practice is quite popular on the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar Animation Studios (Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs' other company).
However, Crandall was unable to provide contacts by press time, and a spokeswoman for Pixar said she'd not personally witnessed employees sharing iPods. The Pixar spokeswoman added she was too busy with the recent DVD release of Finding Nemo to look into it.
"It's not widespread at all, but it's the kind of thing that might take off at a campus or in a small community," Crandall said.
Crandall said he tried sharing iPods in New York's SoHo district with about six people he passed on the sidewalk. Three gave him dirty looks and moved quickly on, while the other three reciprocated. "I don't think it's a native activity there," he said.
Dennis Lloyd, publisher of the iPodlounge, said he was only aware of jack sharing through a thread started by Crandall on the site's forums. But he liked the idea.
"With so many people plugged in these days, it's nice to hear people are actually connecting in the real world," he said. "Reach out and jack someone."
Author Douglas Rushkoff suggested that iPod sharing is a legacy of online file sharing – essentially the same thing, except offline.
"It's kind of a stoner's ethic, really, the way you pass the joint at a Dead show," he said.
Sharing an iPod through its headphone jack is also a crude, low-tech version of what some predict is the real killer application of future iPods: transforming them into short-distance broadcasting devices by adding Bluetooth or similar radio technology, coupled with Rendezvous, an Apple-developed networking technology that allows devices to discover each other automatically.
The prospect of letting iPod users listen to each other's libraries wirelessly has sparked numerous excited forum posts on the iPodlounge and other sites.
The Register's Andrew Orlowski, for example, has suggested several times that turning an iPod into a personal micro-radio station would be "revolutionary."
"It would greatly annoy the RIAA, which would argue that it's a portable Napster," he wrote in 2002. "But ... this music-sharing appliance could have fairly dramatic social effects.... You could get promiscuous with strangers: You could pair and exchange a song on the same short bus ride. You could create short, ad hoc personal broadcasts, to anyone else with a Bluetooth iPod. You could have a 'What am I listening to?' menu option and share your choice with anyone within discoverable range."
Taking Orlowski's "what am I listening to?" option to its logical conclusion, others have suggested that files received wirelessly could be looked up automatically on Apple's iTunes Music Store when users plug their iPods into their main computer. Users would then be asked if they wanted to buy and download the tunes they heard on the road.
