Your iPod Can Be a Lifesaver!

[Tuckerfan]

Rescuers find missing man thanks to the light from his iPod.

An iPod screen glowing in the middle of the night from thick underbrush led rescuers to a mushroom picker lost in the woods.

The search leader said Pini Nou, 25, of Vancouver, Wash., was on his first outing and got separated from his mother, an experienced mushroom hunter. At nightfall, she called Benton County authorities for help.

I wonder if Apple will use the guy in one of their ads?

[ParentalAdvisory]

I wonder what kind of mushrooms he “hunted”?

[Mindfield]

That’s pretty damn lucky, all the more so because iPods are designed by default to turn the backlight off after so many seconds due to the power drain. He must have set it to keep the light on.

Not so much help for those with a Shuffle.

[AskNott]

I don’t know just where I heard this…

A guy’s next door neighbor had a little bitty car that wouldn’t start. So he gave him a jumpstart from his iPod.

[bouv]

@AskNott

A guy’s next door neighbor had a little bitty car that wouldn’t start. So he gave him a jumpstart from his iPod.

I don’t see how that could possibly work. Even the bittiest cars still use 12 V batteries, yes? An iPod is, what, 5 volts? Even if you then had a voltage converter just lying around to jump it with, now way can that little battery put out enough amps to turn over a starter motor.

[scr4]

@Mindfield

He must have set it to keep the light on.

The article says he’d been using the iPod as a flashlight, so yes, he must have done so. Still very lucky though - I think the battery only lasts a couple of hours with the backlight on.

[tbdi]

Seems strange that they could be close enough to see the light but not close enough to be able to hear, assuming they were calling out while searching. Just how bright are those things?

[TimeWinder]

@scr4

The article says he’d been using the iPod as a flashlight, so yes, he must have done so. Still very lucky though - I think the battery only lasts a couple of hours with the backlight on.

The new video ones will get 6 hours playing a movie, with the light on all the time and the hard drive running. If you were just using the light, I can see it lasting much of a night.

[Misnomer]

The other week I had a sudden power outage (no storms in the area, bill paid up, etc.), and used the backlight from my Harmony remote control to get upstairs to the nearest flashlight.

[TimeWinder]

@tbdi

Seems strange that they could be close enough to see the light but not close enough to be able to hear, assuming they were calling out while searching. Just how bright are those things?

I hate passing on things I can’t easily cite for, but “I’ve heard” ™ that the light of a single candle is visible for ten miles or more on a dark night. Dark adaptation in eyes is remarkable: “supposedly” dark-adapted eyes in complete darkness can “see” a single photon.

I live on one edge of a wide valley; there are houses across from me, perhaps 15 miles away. I can see their house lights clearly even on a fairly cloudy (bright) night. The light on an iPod isn’t that bright, but I’m sure I could see one from much farther away than I could hear shouting, especially if there were wind or other ambient noise.