Who cares about the lowly car radio anymore? Any street hoodlum worth his white powder these days has his eyes on something altogether more high tech. And guess what - its the iPod. Apple's little musical box of tricks is single handedly blamed for the 15% rise in muggings throughout London over the past year.
It is old news that the iPods' distinctive white headphones allow criminals to easily target the owners. So logically as its popularity has grown, so have the muggings. Norwich Union, the insurance company, replaced 36 lost or stolen iPods between January and September last year. This figure grew to 1,721 for the same period this year.
Well fear not, Londonist has a plan. On a day that Apple is supposedly launching a new line of iPods – it is only a few hours now kids, although it seems it won't be the much anticipated vPod after all but a line of smaller bigger capacity colour iPods - we say max out your credit card on Sony's PSP instead.
The PSP's 'brick-like' qualities make it a useful mugger deterrent/weapon and it is not sold with any tell-tell white earphones to tempt budding Artful Dodgers. Genius theory - what, what? The Metropolitan Police have yet to endorse the proposed 'Sod the Pod, PSP for Me' campaign but we're sure it is only a matter of time – urban safety prevails after all.
But a tad more seriously lets take a look at the specs. With a PSP you can already watch videos [I took on 'Lost' this morning on the bus], play Playstation games, surf the net via WiFi, and use it as an MP3 player. With an iPod you can listen music, look at tiny thumbnail photos and, according to the stats, increase your chances of getting mugged tenfold.
For any serious safety conscious traveler or tube devotee the PSP should be a given.
[No money exchanged hands with regard to this post, even though it seems a gratuitous plug. The post was made purely in the interests of public safety. However Sony should feel free to donate to Londonist's developemnt/beer fund ad libitum.]
