5 Personal Technologies that Survived Hurricane Sandy

Here are the personal digital media technologies that still worked at the height of the storm.

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JOHN MINCHILLO / AP

Vehicles are submerged on 14th Street near the Consolidated Edison power plant in New York City on Oct. 29, 2012

During Monday’s big storm, much of Brooklyn lost access to the internet and cable television; although the lights flickered, we never lost power.

Throughout the onslaught — just north of Red Hook where my friend Nick shot the now-internet-famous photograph to the right, from his living room — some of my electronics kept on trucking.

Here are the personal digital media technologies that still worked at the height of the storm. The next time your internet, cable, and/or power goes out, they could keep you entertained when Scrabble-by-candlelight gets old.

1. DVR

Our television lost its cable signal fairly early on, and we have yet to cut the cord and go to HD broadcasts and net video. Nonetheless, I had plenty of television stored up on the DVR, recorded before the storm hit. It was nice, actually, to watch something besides wind-whipped reporters in anoraks yelling over the wind as gusts rattled our windowpanes.

2. Apple AirPlay

As the accompaniment to an epic hurricane Scrabble session, we listened to The Beatles and The Charlatans over the stereo. Even though our internet was down — thus no Sonos streaming — our Wi-Fi was up, so the AirPort Express worked just fine with iTunes.

3. Offline Playlists

With the help of Evolver.fm and Huffington Post readers, we built a massive collaborative hurricane playlist on Spotify, starting with the music we assembled for last year’s Hurricane Irene. However, that was for streaming only. Luckily, I had cached the Irene playlist on my laptop and smartphone, so I could rock that even in the absence of the internet.

Nick Cope / Green Painting

4. Charged Books

What a world we live in, when you have to keep your books charged, but there you have it. Before the storm hit, I charged up my Kindle and iPad just in case we lost power and I had to, you know, read or something. It never came to that — but it could have.

5. 3G Data

Even though AT&T has been clamping down on my “unlimited data plan” like the heartless, two-faced bastards that they are, I was able to access the mobile web and use SMS to stay in touch with all the friends and family who wanted to know how we were doing, after being horrified by what they saw on their real-time televisions.

This post originally appeared on Evolver.fm.

Eliot Van Buskirk is the editor of Evolver.fm, the world’s first publication for music fans that’s dedicated to music apps. An award-winning columnist, Van Buskirk has covered digital music since 1997 for CNET, Wired, and now Evolver.fm; is the author of two books for McGraw-Hill; and can be heard regularly on NPR and other outlets.

(Photos: Nick Cope 0f Green Painting)