When we tour to the International Space Station, we’ll be taking this iPod remote control with us. It looks as though it was designed to be attached to a space suit: Velcro on one side; large, prod-able buttons on the other.

Until that day though, we’ll be using it when we’re mountain biking or snowboarding. It’s soft, chunky, durable and wireless. The soft fabric remote control comprises five buttons, a battery and some electronics. It transmits commands to a small antenna that plugs into the base of any iPod with a click wheel, as well as third generation iPods.

It’s backed with Velcro and sticks to an included arm band, which fits around anything from a weedy bicep to the arm of a heavy snow jacket. If you don’t want to look like you’re wearing a stolen doctor’s blood pressure monitor, you can also clip it to any kind of loop on your clothes with an included carabiner.

It’s not water proof, but it is water resistant. So it will survive the rain and is hand washable. It will survive snow use too, thanks to the -10 to 40 degrees Celsius operating range and buttons big enough to be used with thick gloves. You won’t have much success with boxing gloves, but then again boxing isn’t exactly conductive to iPod use.

It doesn’t have a screen, but the interface is simple enough that it doesn’t need one. It will just let you scroll through tracks and move forward and backward in your selected playlist. If you hold down the forward or backward buttons, the iPod will scan through the song.

You have to manually change playlists, because you can’t jump around menus with the five buttons. Other than the forward and backward buttons, plus and minus buttons control the volume and the play/pause button is pretty self explanatory.

The manual claimed the transmitter would work within a 15 meter range, but in practice it stopped working after about 3 meters. This doesn’t matter, because not even American basketball players are tall enough to need more than this range, and you’ll still need to run a cable from your iPod to your ears anyway.

It’s quite pricey at $129.95, but the build quality is high, it works without any hiccups, and it’s a good product for people who are going to use it.