Trusonic Model III: Now you know why the GAP seems to love John Mayer songs

Trusonic is one of those companies we rarely hear about. These are the folks who make the music playing devices that burble sweet pop into our ears at stores and doctor’s offices and their latest creation, the MBOX Model III is a tiny MP3 player that offers two zones of music or messages (“Thanks for shopping at Mel’s Whip and Plug emporium!”) You can choose any of 5 million tracks and upload your own messages on the fly. In short, this is basically a box that spits out Muzak.

The new version – the old version is above – uses Flash memory instead of a hard drive to cue up music for playback anywhere you want to antagonize your customers.