It’s all about convergence. It’s all…about…convergence. Howsabout a sweet memory foam neck pillow with built-in speakers? Plug in your portable audio player or, hell, plug it right into your computer to hear that sweet Eudora jingle every time you get a new e-mail. Eudora’s still cool, right? Anyhoo, I have no idea how long this wonderful product has been in existence but I just noticed… → Read More
It’s not just iPhone users who can listen to the radio while toolin’ about their fine city. A just-released (well, re-released, kinda) application for the BlackBerry called the Mobiola xPlayer lets you listen to Internet radio (that includes live news and the like) and MP3s (and AACs and WMAs, etc.) Listening to MP3s and the like won’t cost you anything, but to hear Internet… → Read More
Oh, Yahoo. Why do you make it so hard to like you? Take this story. Yahoo is shutting down its music download store at the end of September, including the DRM validation servers. Without DRM validation servers, people who purchased tracks outright won’t be able to play them. In other words, people will be left with useless files on their hard drives. Nice. To be fair, it’s not like… → Read More
Can you tell it’s summertime yet? This delightful little concept that’ll never actually be manufactured, called Sweet Honey, combines aroma therapy with lossy MP3s, which just has to be a match made in Heaven. The little bulb thing on the other end of the headphone wire contains a scented tablet. Depending on the type of music being played, different scents are released. Fact: when you… → Read More
I still have my 20GB Dell DJ (the one on the left up there). It’s been sitting in a box marked “To Sell on eBay” for, oh, at least three years along with my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, my first-generation Nintendo DS, and a couple of ink cartridges for an old Lexmark printer. Bad news for me, as it appears the value of my old Dell music player might plummet when Dell’s new MP3 players hit… → Read More
Journey, the “band,” has a 1GB MP3 player out there, brought to you by the fine folks at ZVUE. It comes with 11 brand new songs from the album Revelation and 11 re-recorded songs. A neat venture, but one we’d like to see with a good band, like My Chemical Romance. via Anything But iPod → Read More
The UK’s Sky and Universal are the latest companies to try, and ultimately fail, to knock Apple’s iTunes off its high horse. The two have teamed up to launch a new service, due later this year, that will be one of those all-you-can-eat subscription schemes. Think Napster and Rhapsody. Thankfully, songs that are downloadable will be DRM-free. Universal is the biggest record company of… → Read More
Hackers are now using ASF (Advanced System Format) to trick PC users into installing malicious software. If you’re not familiar with ASF, it’s a Microsoft-defined container format for media streams that contain additional content like links to websites and images. You don’t see it around quite as much these days (most sites use FLV or some such these days) but it’s still… → Read More
A British shoppe is now hawking what it calls the “Sport In-Ear MP3 Player,” a do-as-you-like 1GB MP3 player you wear around your head. With styling straight out of 1997, the player does all sorts of unexpected things, like supporting, in addition to MP3, WMA and WAV. Its little battery charges over USB. No Mac support, it looks like, but who needs that! So it’s a little on the junk… → Read More
Apple has now sold over five billion songs from its iTunes music store. The program has been around since early 2001. Earlier this year, iTunes surpassed Wal-Mart as the most popular place to buy music. Apple still hasn’t figured out how to sell Drakkar Noir for under $40 through its store but, still, five billion songs is impressive. It’ll be interesting to see how long iTunes will be able to… → Read More
Indie cool iRiver is now showing off (in Korea) the L Player, using message board cool Muse’s likeness to promote it. The portable media player has 2-inch LCD, and works with all the dumb file formats you’re likely to find on The Pirate Bay or whatever, including MPEG-4, XVID and FLAC. There’s even OGG support—that must be great news for, like, nine of you. SRS Wow HD, too. → Read More
The MP3 player, bane of the RIAA and friend to commuters everywhere, was first unveiled in 1998. The first device with built-in MP3 decoding and dedicated storage was the SaeHan Information Systems’s MPMan F10, debuting at Cebit (see this post from a couple months ago). Boasting an impressive 32MB, the machine could play back files loaded via an included serial cable. I remember the first… → Read More
Genuinely funny, last night’s episode of The Office (Hulu link) showcased the gravity of the situation between Apple and NBC. The long and short of it is, Michael wanted to create a mix CD using “M3Ps” for the office’s new human resources guy, who’s actually a girl; Michael falls in love with her immediately, or “love at first see with my ears.” Rather… → Read More
If I owned a car anymore I’d probably take one of Sony’s two new Xplod decks for a ride in my whip. Both the GT920U and GT620U feature support for USB flash media and pump out 52Wx4 output. The 920 has a fold-out face plate, rear USB input and it can be customized in three different colors depending on your preference. Unless you’re Matt Hickey, of course, because he can’t distinguish… → Read More
Lest you all think I’m a nefarious, profit-hating music pirate , I bring word of Beatport’s latest innovation in online music distribution. The music site has developed an Adobe AIR download client that brings the fun of clicking “download now” from your Web browser to a stand-alone program. (If you use twhirl, and follow our sorry lot on Twitter , then you already have AIR… → Read More
I remember seeing a prototype (or something similar) of this kind of device maybe a couple of years ago and thought it was a pretty good idea. For those of you who have old cassette decks (or new ones, even) in your car but have gone all digital as far as your music is concerned, this might be a doodad worth looking into. It’s basically a cassette tape that holds an SD card loaded up with… → Read More
Seems nobody wants to let Michael Robertson help people back up their music online. First it was My.MP3.com which, as you may or may not remember, was a very cool service where you placed one of your CDs in your computer’s CD-ROM drive, the MP3.com software scanned the disc, and a few seconds later all the tracks from that disc were available for you to stream from any internet-connected… → Read More
You would never be able to tell, but Ars Techina has obtained documents (read: an e-mail sent to its employees) proclaiming iTunes as the largest music retailer in the U.S., passing even Wal-Mart. As of January 2008, iTunes now accounts for 19 percent of music sales here, to Wal-Mart’s 15 percent and Best Buy’s 13 percent. (AmazonMP3 is fourth.) Those numbers include online stores… → Read More
This video showing off the Samsung YP-S3 has started floating around the Internet, and we’re not not above embedding it here. The brief introduction to the diminutive portable media player tells us a few things. For one, and most troubling to me, personally, is the inclusion of touch-sensitive buttons. Real buttons make better buttons (unless it’s haptic, then never mind this… → Read More
[photopress:colomp3.jpg,full,right] For only $21.99 you can own this cutting edge, state-of-the-art portable media player, Colossal. Your definition of “portable” would have to be a little more flexible than mine, however, since, judging by the photo, you’d need one hell of a bag to fit it in. Its specs are, shall we say, a little on the unimpressive side as well, being powered… → Read More
[photopress:ningetsit.jpg,full,center] As if you already didn’t know, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails’ frontman, also “gets” it. “It” meaning that the music business, as we once knew it, died some time ago. Also, he thinks Radiohead’s In Rainbows was a stunt more than anything else. Reznor, in speaking with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, called out… → Read More
[photopress:sxswrhap.jpg,full,right] It’s amazing. Ever since the music industry declared war on its customers a few years ago those of us who spend entirely too much time online have debated back and forth on message boards, modern day salons. How dumb is an industry that sues its own customers? (Answer: Very.) What compels people to pirate music in the first place? (Answer: Immediacy. Ease… → Read More
[photopress:p2150.jpg,full,center] The Samsung P2 portable media player usually retails for around $200 but Buy.com has it now for $150. The 4GB model, that is. The Windows-only pmp is constantly evolving. Samsung periodically updates its firmware, adding new features with each update. So if you buy it you’re not getting merely what’s in the box. (In fact, if I remember the PowerPoint… → Read More
Ah, the return of the MP3-playing watch. This time, without the ridiculous headphone cord running up your arm. The GoldLantern Bluex Bluetooth MP3 Watch comes with 1GB of storage and a pair of Bluetooth 2.0 headphones. The watch is good for 12 hours per charge of its lithium-ion battery and will play either MP3 or WMA files. I’m not much of a watch man myself, so I asked our… → Read More
[photopress:usenethow.jpg,full,center] If and when the **AA have Usenet shut down after the piece appears, feel free to blame Biggs. He’s making me write it. I occasionally mention Usenet when talking about piracy here, but I’ve never really explained what it is or what it does. I’m still not going to explain what it is, technically, (that’s what Wikipedia’s for), but… → Read More
[photopress:itunesno1.jpg,full,center] iTunes is on track to become the largest music retailer in the U.S., pipping Wal-Mart to the title. (I’ve never known anyone to buy popular music from Wal-Mart. Clearly I’m out of the mainstream.) NPD said yesterday that iTunes had in fact overtaken Best Buy and Target to become the second biggest music retailer, but its projections show iTunes… → Read More
[photopress:jbshorts.jpg,full,center] Dear John Biggs, This pair of Pearl Izumi Microsensor Bib Shorts reminds me of you. I don’t know what it is about them. Maybe it’s the form-fitting Spandex, maybe it’s the straps that remind me of that thing you wore that one time, who knows. I shouldn’t have brought that up, I know. What I do know, however, is that it has a built-in… → Read More
The PS-LX300USB is one of the most exciting new inventions to come down the pike in a long time. See, it’s a record turntable that connects to a computer. Records are disks encoded with music or spoken word and these records spin. A needle touches these disks and transmits the audio electronically to a digital sound thingie that puts it on the USB cable and then into your computer. If you… → Read More
[photopress:rezzzz.jpg,full,center] Microsoft has said that video games from its XNA Game Studio will make their way to the Zune. Being the ambitious young man that I am, I thought to myself, “Well why stop at XNA games? What if Microsoft were magically able to strike deals with publishers, letting it port over other games to the Zune?” Perhaps the biggest problem is figuring out just… → Read More
[photopress:sonya820.jpg,full,center] New Sony portable media players for your viewing pleasure. The NW-A820 series was just announced in Japan, where it’ll be released on March 20. (No release date for the U.S. has been announced. Sony hates us.) Two versions have so far been spotted, a $350ish 16GB model and a $260ish 8GB model. Now, then, what does it do? First, what it… → Read More
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