Category Archives: Product Announcements

People! Let’s find a way to measure exactly how many people are listening to podcasts so that we can set up ways to mine this nascent market! Nobody puts out content and misses out on an opportunity to make money!

Audible.com, purveyor of fine audio content (listen to an NPR program and you’ll likely hear their ads at the end, in case you want a copy of the show) announced on Friday that they have developed a system for cashing in on all of those still-ad-free potential revenue streams. Dubbed Wordcast, the software can be installed on iPods and other digital audio players (or DAPs, for the geeks), in Audible’s .AA file format. Still in beta, it appears to be able to provide podcast producers with the ability to more accurately determine the size of their listening audience, as the embedded software will monitor the number of times files are e-mailed and how far into each podcast listeners progress.

As soon as we can get our act together we’ll get all y’all a podcast. I’m a fool for ignoring the market until now, I tell you!

[Via Red Herring]

Creative is definitely the underdog compared to Apple in the music player market. They must feel like AMD, when the world was abuzz with Pentium chips dominating the marketplace. At any rate, Creative has made some fine players in the past, but this is their latest 20 GB iPod fighter. It has been available globally for a few months, but it is just making its way to the US. While it lacks the flashy video screen, and the support to play video files, it looks like a solid MP3 player for those with a mid size collection of music. Aluminum bodies are always an attention getter, and make “iPod white” look a little drab.

Creative Zen Sleek MP3 player, in durable aluminium and glossy white, is stylish and easy to use. Featuring Creative’s Touch Pad control and large blue backlit display it takes personal entertainment to a new level, fitting comfortably into the hand for fingertip management of all its powerful features. Its 20GB hard disk can store up to 10,000 songs1 in WMA or 5,000 in MP3, with quick and easy downloads from a PC at up to a song per second via USB 2.0. The Zen Sleek offers playtimes up to 18 hours from its rechargeable battery, plus direct recording from the built-in FM radio and microphone.

Check out the specs for yourself here. With any luck, Creative will send one our way to evaluate it firsthand!

Google maps are now phone-friendly; USA Today has the scoop on how those with Cingular, Sprint and T-Mobile phones now have much more than just another way to keep their attention away from the wheel while driving. Using the Java Brew programming language, some 100 phones are compatible with the new service, available at Google.com/glm.

Make sure you have a data plan for your phone before you start using this one, peeps. If you’re all set, hit it up and get yourself out of the woods (urban jungles only, please).

In the old adage of, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” it looks like there will be others looking to try to create similar offerings to the insanely popular Video iPod from Apple. While this press release offers no pictures, I am intrigued by the unit having an interface for flash memory cards. Update: The company sent me a picture. We’ll keep an eye on this device, and test it when available.

The PlayO Pocket Theater’s large capacity 40GB hard disk drive and built-in 11-in-1 flash card reader enable a digital photographer to take numerous pictures without worrying running out of space on their memory cards. Up to 10,000 songs or 20,000 photos from a 3 megapixel camera can be stored, and transferring a file from the HDD onto a computer or another flash memory card is made possible simply by copying and pasting.

Stored images and videos may be displayed either on the device itself, using the 2.5” high resolution TFT LCD display, or on a television using the analog AV-out composite RCA jack. What’s more, the device comes with a remote control so users can even operate the PlayO Pocket Theater from the comfort of a couch. This is ideal for those users who want to store photos to be shared with family and friends while away from home.

It will be nice to see some innovation in this area from companies other than Apple, as well as some competition to push prices down!
You can read the full press release here.

The iPod Nano may not be the only 4 GB flash player for long. Building on their previous experience, they are introducing the m200 player, which tops out at 4 GB of storage, for a competitive $199. So much for everyone claiming they can’t compete with Apple’s sweet deal with Samsung on flash memory.

“It is SanDisk’s guiding principle to always provide superior value to its customers,” said Eric Bone, director of retail product marketing at SanDisk. “One of the ways we have done this with the Sansa m200 line is to feature support for music subscription services and capacities that include a 4-gigabyte (GB) model for $199.99, made possible with our new 70-nanometer NAND/MLC 8-gigabit chip. When you combine these key features with a compact yet robust industrial design and an easy-to-use interface, we believe the Sansa m200 line will be very compelling for anyone who appreciates music.”

So the iTunes phone is finally ready – Apple CEO Steve Jobs is in the process of wooing the media in attendance at today’s event at the Moscone Center, which started approximately one hour ago. The image you see is from the Cingular web site, featured prominently on the front page. I write this from the front seat of my rental car in downtown San Francisco (forgive my lack of posts over the past few days – I’ve been out in SF looking for full-time employment). Having just returned from the flagship Apple store here, I managed to snag a free wifi signal and am keeping an eye out for meter maids as buses and delivery trucks roar by. If they won’t let you attend the event, any self-respecting blogger should take things into his/her own hands, I say. If this isn’t blogging, what is, right? Updates to follow.

UPDATE (3:45 pm PST):
This is already all over the net, but since I finally secured a reliable connection (at my friend’s house) I figured I’d just post the highlights of today’s Apple announcement:

• iTunes phone. Available exclusively from Cingular in the states, the phone is $249 with a 2-year contract. It’s a tri-band GSM/GPRS phone with a built-in VGA camera, speakerphone, Bluetooth and apparently sports up to nine hours of talk time (if true, major thumbs up). The phone can hold up to 100 songs, downloaded from your Mac or PC.
• iTunes 5. The latest version of the music app sports a few minor aesthetic changes, as well as support for the new iTunes phone, a new type of smart shuffle allowing adjustments to random playback and a few other features.
• iPod nano. Similar in appearance to its big brother, the full-size iPod, the nano apparently emerged from the ether and killed the iPod mini, taking its place in Apple’s music player lineup. Thin as a pencil and approximately 3.5 inches wide, it sports a color screen and comes with either 2 GB ($199) or 4 GB ($249) of space, in either white or black.

Those who are interested can watch this morning’s keynote here.

“and then I saw her screen, now I’m a believer” Oh Mobiblu, I think I love you.

This iPod Shuffle killer has won me over, and I’ve never even met her in person. Less than 1 cubic inch in volume this baby packs a punch and bite like Mr. Tyson. OLCD display, 1GB, FM tuner, Clock, Li-Ion battery, and all at .63 oz, I can’t live without one.

Mobiblu keychains, earrings, appetizers, and dice are just a few of the many uses a new Mobiblu could bring to my life. If anyone on the planet really loves me, then they’d buy me the 1GB version. Let’s expand that to anyone in the galaxy. I can do without gas in my car, food in the fridge, and who pays water bills anyway… I need a Mobiblu!

Sirius just announced its first portable satellite radio player, the S50, available in October. With a color display and the ability to store satellite radio programming and MP3/WMA files, the 1.9 x 3.9-inch player also includes voice-assisted navigation of content, organized by channel.

With a suggested retail price of $359.99, Sirius says the S50 will come with a 6-hour rechargeable battery, earbuds, a belt clip, USB cable and AC adapter. The unit will also come with a car dock to enable listening while at the wheel.

Frankly, it seems rather surprising that it took Sirius this long to get their portable player out – XM’s MiFi’s been out for nearly a year. Given that these portable devices will ultimately differ little in their core functionality (unless the companies start packing a ton of value-added features into them), the content war is really where it’s at. XM snags ex-NPR newsman Bob Edwards, Sirius signs Howard Stern in a cool five-year, $500 million deal…and on and on.

So Google did launch Google Talk this morning, making yesterday’s LA Times piece spot on. Supporting free voice calls and traditional text-based chat, the app’s in beta (come on, it’s Google!) and currently for Windows only. Sporting compatibility with Jabber/XMPP-based IM clients like Trillian, GAIM, iChat, Adium and Psi, it requires a Gmail account and automatically imports your contacts, giving you the ability to e-mail them as well as give ’em a call.

[Thanks for the e-mail, Tai!]

So the guys at Axion just announced a TV tuner and Sega gaming controller for their proprietary Axi-port enabled portable DVD players. I’ve personally never heard of the company, which is an immediate indication that this type of thing could be a good way to get them some press. The “ergonomically designed controller” is likely to provide “hours of entertainment” with help from the seven Sega games stored in its memory:

•Super Shinobi III
•Altered Beast
•Columns III
•Shadow Dance
•Flicky
•Gain Ground
•Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle

I remember Altered Beast and Gain Ground (a personal favorite) from the arcades. Old school. Damn. We here at LD might just have to make an effort to get our mitts on one of these babies (in addition to a device with one of these so-called “Axi ports”) to see just how engrossing the experiene can be. Cheers to the idea of a portable TV tuner – portable DVD players have been hot for a while now as parents find new ways to keep AV-deprived children happy. Kidding. Snagging free cable signals from the ether for their viewing pleasure could bring much-needed relief when the kids want to watch Lilo & Stitch AGAIN. Make them watch the Food Network or something – that way they could get a few ideas about what they’d like for dinner while watching chefs compete to design the best carp dishes.

Ewww.

The guys over at Trusted Reviews just posted this nice review of Maxtor’s new FireWire 800 edition of the OneTouch II. A 300 GB (279 when NTFS formatted), 7,200 RPM drive, they give it three solid scores:

Features: 8/10
Performance: 9/10
Value: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

Not bad. With three different ports in the back (one FireWire 400, one USB 2.0 and two FireWire 800), a nicely-designed case, one-touch backup and data lock features and good data transfer speeds, it’s a solid buy.
Price? Froogle says…from the low $200s to over $300.

Now that I’ve grown to love it, I couldn’t imagine working without tabbed browsing. In the early years of the public internet I was sated by the simple fact that I had access to so much information – digesting the concept of a browser took time. Now I’m like many people out there, navigating windows crammed with tabs, jumping between applications and trying to find time for everything (while not getting distracted).

Reading this Register article got me thinking. It’s about Japanese software company NTT’s plans for an October release of SpaceBrowser, its three-dimensional web browser, which, at $275, claims to be able to render IE information in three dimensions:

Looking at the above screenshot, its easy to think of Exposé, a feature introduced in the latest version of Mac OS X:

With two Macs at home, I occasionally using Exposé, but, perhaps surprisingly, I typically forget about it and simply do a homemade organizing job, layering browser windows and clicking back and forth between them. When it comes time to move between applications, I simply do so using command-tab, which brings up a semi-transparent bar at the center of the screen and allows you to move between icons of currently open applications. I know I’m living two lives when I use these new features while falling back on old habits – I’m stacking windows that are now full of tabs!

These new ways of navigating through all of this information are a great new way of looking at the browsing experience, whether on the internet, your home computer or in corporate environments (think project management). Curiously, I think an element of this entire movement that’s easily overlooked is this: this stuff wouldn’t stand a chance without the increased prevalence of larger computer screens. Thinking back to the days of a 15″ monitor, I couldn’t imagine trying to effectively navigate through shrunken application windows floating in simulated 3D. Nowadays, I find a monitor less than 19″ completely undesirable (laptops excluded, of course).

Anyone care to comment on SpaceBrowser’s worth (or lack thereof)?