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Sony presents a new cylindrical MP3 player designed for sports freaks…

Sony: “Perfect for active people who want music wherever they are and whatever they are doing, the Walkman NW-S200 series is compact and lightweight, yet packed with unique features. This includes a durable, water-resistant body; various playback options including ‘Music Pacer™’ and ‘Shuffle Shake’ functions, FM tuner and integral sports counters. In sleek and seamless aluminium, it can withstand water splashes from wet hands, perspiration or outdoor use, even in wet or snowy weather conditions. At the same time its stylish ‘stick & ring’ design in silver, pink or black will also appeal to those who just want their digital music player to look good.”

The users at CNET.com seem rather enthusiastic about the NW-S200. Read more here.

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Creative will come up with a speaker system for the 30GB and newly confirmed 60GB Zen Vision:M, as well as the Zen V and upcoming Zen V Plus flash players.
No specs, no pricing, no further details. Just an inferior picture and a name: the TravelDock Z500. (source: anythingbutipod)

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And now for something completely different. You’ve got your smart phones. There’s music phones. But have you ever heard of flexible phones?

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The Register reports the Vivendi Universal Music Group will make their entire music back catalogue available as free legal downloads. The new Spiral Frog music service will be funded by advertising and is due to start up in December.

the Press Release

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Bloomberg: Toshiba Corp. shares rose after Microsoft  announced that the Japanese giant would be producing its Zune digital music player that will compete with Apple’s iPod.

Microsoft is working with Toshiba to get the device in stores for the Christmas selling season.

Apple has sold more than 58.9 million iPods since their introduction in October 2001, including 8.11 million units in the quarter ended July 1.

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ABC News announces that Dell will exit the MP3 player market. Almost at the same time Creative joined Apple and Sandisk introduced an 8GB Player, doubling the maximum capacity of the iPod Nano. Will the Sansa e280 music player be a real iPod rival or must we believe the 32GB ipod rumour?

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“For less than half the price that my BMW dealer wants to hook my iPod to the 530i’s stereo, you can use Belkin’s TuneBase FM for iPod to hear your music collection through your car’s FM radio.”

That’s Fred Manteghian from Ultimate AV spreading his wisdom. And we’re avid readers. Check the full post.

picture: (c) Fred Manteghian

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We all heard the news: Nokia bought Loudeye. Thus acquiring a music catalogue of about 1,5 million tracks. Finally some serious competition for iTunes – who are still in the lead with their 3 million tracks catalogue however.

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Suppose you don’t like iPod – for whatever reason. What are your options if you want a flash based cool looking mp3 player with 4GB, and it’s not called Nano?

Anything But iPod presents the Creative Zen Neeon 2:
“Creative has a page up for the forthcoming second release of the Neeon line of players. Unlike some iterations of the Neeon 2 is strictly flash based coming in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB sizes. The player supports MP3, WMA, and WAV on the audio side and an AVI format that will need to be converted by supplied software. Finally, JPEG is supported on the photos side. The small 81 x 42 x 12.5 mm player manages to squeeze in a 1.5” color CSTN (basically less expensive to make LCD) screen with 128 x 128 pixels.

Other than the larger screen the Neeon 2 doesn’t offer too much more than the recently released Zen V and soon to be released Zen V Plus.”

Pricing in Europe hasn’t been communicated yet. US prices are 125$ (1GB), 170$ (2GB) and 190$ (4GB). For more info, please contact your local Creative distributor.

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Enjoy the Silence? Not anymore. German company TrekStor has made a special edition of one of its mp3 players and dedicated it to Depeche Mode. Some features of the i.Beat vision DM:
. Playable file formats: MP3, WMA, OGG, TOM
. Movie player (TOM)
. Integrated stereo FM radio
. Integrated voice recorder (MP3)
. TFT display with 260,000 colors
. Direct recording from the radio (as an MP3 file)
. Line-in recording (MP3)

The extras are quite disappointing. Yes, there’s the Depeche Mode inspired casing. And the preinstalled video of Suffer Well. But that’s about it.

The 2GB version costs about 220 euro. We wonder if U2 is getting worried…

(source: gizmodo.com)

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Windows is not – we repeat: not – working on an iPod killer. So just for now, let’s all pretend we don’t know it will be called Zune.

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Yes, they’re doing it: Microsoft is launching the ultimate iPod killer! And it has Wi-Fi too! Ooh… no… just wait a minute… they’re denying everything.

The gossip factory is doing overtime, these days. And just in case this rumour is drying up, we still have the Apple iPhone to chew on.

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