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Engadget: So, what’s a company to do when turning the big one-oh? The same thing that it always has, of course! Tivoli Audio’s classic styling has somehow found its way back around again on the 10th anniversary Model 10 AM/FM clock radio, a highly compact music maker with a 7.8-inch cabinet, a pair of independent alarms (which can be set to music or a tone), inbuilt LCD and a menu screen with an adjustable backlight. As you’d expect, the pizazz is coming mostly in the form of exterior color options, with “furniture grade wood” being offered in walnut, cherry, blue, black and red. For the true historians, a Celebration Collection is available in light and dark aluminum wood finishes, with the Superior Collection adding a high gloss Frost White and Chesnut Brown (along with the ‘Lines’ pattern shown here). The auxiliary input allows pretty much any source to be connected, with all functions dictated by a single top-mounted rotary control or a bundled remote. As for pricing? They’re going for $199.99 to $379.99, or precisely 19.2 times more than you ever expected.

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What HiFi: The controversy over digital radio rumbles on. After the Lords communications committee called for an analogue radio scrappage scheme, now comes news that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an ad claiming that digital radio doesn’t suffer from signal interruptions, unlike analogue sets.

The radio campaign, by the Digital Radio Development Bureau, had a voiceover that was intermittently interrupted with interference. The voiceover said that interference was an issue when listening to “conventional analogue” radio.  Read more…

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Akihabara News: Announced yesterday in Europe, the ICF-DS11iP and ICF-C05iP are the latest dock and alarm clock made for both the iPod and iPhone made by Sony.

The first model, ICF-DS11iP, include the Basic Dock and Charging features as well as the support of both Video & Audio playback, FFWD/REW and volume control via Remote, as well as the basic Alarm features ranging from the usual Buzzer Radio or any music stored on your iPod/iPhone while the second model the ICFC05iP, offers in the other hand only the support of Music on top of the Dock/Charge function and the advance Alarm features giving you access your iPod/iPhone music library. Read the press release

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ZDNet: US researchers have created a radio using carbon nanotubes so tiny it can fit on a grain of sand, showing how nanotubes could soon be used to make more efficient electronic devices. This follows a similar announcement from physicists at the University of California at Berkeley, who demonstrated a nanotube whisker receiving music by the Beach Boys and Eric Clapton in October last year.
Professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois, Tim Rodgers, who led the researchers, said: “Our radio is unique in that it uses nanotube-based transistors for all of the active components of the device, from the resonant antenna to the RF amplifiers, RF mixers and even the audio amplifier.” Headphones can then be connected directly to the output of a nanotube transistor, he added.

Rodgers noted, however, that the device is merely a demonstration potential of carbon nanotubes in circuitry.

“We sought to demonstrate realistic, reproducible means for using nanotubes for RF electronics,” he told ZDNet.com.au. “The radio is just a tangible demonstration that we can create all of the key building blocks for this type of electronics… radios are not the primary goal, general wireless communications devices are.”

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PC World: Cambridge SoundWorks last week announced their SoundWorks i765, a new compact sound system that features an iPod dock connector.

The SoundWorks i765 has a built-in DVD player, CD player and radio. It can play CDs encoded with MP3 or WAV files, and features a fully digital AM/FM tuner. It features dual alarms that let you wake up to music from an iPod, CD or radio station. It also features composite and S-Video output, so you can attach it to a TV to watch DVD movies, or movie and video content stored on your iPod. The i765 also charges the iPod when it’s docked.

The i765 works with all dock connector-equipped iPods, according to Cambridge SoundWorks, including the new third-generation iPod nano, iPod classic and iPod touch.

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