Sony's latest Walkman NW-A910 not only plays video on its 2.4-inch screen, but can record digital over-the-air broadcasts with its internal PVR software. (And claims to squeeze a near-miraculous 100 hours of video into 16GB of flash memory—that must be some serious compression.)

It's Japan only for the foreseeable future, but I am linking it primarily because I like things that have antennas.

Product Page (Machine Translated) [Sony.jp]

Around the gadget mines: Gadget Lab; Gizmodo; Engadget

The cy-fi is a $150 wireless speaker set that allows you to listen to your iPod on your bicycle without blocking yourself out from the world around you. The speakers mount on your handlebars. Although I can't find anything that confirms this specifically, it looks as if they point up towards the rider's head, not just out; perhaps that's such an obvious thing to do it doesn't bear mentioning.

Cy-fi uses wireless technology from Kleer, a product platform I've had my eye on Wired's Eliot van Buskirk first pointed their technology out to me at this year's CES. Kleer is essentially what Bluetooth A2DP should have been: lossless; low-power (1/10th the draw of Bluetooth, they say); small (mostly from the smaller batteries). But the coolest thing about the Kleer products are that they should interoperate between different brands, so this iPod transmitter that is included with the Cy-fi should work with a pair of Kleer-powered headphones from another vendor. (We'll have to see how well that works out after there are more products on the market, of course.)

Because of the wireless connection, the Cy-fi can perform a couple of neat tricks. You can change volume and skip tracks using the speaker controls—no need to remove your iPod from your pocket. You can also link up to four speaker sets into one transmitter, allowing a group of riders to share a simultaneous anthem. A niche use, sure, but slick.

My only reservation is not technological, but social. I live in New York City. Riding a bike with headphones here is asking for a broken bone or worse. But because the city is so crowded, it's unlikely I'll ever be riding in an area without people. I don't want to be the guy riding around blasting his neighbors.

If you're interested in the Cy-fi, you can sign up for a pre-order now, but they won't be shipping until March of next year. It looks cool, but there's no harm in waiting for the reviews.

Product Page [MyCyFi.com via Playlist]

Like the gum-sized Micro-Camcorder I just linked before, this "MicroDot Squared" Audio Recorder is supremely overpriced. It's almost five-hundred bucks! (But what price to listen to endless hours of silence punctuated by occasional footsteps to provoke irrational but addictive jealousy?)

Besides its size, the MicroDot shares a feature set with most voice recorders: low power consumption; voice-activated recording; programmable recording timer. (Okay, the timer is pretty useful, I'll grant them.) Why they named it after a method of LSD distribution is a mystery. Maybe after too much acid the inventor decided his wife was banging the milk man, despite that she's lactose intolerant, they don't have a milkman, and he's not actually married.

Product Page [PIMall.com via Red Ferret]

Vinyl warps. Even if you treat your LPs with utmost care, it's common to find used albums too warped to get needle to groove. The Furutech DFV-1 LP Flattener works as a giant waffle iron for vinyl, delicately heating an LP just enough to get it flat without disturbing the audio grooves on the sides, then quickly cooling it to lock the new shape in place.

It's $1,500, but at this point there's really no price vinyl devotees aren't willing to pay to keep their precious albums in working order.

Product Page [Furutech.com via Crave.CNET.com]

This keychain-borne iPod Shuffle case, called "The Bevy" includes an integrated bottle open positioned just over the hole for the controls. You might thing it likely to scuff up your Shuffle just looking at it, but the Bevy doesn't actually work until you remove the iPod first. You can wind your headphones around the outside when they're not in use.

The only problem seems to be that it's not actually on sale yet.

Catalog Page [Firebox via Coolest-Gadgets]

Update: Reader "Anonymous" points out the Bevy is also available on Amazon. And he or she is correct! (It's $15.)

How good this "Ultimate Display Speaker Shelf" sounds is anybody's guess, but it's only eighty bucks and looks better than every other iPod dock on the market. A winner!

Catalog Page [PBTeen.com via Geeksugar]

[Xeni] -- Spotted in a NYT piece today about the preservation of endangered languages: the same trusty digital recording device I use out in the field to record stuff for NPR, and for Boing Boing podcasts. Link to BB item.

FM transmitters are useful buggers for car trips, even if they are an evil made necessary only by car stereo manufacturers' still amazing reticence to add a nickel miniJack input to their stereos. (Although to be fair, that is an increasingly common option in new cars.) The primary problem with FM transmitters—okay, secondary, since the poor audio quality of FM versus a direct line is certainly primary—is the hassle of finding a clear station on which to transmit. This is especially frustrating on road trips, as it's all too common to find an open frequency that, just a few miles down the road, turns into a garbled mash of your music and any given radio station.

The Belkin TuneBase FM dock takes a little of the sting out with the inclusion of "CleanScan," a function which travels up and down the FM band until it finds an open frequency and locks on, displaying the channel on its LCD screen. (Tuning to the station on the car radio is still your job, of course.) Considering how dangerous it can be to fiddle with the mess of audio cables in a car, every step that can be smoothed out is welcome.

What isn't welcome is the price, which like most other name-brand FM transmitters is insultingly high. Ninety bucks for an FM transmitter, even with a charger and integrated iPod dock, is seriously bullshit. I bristle at paying the $30-40 an FM transmitter costs in local electronics stores, especially when I know a perfectly functional version can be found for under twenty bucks online.

Product Page [Belkin]

Creative has announced a new set of headphones, the Aurvana X-Fi Noise-Canceling, uh, Headphones. They're $300, which is a bit ridiculous for a set of non-audiophile cans, but they're marketed to the same business class travelers who blow fat stacks on those Bose units which are also priced beyond what a rational person would spend.

The thing that makes the Aurvana units noteworthy is Creative's addition of its "X-Fi Crystalizer," a bit of real time DSP magic that adds back in some of the high and low frequencies chopped off during the process of MP3 compression, which originally showed up in Creative's aftermarket sound cards for the PC.

I bought an X-Fi for the last computer I built, in search of some mythical 3% more awesome framezzzz in videogames or some crap instead of just using the perfectly capable onboard sound. And you know what? The crystalizer actually does a pretty bang-up job of making my music sound better. Sure, it could probably be done in software, utilizing some of the latent multi-core power at my disposal, but what's the fun in that?

I'm not suggesting you dash out and drop three bills on these immediately, but unlike most overpriced noise canceling units, these actually have a couple of extra tricks in there.

Creative intros Aurvana X-Fi Noise-Canceling Headphones [iLounge]

Reader Ethan Andersen writes in about his "Exeluxe" hand-made speakers, built to resemble old guitar amps, currently available on Etsy:

These are handmade hi-fi bookshelf speakers for your home stereo. The Champinos are a throwback to mid-century guitar amps. On top of the good looks, these little guys sound great too! They are built with high-quality Audax coaxials, 5 1/4" drivers with a 1" dome tweeter. Dimensions are 11.5"x12.5"x7". The wood enclosures come covered with various colors of faux-leather vinyl, as well as several grillcloth options. The handles make them super portable.

Catalog Page [Etsy.com]

Some people are really not loving one part of the new iPod Classic and Nano interface: the album art that appears underneath the menus.

The problem is two-fold: The art scrolls ever-so-slightly behind the menu, which some people find distracting; some people are embarrassed that the iPod, which randomly selects album art from your music, will display something you are embarrassed of owning in public.

Kirk McElhearn had the first issue:

Let me explain how this works, for those who do not have new iPods. When you are on the main menu (the top-level menu), or the Music menu (which leads to Playlists, Artists, Albums, etc.), you see album art on the right half of the iPod screen. This is a random cover from your music, and it changes about ever 8 seconds. It also moves around; you know, like those annoying Flash ads on web pages that distract you so you can't read articles?

The second complaint came mainly from my friend John, who lives in perpetual fear that his mother will discover he listens to music less than wholesome, despite that there is a literal ocean between them. Floating cover art, as McElhearn rightly points out, should be something you can turn off in the settings. As for the shame in music selections, I would remind John that his mother loves him very much, even if she is terrified of what a creepy, leering monster his music indicates he has become.

It's Official: Apple's Stupidest Interface Innovation Ever [McElhearn.com via Daring Fireball]

We've been meeting here for a while now and I really like you, so I think it's probably important for me to tell you something that you're not going to be happy to hear: tube amps are a joke. Sure, you may think you can tell the "warmth" from a tube model versus one where the sound is generated inside a hunk of silicon, but you really can't. Seriously. Let's double-blind it.

I'll give you this, though: Your amps, like this Avon Sunfire, are really, really pretty. And mine are really, really inexpensive. If only we could meet in the middle!

Product Page [AyonAudio.com via Crave.CNET.com]

The next version of the Sony Reader has leaked to the web, bearing the typically sexy Sony moniker of the "PRS-505." While the 505 is primarily a screen update—the new ePaper screen can refresh in almost half the time—the new units also tend to be a little bit thinner and compact.

The rest of the world may not be that interested in eBook tech, but I remain intrigued despite all good advice to the contrary. With Amazon's "Kindle" eBook reader on the horizon, we may end up with a full-fledged race on our hands. One only I will care about.

Of course, the issue with these things tends not to be the hardware, but the cumbersome management of the eBook files themselves. Even if you wanted to buy a DRM-encumbered book from Sony's CONNECT eBook Store, it would still be nice to be able to toss a random mish-mash of plaintext files, PDFs, .doc, HTML—whatever—and have the Reader do a decent job of rendering it sanely. At least this time around Sony appears to be advertising the Reader's ability to work with non-DRM files, as well (at least according to a catalog page that has now been yanked), so there's that.

New Sony Reader coming? [Mobileread via Wowio via Gadget Lab]

SanDisk, maker of one of the best MP3 and media player lines out there, has announced the new Sansa View, with robust video support, expandable memory, and up to 16GB of storage. Priced to move at $200.

Around Gadget Valley: Gearlog; Engadget; Crave; Gizmodo

If you soon find yourself driving at a reasonable speed down the highway only to catch the impending dopplering stacatto from three-second clips of "Mama Said (Knock You Out)," you may soon share the road with a "Horntones"-equipped vehicle, capable of blasting short MP3 clips from its built-in loudspeaker.

The Horntones FX-550 Player is the heart of the system and is the primary user interface. It has 256 mega-bytes of flash memory to store hundreds of Tones (depending on the length of the audio clips utilized). It features a blue LCD display and has 9 preset buttons. Each button can play a different Tone for the selected Theme. It also has a USB port that is used loading new Themes and Tones. Two negative-trigger inputs are also provided for future use to interface with your extra buttons or other compatible devices.

The Horntones system is only $250, putting it well within the budget of almost any kid who thinks blasting fart noises and Simpson's quotes at intersections is the height of hilarity.

Product Page [Horntones.com via Gadget Lab]

The Sony Rolly MP3 device will be out soonish in Japan, so start rubbing olive oil into your cheeks and chewing raw latex right from the tree to prepare your face for the beatific smirk and painfully clenched body that the tiny rolling speaker provokes in even models paid to appear entertained.

I don't want to penalize a company for doing a project that's just whimsical and for fun, but it's hard not to look at the Sony Rolly MP3 player in this new video and wonder how this little rolling, flapping sound thing made it out of the lab and onto shelves. I think Gadget Lab nails it when they call it a "Big Mouth Billy Bass crossed with a Wii," although I'd lean more heavily on the former than the latter.

Oh, yeah: Sony has announced the Rolly is going to be $350 and come with a meager 1GB of storage.

Product Page (Google Translated from Japanese to English) [Sony.jp/Google via Gadget Lab]

Last night, over dinner at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood, this correspondent confirmed that without a doubt, the new Apple iPod Nano is neither a chocolate bar nor a pat of butter.

I received a review unit from Apple earlier in the day, and brought it along to test it out the best way I knew how: in the hands of friends.

Our waiter said he was astonished at how thin and lightweight it was (6.5 mm!), and he stared at an episode of Flight of the Conchords for so long that other tables began complaining. "The video quality is really amazing," he said, and I agree. The device is small, but that 204 pixel per inch display renders 320x240 res with about 65% more brightness than previous generation iPods.

One female friend at the table, who'd had a few too many of those Musso Martinis, offered to taste-test the hypothesis that the Nano is made of chocolate -- we grabbed the device back just in time.

It is in fact made of anodized aluminum and shiny polished steel, but the translucent color finish (in this case, red) does give it an appealing, candy-like feel.

The UI is a few steps more intuitive than the last nano generation, but I found myself (as did other friends at the table) thumbing at the screen, now acclamated to iPhones. It's not a touchscreen, and it's hard to kill that instinct now.

Coverflow is nice on this tiny device. One male pal at the table flipped through photos for a long time, and liked how bright and crisp they looked, even on the compact display.

I like that I can use my fancy schmanzty Bose headphones with this Nano, unlike the iPhone, which is designed to accept only Apple-issued headphones (or others designed for that non-standard jack depth, and the potential RF interference).

I spoke to an Apple rep yesterday about those pre-launch leaked images of the Nano popping up on various gadget blogs before Wednesday. Apple asked those sites to remove the images, in part because people "wouldn't see the context," as this spokesperson said -- I can see why. Those photos made the new Nano's butt look big. In the photos, the new Nano looks a lot bulkier and wider than earlier generation Nanos, but when you're holding the little bugger in your own hands it feels pleasingly petite.

4GB models are $149, 8GB are $199 (that's the edition where you can choose colors: red, silver, black, blue, green).

Of the three devices launched this week by Apple -- the "Touch," the new Nano, and the "Classic" -- if I were going to go buy one it'd probably be the Classic. 160 gazigamajigabytes! I'd use it on foreign trips to back up sound (if I'm doing field recordings and interviews for NPR), and photos or video. Holds about 200 hours of video, less if it's HD but still -- a bunch of space in what would amount to a very small portable hard drive.

Oh, bonus round: I also asked the Apple folks if they planned on releasing an SDK for iPhone any time soon, given that so many developers were working so feverishly on installable apps. No plans to do so at this time, quoth the spokesperson. They're encouraging people to develop and use Web 2.0 apps instead.

Photos: top, shot at Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard with an iPhone, below on my desk with the same.

Much yapping was made of Apple's decision to lower the price of the iPhone two days ago, then offer a $100 credit to the earliest adopters. Some questioned whether the iPhone was selling well at all, while some early adopters complained they got burned by a price drop that happened only two months after launch.

I have no interest in doing a big think piece about what this or that means, mostly because it's all masturbatory speculation, but I will mention what I think is most interesting about these last few months watching Apple.

The iPhone signifies a new strategy for Apple. They released a glut of information about the device six months before launch, obviously a smart play that built a fever pitch, but diametrically opposed to the way Apple traditionally handles product launches. They priced the iPhone at $600 knowing full well that they would be launching the iPod Touch only a couple of months later. Then Jobs took a step back and offered the $100 credit, which may or may not have been calculated—we'll never know—but is as close to a mea culpa as we've ever seen.

These aren't the moves of the stoic hits factory we all have come to know and love (and loathe). This is a company that is straining at full tilt to capitalize on their unique place in the market, working every engineer they've got to maximum capacity, juking quickly when they once would have silently taken their lumps.

Whether previous sales were a factor in the iPhone price drop is hard to say. But this is the product line-up Apple has been putting together for the last several years, right in front of a Christmas they certainly hope will be their biggest sales quarter yet, with media giants like NBC starting to really get the taste of fear in their mouths. What we're seeing now is an Apple cashing out all their stored up success and making a big play. Apple is going all in.

An Apple spokesperson has confirmed to Boing Boing Gadgets that the upcoming iPod Touch does not include Bluetooth, despite rumors to the contrary today. An image had made the rounds earlier today—the corner with the purported Bluetooth icon in the corner is reproduced here—but Apple has said it is not an official image.

While there wouldn't have been much use for monophonic Bluetooth headsets in the iPod Touch, the lack of Bluetooth precludes the possibility of wireless Bluetooth stereo headsets or microphones that could be used with a future third-party VoIP application.

Update: Some eagle-eyed readers have pointed out that there are Bluetooth icons on images on the Apple.com pages. (See this post's comments.) Since Apple roundly denies there is Bluetooth in the Touch, I think we can chalk it up to a Photoshop blunder. (Once they hit the street and someone tears it apart, we'll know for certain if there's Bluetooth hardware in there or not.)

Image: Andrew Huff

Brian Dettmer created this skull entirely out of melted '80s metal band cassettes. He later built an entire skeleton using the same technique.

There's a metaphor in here somewhere. Home taping is killing tapes?

Cassette Tape Skull (cc Andrew Huff) [Flickr.com]
"briandettmer" tag on Flickr [Flickr.com] (Thanks, DreepDrishcoes!)

Today, Apple, a computer and gadgets company based in Cupertino, California, announced new versions of their MP3 player line, the iPod:

• An updated, all-metal iPod nano adds a 2-inch screen that supports video playback and the 3D "Coverflow" album interface, available in 8GB or 16GB of flash memory.

• An updated, all-metal "iPod Classic" model with an internal hard drive with up to 160GB of storage.

• A new "iPod Touch," a touchscreen-based media player with built in Wi-Fi, able to browse the internet with the built-in Safari web browser, as well as purchase DRM music downloads without a computer from the new "iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store."

Apple also announced that downloadable ringtones would be coming to their iPhone smartphone, which has been reduced to a single model: an 8GB iPhone for $400, plus subscription. The new iPod Nano and Classic will be available by the weekend, while the iPod Touch will ship at the end of the month.

Boing Boing Gadgets will be enjoying the Apple iPod event, now ongoing, the best way we know how: with a nice cup of brothy soup away from the computer.

Xeni is covering the event from a doctor's office in L.A. and will update later tomorrow. If you must get a faceful of Apple right from the protuberance, MacRumors has a nice index of the places that will be liveblogging it.

Dan Rutter takes a gander at the "HUMP NF01" and "NF02" desktop speakers from Unique Hardware and finds—to everyone's surprise, including his—that the little desktop units and their USB amplifier actually put out a set of decent sound waves for not too much money.

If you don't need little tiny super-portable speakers, you don't need the NF01s. If you still need a USB audio solution, there are umpteen super-cheap "USB sound cards" on eBay. Get one of those, plug it into any old amplifier and garage-sale speakers, and you'll be golden.

If you want pocketable speakers that don't sound like wet mud and/or the audio leaking out of someone else's headphones, though, the NF-series speakers are an absolute revelation, and definitely worth the money.

Unique Hardware sells their product directly via eBay at the moment under the name "humpunique"; Prices are in the $65 range, plus shipping. You could get speakers just as nice for less, but probably not as small. If you think you might want to use these with something that doesn't have a USB port—an iPod, say—then you'll want the HUMP NF02, which includes a 3.5mm line in. (Although if I'm not mistaken, you'd still need to be plugged into a USB port for power.)

Unique Hardware NF01 and NF02 USB speakers [Dan's Data]