Short of adding the kitchen sink, Creative Labs has managed to squeeze a speaker inside it’s tiny Zen Stone and Zen Stone Plus MP3 players.
OK, let’s assume that you won’t be shaking the walls here but it’s still going to be handy for those of us that don’t like wearing earphones all the time and for those times when we want to share our music with friends without getting their ear wax back in return. Icky, but true.
The Zen Stone comes in 1GB and 2GB capacities while the Zen Stone Plus is available in 2GB and 4GB models. Battery life is rated at 20 hours. All models sport in-built FM radio, customisable graphic equaliser, clock/stopwatch and voice recording.
They come in matte black, dark blue, pink or champagne and each one comes with a skin and clip accessory. You can see more info on the European site here but no prices yet.-Martin Lynch
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DVD rentals and sales in the US have fallen for the first time since the format appeared in 1997, prompting doom and gloom predictions that it’s all downhill for DVD from now on. In reality, it’s a blip and DVDs will be king of the hill for a few years yet.
Sales and rental revenue came to $23.4bn in 2007, down 3% on 2006, according to figures from the Digital Entertainment Group. The current economic crisis in the US was cited for the much of the dip. Interestingly, people spent just as much renting DVDs in 2007 as in 2006 at around $7.5bn but sales of DVDs were down. Consumers shelled out around $16bn in 2007 – down $600m on 2006. Movie download services are expected to more than double in value to $1.6bn this year.
Ironically, high-definition (HD) movie sales – Blu-ray and HD DVD combined – barely registered at $300m showing that, despite the hype, the big HD war is still more of a playground squabble in the eyes of most consumers.
However, now that Warner has dumped HD DVD for Blu-ray and rumours abound that Paramount will do the same soon, Blu-ray could be crowned the HD champ this year.
This would end the confusion that has prevented many customers from hopping aboard the HD wagon and really boost HD movie sales.-Martin Lynch
DVD HD DVD blu-ray movies
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Just a few days ago I covered the launch of a new projection system for mobile devices by Microvision and now here’s 3M with a fully operation projection device that can be implanted into any mobile phone. Sweet.
The LED-based device is less than half an inch thick and roughly the same size as a wireless earpiece. Despite this, 3M claims that it is capable of VGA resolution images and unlike certain other tiny projection technologies, it is available today. Texas Instruments showed it’s own Pico Projector in action here a few months back.
3M claims that its wee projector is capable of firing out a 40in, or larger, image with “no-speckle and a high-fill factor that ensures superior image quality”.
“3M mobile projection engines achieve the size, efficiency, image quality and affordability needed for consumer adoption of this promising new product category,” said Mike Kelly, executive vice president, 3M Display and Graphics Business.
It will be interesting to see which phone maker snaps this up first. It’s about time luxury mobile phones offered something a lot more useful and cool than some silly shiny metal and Swarovski crystals.-Martin Lynch
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The high-def format wars took a new twist today when the HD DVD camp cancelled its press event at the world's most important consumer technology show, CES 2008 in Las Vegas.
The North American HD DVD Promotion Group blamed the cancellation on Warner Bros – one of its key supporters – which announced that it is defecting to the Blu-ray alliance. What timing! Only two of the big seven Hollywood studios – Universal and Paramount – are left in the HD DVD camp.
Warner’s CEO, Barry Meyer, said: “The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers.”
The HD DVD camp commented: “While Warner's decision is a setback for HD DVD, the consumer has benefited from HD DVD's commitment to quality and affordability -- a bar that is critical for the mainstream success of any format. We believe widespread adoption of a next generation format will ultimately be determined by the consumer.”
Putting its tail between it legs and high-tailing it in front of the world’s media in order to come up with that banal statement above stinks of defeatism.
There’s little doubt now that the HD DVD format is in serious trouble.-Martin Lynch
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Yoggie Security has been doing some interesting things on the consumer PC security front in recent years and have the awards to prove it.
At this year’s CES 2008 show it unveiled an ultra-portable USB key-sized hardware-based firewall product, Firestick Pico. It’s more than just a firewall on a stick though since the Firestick Pico is a fully functioning Linux PC with a 300MHz core and a dual Flash memory mechanism that allows it to be an ‘untouchable operating system’ running an independent firewall application.
Like other Yoggie products, the Firestick Pico offloads the security function – in this case the firewall - off the PC so that threats never actually hit your system. Unlike some of its pricier siblings, this one is more affordable.
It costs around £60 and comes bundled with Kaspersky security software suite. You can get it online now at places like Buy.com and Amazon.com.-Martin Lynch
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Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
