C’mon lovebirds, it’s time to try something a little bit more imaginative this year for Valentines, the world’s most hollow, commercial tribute to love.
Microsoft is hoping you’ll ditch the flowers and choccies for a special series of smoochy woochy-themed, Zunes. The 80GB Red Zune Originals will sport a series of new engravings dedicated to ‘love & sharing’ on the back. You get to choose from 20 laser-engraved designs from four artist collectives: Colorblok, Friends With You, PSYOP and Studio Play Pretend. The engravings are free and will come specially packed for maximum impact.
“Zune gives consumers a dynamic canvas that is brought to life by the music, pictures, videos and podcasts they fill it with,” said Scott Erickson, senior director of product management for Zune at Microsoft. “Zune Originals makes it easy to design a customised player, while wireless sharing and the Zune Social online music community give people new ways to connect.”
The new graphics can be paired with up to three lines of text, or, five lines if you don’t want an engraving.
Plenty of room to say:
“Honey, I give you this Zune
with all my love but
if you crush my heart I want it back.
I mean it.
These things aren't cheap, y'know.”-Martin Lynch
[Zune Originals]
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With Apple determined to win the Size Zero notebook awards with the new MacBook Air, BenQ seems equally determined to put digital cameras on a crash diet.
Its new DSC X800 camera is just 10mm thin, which the company claims is the world’s skinniest. The company recently released another skinny snapper, the DSC X835, at 12.5mm.
The X800 is an 8MP camera with 3x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom. Alongside Normal and Macro modes, BenQ has added a Super Macro mode for shooting things at weenie distances ranging from 1-5cm. There’s anti-shake and automatic face detection functions along with 29 shooting modes for different environments. It takes SDHC cards up to 4GB and runs off a lithium-ion battery.
On top of this, the X800 can record MPEG-4 video at 30fps in 640 x 480 pixel resolution. It will even playback your MP3s and other MPEG-4 videos on its 3in LCD display and has a audio jack for the supplied earphones .
It’s due out in Q1 but there’s no price yet.-Martin Lynch
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Sennheiser has rolled out its latest luxury in-ear cans with a new design and some tech upgrades too.
To be honest, it’s hard to keep up with all the new head/ear phones out there so I’m going to keep this relatively short. First up, unless you have – and are willing to part with - £80, you can stop reading now.
The CX 95 ear-phones feature a new design that includes a small arm tilted forward to “ensure that the cable is routed cleanly to the ear from the front and the shape of the housing ensures that the 95 is always positioned ideally in the ear.”
Sennheiser promises they will keep the music in and the noise out, which should keep your fellow passengers happy and allow you to listen to your tunes on noisy public transport.
As for the audio, purchasers are promised ‘deep, clean bass’, ‘strong dynamics’, and ‘exceptional clarity’.
I use entry-level [cheaper, a lot cheaper] Sennheiser earphones myself and am happy with them but, I’d wait for some reputable reviews before forking out £80.-Martin Lynch
earphones ipod music
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The iPhone is selling like the proverbial hot cakes and has topped 4 million but it’s doubtful that the trendy phone will hit its original, lofty sales estimates of 10 million units in a year.
Steve Jobs said at Macworld Expo 2008 that the iPhone is selling at an average of 20,000 units a day which is impressive but with just five months to go until it turns one, it’s unlikely that the iPhone will sell another 6 million. After all, the Silly Season that is Christmas has passed and there’s no other shopping spell like it. So far, UK punters have said the iPhone is too expensive.
A recent story by The Mail on Sunday has just claimed that Apple ‘gagged’ UK iPhone partners, O2 and Carphone Warehouse, from discussing sales figures because of poor UK sales.
It’s somewhat telling that Jobs was expected to break out some European sales figures for the device at Macworld this week but, quite noticeably, didn’t.-Martin Lynch
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Considering the hottest selling products over Christmas were digital photo frames, it’s not that surprising to see display heavyweight ViewSonic scaling its products down for this profitable sector.
The company has announced its first three products, the widescreen 7in DP701W4WH, widescreen 8in DF88W-523 and traditional 8in DF87G-533. The frames come with 128Mb of internal memory and photos can be uploaded via or a memory card. The 7in DP701W4WH has a an 800x480 resolution, 220 cd/m2 brightness and a 400:1 contrast ratio.
The 8in DF88W-523 has the same resolution but throws in audio and video playback to the mix with support for MPEG2 and MPEG4 files.
The top-end DF87G-533 has a the highest resolution and contrast ratio of 800x600 and 500:1 respectively, and also supports music and video playback. Both the DF88W-523 and DF87G-533 have integrated speakers.
Available in the US first, and here in the coming weeks, the 7in DP701W4WH costs $99 while the DF88W-523 and DF87G-533 cost $119.-Martin Lynch
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Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
