Just spotted on the play.com site is Sony’s new NWS706 Walkman MP3 Player, kitted out with a healthy 4GB of flash memory.
Specifications are a bit vague at the moment, but the site gives out a few tantalising details of the mini-player.
Described by some wags as ‘tampon-shaped,’ the chunky-looking, cylindrical Sony offers the same rotary playback control as seen on the earlier NW-A600 series.
Notably, it’s also got a colour screen, albeit a teensy weensy, itty-bitty one which has to be one of the smallest we’ve ever seen that’s capable of showing album artwork (but we like seeing album art, even when it’s this small!).
The Sony comes in a range of three colours – pink, purple and black – and also sports a built in FM Tuner and a line-in recorder.
We’re not sure right now if the NWS706 can also record off the radio, but surely Sony wouldn’t be so daft as to leave off that useful feature. Would they?.
The Walkman is billed as shipping with “noise cancelling technology,” courtesy of “high value EX headphones” with the player promising a healthy 50 Hours battery life backed up by a quick charge function.
The player also touts a USB 2.0 interface for the nippy transfer of tunes from the user’s PC.
Play.com is currently advertising the NWS706 Walkman MP3 for £180, with delivery promised on the 9th October
The buzz has been around for months and finally we get to hear the pricing. Retail pricing will be $249 and it will hit the shops in 14th November in the US.
Along side this will be the Zune Pass subscription service, which for $14.99/month will give access to “millions of songs.” The downside on this one is that once you stop paying, your stop getting access to the music.
There’s going to be a ton of accessories available at launch, which are listed at the bottom of the 
The BBC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft. Areas of the potential investigation and collaboration that the non-exclusive agreement includes, covers “search and navigation, distribution, and content enablement” (what ever that means in English).
Microsoft has been creeping into the BBC’s online media for a long time now. It first came to light when we broke the story near the start of 2004 that the 
We love a good laugh at overblown press releases that get carried away with themselves, so we certainly cheered up when we got our hands on Sony’s latest artistic offering describing their new Sony’s new Vaio C range of laptops.
Or maybe, “Cor blimey, who writes this Cobblers?”
Connectivity options come in the shape of an integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro or ExpressCard media slots and i.LINK (IEEE 802.11) and USB ports.
Currently blossoming on the Ugly Tree and ripe for plucking is the new i-mate JAQ PocketPC phone.
As far as we know, i-Mate haven’t officially split from HTC, but the company seems to be following O2’s policy of sourcing Windows smartphones from other manufacturers as well as HTC – a decision perhaps prompted by HTC recently releasing phones under their own name.
Quite a hefty beast at 122x71x22mm and weighing 160 grams, the i-Mate JAQ comes with a 2.8″ 320×240 pixels, 65k colour display, Bluetooth and InfraRed, but there’s no WiFi or 3G in sight, neither is there an onboard camera, which strikes us as a serious omission.
Microsoft is looking to shove its king sized oar into the massive successful user-generated video phenomenon with the launch of an online service to take on the likes of YouTube, Google and Yahoo.
With Microsoft’s vast reserves of cash to fall back on, it’s not surprising that Bennett is chirpy about their prospects, “It’s really early days in online video; this is still act one.”
Sony Europe has announced the Vaio LA-Series, a striking all-in-one Media Centre which is sure to make a big statement on your desk (e.g. “I have pots of money” or, “keep your grubby mitts off my fashion statement transparent surround”).
In a design not entirely unreminiscent of the iMac, the slim and sleek unit has all the components and gubbins neatly tucked away behind a large LCD screen.
In line with the unit’s eye catching looks, there’s Sony comes bundled with a wireless keyboard and mouse in a stylish brushed aluminium finish, with the keyboard “folding up for a beautiful presentation when not in use.” Can’t say we’ve ever seen a beautifully presented keyboard before, but there you go.
Slated for an October release is the swish O2 Xda Stealth PDA phone, clad in ‘ebony black’ and featuring a slide-up numerical keypad.
The front panel is dominated by a 2.4 inch touch screen supporting a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and 65,000 colours.
A SD card slot takes care of expansion needs, while the 1300 mAh Lithium Ion battery provides a claimed 150 hours of talktime and 4.5 hours of standby time.
A Brazilian company has forged a software bridge between Asterisk and Skype.
One feature that has been missing is Skype integration (the next version of Asterisk v1.4 supports GoogleTalk using Google’s libjingle library). A Brazilian company has now changed that, with their ChanSkype site.
Apple has for once pre-announced a new product, codenamed iTV (which is unlikely to be the final name as they’d get sued in the UK for a start).