During his keynote, Gee Sung Choi, President and CEO of Samsung announced the launch of the YP-5K, a very slick MP3 player with built-in pivoting speaker, letting you ‘entertain’ your friends or fellow train passengers.
The hinge mechanism is very neat. As it slides the silver grill of the stereo speakers is exposed. When fully expanded the front pivots, enabling the unit to be placed on a table, with the speaker angled towards the listener. Ideal for listening to. (Watch the video).
They’ve also gone to town on the visual interface, with celestial collection of glowing blue pixel, rearranging themselves to form the different icons. (Watch the video).
Make no mistake, this is a slick bit of kit, with photo display and 30 hours of playback time.
It’s going to be available in 1Gb/2Gb/4Gb capacity using solid-state Flash memory.
US pricing – $210 for 2 GB and $260 for 4 GB.
Although speakers are an essential part of any gadget lovers set up, let’s be honest: they’re a bit boring to look at. 
Well, we actually already use one of their keyboards that does just that, but we’re sure that some folks may appreciate being able to adjust volume, treble and bass, and play, pause, skip forward and jump back through tracks from the comfort of their, err, speaker. 
As we’ve all witnessed, Apple’s Nano is a beauty to both behold and hold. The whole industry has been gunning for Apple, ever since they realised that Apple had shifted the market. We’ve seen many attempts to put out devices to match or catch them, only to watch them fall by the wayside.. 
What’s it like?
There’s going to be an optional docking station that works with the newly-upgraded Streamium, WiFi HiFi. Once the GoGear (a nifty name, the more you say it) is docked, its track list appears on the streamium and tunes can be played through it. 
Vivendi Universal, the biggest music group on the planet have signed a deal with Spiralfrog to let surfers download the contents of its man-sized music catalogue for free. 
Making it pay
When upgrading their Instant messaging (IM) and VoIP software released earlier this week, Google has taken the opportunity to introduce a new feature – Music Trends. 
So what? you may say. Google say it’s an interesting way to discover new music, which we’re sure has nothing to do with one of the other features of GTalk, file transfer – “cool tune, man, can you IM it over?” Surely not. Would be a great way to get people buying music, through a long rurmoured Google Music-buying site though wouldn’t it? 
Sony has released details of the Mylo, a groovy new Wi Fi-enabled personal communications device aimed at Instant Messaging nutters. 
For teens who, like, don’t find email too slow for their hyperactive needs, there’s also an e-mail client, compatible with services such as Yahoo! Mail and the Gmail web mail service. 
Battery life looks pretty good too, with a claimed 45 hours of music playback and around seven hours of instant-message chatting/Web surfing. 
When it comes to convergence, we’re always on the look out for shiny new smartypants devices, even if we’re not always totally convinced about their usefulness. 
To a long, long fanfare that we began to fear would never end, Top of the Pops, the world’s longest-running weekly music show, was finally killed off last night. 
The figures back up the story too, with a recent survey revealing that people spend longer on the Internet than watching television, with the audience for Top of the Pops crashing to around a million viewers from its once-lofty peak of more than 15 million. 
After an eternity of denials, obfuscation, rumour and counter-rumour, Microsoft have finally confirmed that they will be launching their own rival to Apple’s iPod range. 
Billboard Magazine, who broke the story, has speculated that the Zune-branded range of products will include music players, video players, WiFi-enabled devices and possibly even a portable video game device, with Microsoft incorporating social networking and mobile media purchasing. 
Microsoft has already busied itself with the dreadfully punned 
Yeah, we know: it’s another ruddy phone from Samsung who seem to have a new mobile on the market every tea break, but this one is actually a bit different – honest! 
The phone itself looks much like the usual fare from the overactive designers at Samsung, featuring a familiar slide-out design and mean, all-black finish. 
Specifications