Details are still a bit sketchy on these shiny new fellas, but Sharp’s new range of flash based MP3 players sure look mighty purdy to our jaded eyes.
Boasting a stylish crystal mirror-finish, the new flash-based MP3 players look set to keep even the tightest of trousers unruffled, with the sleek-n’slimline beasties measuring just 8.9mm thick and weighing a mere 65 grams.
The players come in four natty shades – silver, blue, black and lead grey – with the Sharp MP-B200 offering 512MB of flash memory and the top of the range MP-B300 coming with 1GB memory.
To keep music mad punters fully stocked with tunes while on the move, both players offer extra capacity in the shape of a miniSD slot, with the audio player offering WMA-DRM and MP3 file format support.
As is de rigueur these days with (non Apple) MP3 players, there’s an FM tuner onboard with direct audio encoding – great for recording radio shows or capturing your mobile mumblings via the built in microphone
The built in audio player comes with WMA-DRM and MP3 file format support, and sports a useful audio in function.
The measurements of the MP-B200 and MP-B300 are 49 x 87.6 x 8.9mm – pretty damn small, but positively bun-scoffing compared to 6.8mm thickness of the Apple iPod.
No news of pricing or UK availability yet, but it should be in Japanese stores from next month.
It may not have the swish designer lines of the iPod and the name may roll off the tongue as smoothly as a mouth full of dry nuts, but LG Electronics new MFJM53 MP3 player looks more than a bit useful. 
Although we like the look of this fella – the feature set particularly impresses – the lack of a scroll/clickwheel is going to seriously hamper its ability to challenge the dominance of the uber-iPod. 
Sony Ericsson has announced its first Walkman phone for Japan today and it looks like a beaut. 
True to its Walkman heritage, the slide-out phone has a smorgasbord of built-in dedicated music controls, including a natty new mechanical navigation wotsit bolted on to the bottom of the phone. 
There’s been no firm announcement of the retail price yet, although it’s hotly rumoured to be around the $180 mark, and no announcement of a UK release yet, natch. 
Sitting right next to the baked beans and cornflakes at a Tescos near you soon should be Tesco’s new range of cheapo MP3 players. 
The interface is bog standard but straightforward – there’s not much to get confused about here – and the player connects to desktops via a USB interface. 
Tesco are no stranger to this MP3 thing, launching an 
Apple’s hugely popular iTunes music download service looks set to face some mighty competition in the coming months. 
Users wanting to transfer songs onto portable music players can subscribe to the $14.95 service, with tunes protected by anticopying software from Microsoft. 
Noting that consumers have embraced satellite radio because it features dozens of channels with music chosen by experts, Harris reckoned that this could prove a real advantage to the Urge service.”You’ve got the experts in music here from MTV doing programming across a whole bunch of genres,” he commented. 
Although Harris admitted that the iPod incompatibility issue was “a hurdle that we have to get over” (an understatement, we reckon!), he added that, “there’s a long way to go in this market,” pointing out that the zillions of iPods sold still represent a fraction of the potential audience for music downloads. 
Straight out of the school of Advanced Homage to iPods comes this new music phone from South Korean phone maker Pantech. 
Rounding off the phone’s feature set is stereo audio-enabled Bluetooth and a speakerphone in the 10.2 x 4.7 x 1.8cm package which weighs in at 94.1g. 
Proof that podcasting is moving further into the mainstream comes with the news that MP3 players from mobiBLU will be shipping with preinstalled software designed to download podcasts with just one click,. 
With a wagging finger and nodding head, Russell Holliman, founder and CEO at Podcast Ready sighed, “There is a huge perception that podcasts are for Apple users only, and if you’re not using an iPod it’s a difficult process.” 
The appropriately named mobiBLU Cube is, at 0.94″ square, one of the smallest in the world and comes with a large OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display. 
In an attempt to grab a bigger slice of a music download market currently dominated by Apple’s iTunes, Napster is letting users gorge themselves on the 2,000,000+ tracks in their bulging catalogue. All for free. 
The freebie web-based service uses a Flash application to provide a basic music player interface along with windows for album art and the inevitable advertising. 
Gorog believes the boom in online advertising will pay dividends for Napster’s new advertising-supported business model, noting that their website currently averages 2 million visitors a month. 
If, like the Temptations, you find yourself wishing it would rain or you just like to belt out tunes in the shower, Pioneer’s new waterproof headphones might be just the things for you. 
Of course, there’s no point having waterproof headphones if your player gets slippery when wet, so anyone looking to go surfin’ USA might be interested in checking out the range of waterproof iPod/iriver cases from h2o Audio. 
Uber music giants EMI Music Publishing have announced a deal with hotshot VoIP upstarts Skype to sell music on Skype’s new retail website. 
Roger Faxon co-CEO of EMI Music Publishing was ready and willing for some Monday morning gushing, dishing out the kudos to Skype, EMI and composer royalty collectors the MCPS-PRS Alliance for their help.