Details of a snazzy new range of Sony flash memory MP3 player/FM radios with a colour display have appeared on Sony’s Chinese site.
As our Chinese translation skills are up there with our ability to understand advanced quantum physics explained in Latin, we may not be 100% accurate here, but it appears that Sony China is introducing a new range of flash memory multimedia players, under the name of the CE-P series.
Sporting attractively bijou dimensions of 75.5mm x 45.5mm, the CE-P is smaller than a credit card (but not as thin, natch) and is designed for carrying around your neck, gangsta-stylee.
The first model to be designed by the Sony China Creative Centre in Shanghai, the front of the display is dominated by a 1.5″ 260K color OLED display.
Sony’s designers have turned up the feature set to eleven, with the unit ramming in MP3/WMA playback, a built-in 87.5-108MHz FM tuner and FM radio recording, voice recording, BMP/JPEG picture display and USB 2.0 for file transfer.
The CE-P series will come in three flavours, offering storage capacity from 256MB to a 1GB.
We’ve no idea about availability in Europe and America, but pricing should be somewhere in the region of $150 (E124, £86) for the 1GB model, $125 (E103, £72)for the 512MB and $100 for the bottom-of-the-range 256MB unit.
The highly rated Palm Treo 650 smart phone has won the support of another major mobile phone operator in the UK. 
With Orange the sole Treo supporter up until now, rivals Vodafone, T-Mobile and O2 have preferred to offer a selection of Windows Mobile-based devices made by HTC – including the 
Palm – who are currently celebrating the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Palm Pilot – is reported to have shifted 564,000 Treos in the last quarter (and we’re soon to join the throng after giving up on the fiddly complexities of our Windows Mobile handset). 
It’s thought that the forthcoming UK chart show, released on Sunday, run by the terribly formal sounding Official UK Charts Company, will be the first time a Number 1 will be a non-physical product. Translated – Crazy by Gnarls Barkley has only been released electronically, as a download. 
Those Chart cat’s are exactly what you’d call ‘with it’ are they? But I guess we know that given how long it took the music companies to pull their fingers out and start to grab hold of the digital revolution – actually there’s many who’d argue that they still haven’t. 
UK Mobile company, Orange, is to abandon their numbered Talk plans to replace them with ‘types’ – Dolphins, Canaries, Racoons and Panthers. 
Orange has always been a pioneer in dealing with customers. This started with their name, which back in 1994, was extremely adventurous – as was tying it in with a colour and trying to associate it with emotion. 
On a personal note – I’ve been with Orange since they started and was highly impressed in the early days. Over the years I found that the quality has gone south a little – people you speak to there are a little less helpful; the flexibility that made you glad to be with Orange and started to atrophy shortly after Wanadoo (France Telecom) took over in 2001. 
Instead we will be categorised as Dolphins, Canaries, Racoons or Panthers. Here’s the explanation …
Global revenue from music downloaded onto mobile phones went through the roof last year, with pundits predicting that the only way is up for the next five years. 
How to make a mint from mobile music
After reporting Google’s 
Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Fine predicted that, “Google’s increased market share and better monetisation of queries will lead to an increased share of ad dollars relative to competitors in the first half of this year.” 
The BBC are reporting that they are suspending a Blue Peter badge scheme. Why? Cheeky blighters are buying them on eBay and presenting them as if they ‘earned’ them and claiming the benefits. 
Sanyo have just launched what it’s claiming is the world’s smallest, thinnest and lightest solid state digital camcorder, the Xacti C6. 
Saving space by recording straight to a SD card instead of using conventional tape, recordable DVD or hard disk, the Sanyo can grab an hour of VGA resolution (640?480 pixels) video at 30 frames-per-second on a 1 GB card using the “TV-HQ” mode (MPEG-4 bit rate: 2 Mbps). 
There’s also a 5x optical zoom, 12x digital zoom and a Digital Image Stabiliser for correcting any wobbles, with the CCD sensor using 9-pixel mixing technology to record brighter and clearer video in low-light situations. 
With a leather-gloved stroke of the company white cat, Google’s mastermind cackled loudly as new figures revealed that their plans for UK domination are nearly complete, with almost three out of every four searches in the UK using their search engine. 
It looks like the Brits have taken a particular shine to the San Francisco-based search giant, with February’s search referral stats outperforming Google’s US average for the the month (55.39 percent) and their global average (62.4 percent). 
It is being reported that MySpace-owner, News International, is looking to expand its presence in Europe with its focus being London.
Importantly it also has social/network effects built it. This works both for the creators, as they grow their links to their friends – real and imagined; but importantly for MySpace’s income, the network effect for browsers is huge. As a browser looks at the original site, they split off in a myriad of different directions as they distract themselves, exploring the music taste and hobbies of linked friends. 
It’s expanded beyond this now and has now reached the point where record companies feel bands _must_ have their own presence on MySpace, even if they’ve got their own Web presence – witness sons of Ventnor, 
With the media footprint that News International has, it’s highly likely that they’re going to be able to make best value from what appears to be a considerable purchase price. Already there’s been reports their