With a multitude of third party manufacturers making a mint from a multiplicity of iPod accessories, Apple has decided to cut itself a slice of the action with their own high-end Apple iPod Hi-Fi speaker system.
The high-fidelity speaker system comes in at a premium price and looks like an attempt by Apple to scare off the competition from upmarket speaker manufacturers like Bose and Denon, both of whom have done very nicely thank you very much from their iPod accessory ranges.
Powered by the mains or six D-cell batteries, the shiny white box has a slot to accommodate iPod players at the top with an Apple Remote letting users control the player from the comfort of their sofa/bed/hovel.
The all-in-one design features an isolated enclosure, with two custom designed wide-range speakers lurking under the speaker grill and a tuned ported bass system claimed to minimise vibration.
With portability in mind, the iPod Hi-Fi features big handles on either side (but no central grip which is a bit odd).
There’s also a removable front grille with precision-mounting clips, touch-sensitive volume control buttons and a dock connector for all iPod flavours.
While docked, the iPod Hi-Fi automatically recharges the player, with the player’s display showing Tone Control, Large Album Art mode and volume mirroring.
There’s also a handy dual-purpose 3.5-mm auxiliary input that accepts either analogue or digital signals for connection to a wide range of audio sources and third party players.
Initial reports say that it sounds good, but weighs so much (14.5 lbs without batteries) you’ll be unlikely to drag it down the beach.
That shiny finish looks a bit scratchable to us too and we can’t imagine many death metal loving teenagers wanting a great big white box in their satanic bedrooms either.
Our initial impressions: not good
We’ve got to say we’re unimpressed. It looks too bulky to be a take-anywhere beatbox, too delicate to be taken outside the house and with the speakers so close together, unlikely to produce the kind of hi-fi we’d expect for the top-tier price – US$349 (~e292, ~£198) in the USA market.
Mind you, Steve Jobs was suitably enthusiastic, declaring it as the, “home stereo reinvented for the iPod age”.
Smell the leather
Also announced was an eye wateringly expensive leather iPod case, yours for just $99 (~e83, ~£56).
Personally, if we desperately needed a case with a little Apple logo on it, we’d head down to the local street market and get something that would do the job just as well for about £5. But hey! Maybe that’s because we’re just a bunch of cheapskates!
Due to hit the shelves in March, Samsung Electronics’ new YP-Z5 MP3 player is causing a stir because it was designed by Paul Mercer – the very same programming genius who created the interface for Apple’s runaway success, the iPod.
At $199 (~e167, ~£113) to $249 the pricing is similar Apple’s product, and – crucially – Samsung is promising a seamless connection between player and download service via Microsoft’s PlaysForSure digital music standard.”
In a reflection of the growing convergence between phones and digital cameras, Sony Ericsson have declared their new K800 and K790 phones to be worthy of the Cybershot brand.
To help share your photographic masterpieces, Sony Ericsson have struck a deal with Google to enable easy photo blogging with the search engine’s Blogger service.
Sony Ericsson have also announced two additions to the K series along with a new phone in the Z range.
EntertainmentMusic Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ support)
More flexible than a Russian athlete in a vat of oil, Samsung’s double-flipping DMB phone offers a novel twist on the clamshell format.
As well as the DMB functionality, the Samsung SPH-B1300 serves up the usual advanced mobile feature set, complete with a two megapixel digital camera and built-in MP3 player.
We can expect more details about the Samsung SPH-B1300 to be revealed at the CeBit 2006 show in Hannover next month.
In a flurry of press announcements, Sony have announced no less than four shiny new cameras to add to their popular range of digital compact cameras.
Both cameras come with optical zoom lens offering a huge range of 36-432mm (35mm equiv) at F2.8-3.7.
The DSC-H5 camera will be available in May for about $500 (~£287, ~€420) and the DSC-H2 a month earlier for around $400 (~£230, ~€337).
Featuring 8.1 and 7.2 million pixels respectively, the DSC-W100 cameras offer a 3x zoom (38-114mm), eye-level viewfinder and a 2.5-inch screen.
Battery life is an impressive 360 shots on a single full charge, with the W100 coming with 64MB of internal memory and the W70 58MB. Both cameras use Sony’s Memory Stick storage.
Panasonic’s first digital SLR camera with interchangeable lens has been announced at the PMA show.
Do we like the sound of that? You betcha!
Onboard is Panasonic’s Venus Engine III image processing LSI, claimed to consume only 80% as much power as its predecessor, the Venus Engine II.
Although full details have yet to be announced, the camera does seem to share quite a bit in common with the Olympus E-330 EVOLT, although the new, Leica-branded lens looks to be a very classy number indeed.
Jogging geeksters! Set your wallets to ‘buy’ as GlobalSat are set to release a wrist-type GPS Receiver aimed at sporty types who get their kicks from running around all over the place on foot, bike, board or ski.
Training projects and analysis come with the bundled Windows-compatible “professional self-training” package, but Apple users can stay at home because we couldn’t find any mention of Mac support.
GPS Parameters 
Announced at the CES 2006 show earlier this month, the Samsung Helix XM2Go has now appeared for pre-orders on Amazon.com (US).
The good news is that the service is commercial free – the bad news is that it’s a subscription service, with plans starting at $12.95 a week.
This lets users ‘tag’ a song they hear on the XM radio, and then buy and download the tune song via Napster.
According to a new survey from Virgin Mobile, mobile telephone text messaging has become so popular in the UK that millions are complaining of injuries to their thumbs and fingers.
Despite the agony, it seems that Brits are prepared to go through the pain barrier to keep bashing out their texts, with more than twelve per cent admitting to sending 20 text messages a day – with a seriously obsessed ten per cent blasting out as many as 100 texts a day!
Designed to highlight the very real problems of RSI, Virgin have sponsored a very useful site, 
As a recent sufferer of RSI (brought on by long hours sweating over a hot Logitech as I try to bring you, dear reader, the latest stories), I strongly recommend you try out some of the exercises.
Canon have unleashed a veritable avalanche of new cameras today, with no less than ten new models being announced ahead of the PMA 2006 show.
Canon PowerShot S3 IS
Canon PowerShot SD700 IS Digital ELPH (European name: IXUS 800 IS)
Canon PowerShot SD600 and SD630 (European name: Canon Digital IXUS 60 / IXUS 65)
Canon Powershots A700 and A540
The 4-megapixel A420 serves up a 3.2x zoom and 5-point AiAF auto focus, the 4-megapixel A430 has a 4x optical zoom and 9-point AiAF auto focus while the A530 ramps up the resolution to 5 million pixels, a 4x zoom and ISO 800.