In the highly competitive MP3 player market, every single ounce of extraneous lard could result in lost sales, so Creative’s boffins in Japan have been working hard to slim down their popular Zen players.
Fresh outta hi-tech Fat Farm, the new Zen Vision M and W models have managed to reduce their bulk by 15% on previous versions while wedging in a bigger hard disk.
Vision M
Looking at the vital statistics, the Creative Zen Vision M measures up at a pocket pleasing 62x104x19mm (slimmed down from 22.1-mm to 19mm.)
The rather desirable little fella weighs in at a light as heck 170g (and that includes the battery) and comes with a 2.5 inch colour screen.
Despite its featherweight form, the device manages to pack in a fairly generous 60GB of storage, which should be enough to keep punters entertained on all but the longest journeys (British Rail delays notwithstanding).
Vision W
The Zen Vision W has also spent time on the juddery slimming belt machine, and now comes in a 134x75x22mm package (slimmed down from 26.4mm to 22mm) and weighs 280g, including battery.
There’s also 60GB of onboard storage and a generous 4.3 inch display, although some may be wondering what happened to the 80GB and 100GB models.
When?
At the moment, there’s only been an announcement on the Creative Japan site, so it may take some time before us Brits can get our grubby hands on these puppies.
Apple have just announced that they have signed deals with six major airlines, offering the first seamless integration between iPod and the planes in-flight entertainment systems. 
Smaller than a pixie’s pocket plaything, the ridiculously tiny Ultra Portable Personal Media Player and Recorder is quite the teensiest thing we’ve seen for a while. 
Lord knows how they’ve managed to fit it in, but there’s also a speaker onboard too, although we imagine the output must be quieter than a gnat having a snooze. 
It’s as cheap as chips too, with Gadget Universe offering it for just $80 (£42, €62). 
Pure Digital Technologies has announced a cheapo camcorder that can upload movies to video sharing Web sites like Google Video with a single click. 
Allen Weiner, an analyst with market tracker Gartner, reckoned Pure Digital were on to a winner, describing the pint-size camcorder as “simple, but also revolutionary.” 
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). 
In the UK, the iTunes music store was closed all day yesterday for refurbishment, with a black screen just saying ‘Showtime.’ At about 6pm (UK time) Steve Jobs announced why. There’s a slew of new/updated iPods and more content on the store as well as version 7 of iTunes for Mac and Windows (more on this later). 
Movies (and video from the iTunes store) are now stored in 640 x 480 format. 
Both the Nano and iPod video now have search features so that albums can be searched for etc., using the click wheel (with on-screen letters and search criteria). Gapless playback is a new feature, so songs can be played continuously without the normal two second wait between songs. There’s no beat matching yet, but maybe that’s Apple’s next enhancement so DJ’s will be out of a job. 
A visual communications company, All New Video, have announced a deal with BBC to enable feedback and input into TV programmes from viewers, video calling from 3G phones, Web cams and ISDN. On the voice side, it will add VoIP to its inbound voice channels. 
The system give the assistant producer the ability to carry out a video chat with the viewer letting them ascertain their suitability of the show – frankly, filter out those not relevant. Each person can also be ranked and some notes made about them. 
The new BBC system will let people do the same from the safety of their own bedrooms, where they’ll be able to leave their five minutes of video wisdom in a video mail system. 
If you enjoyed Hitchcock’s Rear Window movie, you can now play a James Stewart character in your very own home thanks to Brando’s new USB Web Cam With Telescope. 
The manual focus Webcam also offers video with a frame rate of 30fps at 320×240 and 15fps at 640×480. 
Being a Brando product, it’s as cheap as chips – just $26 – and only available via mail order from Hong Kong. 
Logitech has dished out some details on their new QuickCam Ultra Vision Webcam, which they claim offers, “a true-to-life video calling experience by delivering twice the image clarity as that offered by typical Webcams.” 
Unfortunately, Logitech haven’t released any proper photos of the Webcam or posted up any examples of the image quality, so I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the it’s as good as they say. 
We’re sure children under 10 years old (and some cray-zee tie wearing office pranksters) will get more pleasure than we did out of using the included ‘Video Effects’ software.