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.
New figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reveal soaring global sales of digital music while overall music sales continue to decline. This in the same week that Gnarls Barkley and their musical ditty Crazy have become the first digital-only Number One in the UK Hit-parade, as we’d 
The growing single song download market (which accounted for 86 percent of purchases), has resulted in many listeners choosing to grab individual tracks rather than download entire albums.
The biggest selling album of the year was “X&Y” by Coldplay, which could be heard being played – not too loudly, mind – in 8 million bedrooms, company cars and comfy living rooms.
Leica has released details of their new Leica C-Lux 1 camera, an ultra compact number which claims to be the world’s smallest camera with a 28mm lens.
The f2.8 – f5.6 zoom lens offers a normal focusing range of 50 cm to infinity, with the macro setting getting close up and personal at 5 cm at the wide position and 30 cm for telephoto.
Early reports have commended the camera on its sharp, high resolution output, but as with the 
Supplied with a high-capacity rechargeable lithium-ion battery plus a posh leather case with micro-velour lining, users can expect to pay a hefty premium for the privilege of flashing a Leica-branded camera about.
Toshiba has today released the first HD-DVD player.
Where the Toshiba-lead HD-DVD will win with the public is in the simple extension of the DVD name, incorporating HD which everyone either does know about, or will do after the advertising frenzy around this years World Cup.
Palm’s PDA sales may be falling on lean times, but their hugely successful Treo650 smartphone continues to do brisk business, supported by an army of passionate developers producing a vast range of applications.
The information is presented on TreoAlarm’s clear and simple interface, with weather icons displaying sunny, cloudy, rainy or stormy conditions. Underneath a text box offers more detailed weather information.
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).
With the under-whelming Pocket Outlook PIM that comes bundled with Windows Mobile, it’s not surprising that third party developers have been busy serving up their own offerings for users seeking more power.
Predictably, the calendar application served up a feast of different views, including Today, Hourly Day, Hourly Week, Week, Agenda, Month, and Year, and you can jump from view to view via a drop down menu.
Although we didn’t find Agenda Fusion’s Contacts interface to be a vast improvement over Pocket Outlook, it does have a few extras, including a preview pane at the top and the ability to attach a mugshot to any specific contact.
We’ve never been particularly impressed with the way Pocket PCs handle notes – the Palm OS does it much better, in our opinion.
We were pleased to see that Agenda Fusion had included an integrated project management tool, which lets you organise contacts, tasks, notes, appointments and documents into Projects with the ability to track time and create reports.
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.
Aimed at aspiring superstar DJs, bedroom mixers and club jockeys, Numark’s entry level CD Mix 1 combo is a convenient package offering dual CD transports and a basic mixer.
A large pair of LCD screens above each of the CD’s controls offers useful information on the modes selected and time remaining/elapsed for the playing track.
Although it has to be said that the beatmatching facilities on the CD Mix-1 are unlikely to thrill ‘ardcore drum’n’bass heads looking to mash it up bigstyle, it’s certainly a good place to start on.
Our verdict
Hook it up to your home system, your hi-fi or zillion watt soundsystem and you’re off!