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Holiday Gift Ideas 2008: MP3 Players

Audio/Video, Home Theater, Gizmo of the Day, Holidays, Portable / By /

More gift ideas for the music fan, but honestly, who doesn’t want an MP3 player today? The vendor choices haven’t changed much since last year: Apple, Microsoft, Sandisk, Creative, Cown and Sony. There are 2 main choices in MP3 players – whether or not it has a Flash drive or a hard drive. The Flash drive based ones are a lot smaller and lighter. Here are but a few good samples.

Apple iPod Touch (2nd gen, 32GB: $370, 16GB: $280)
Apple iPod Nano (4th gen, 16GB: $200)
Sony Walkman (8GB: $92)
Creative Zen (16GB: $153)
Microsoft Zune (Video 120GB: $225)
Cowon PMP (16GB: $177)
Sandisk Sansa View (32GB video: $210)

(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Holiday Gift Ideas 2008: for the Music Lover

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Everyone knows a music lover or 2 or 12. What better gift than an album (starting around $10 on average), collection (varies), or box set (varies, could be as low as $25)? This is definitely a gift that can keep on giving for a lifetime.

Amazon has a great page with lots and lots of music ideas.

If you’re not sure about your friend/family’s preferences, give them a gift card from iTunes ($1/song) or perhaps Rhapsody ($13 & $15/month subscriptions).

iPod nano 4G – back to tall and slim and now in 16GB size

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Thank you Apple for bringing the iPod nano back in its very cool, tall, thin, original incarnation. Not only that, but for adding some bright, rad colors (9 total). Oh yes, it now comes in 8 and 16GB versions. So what else is new? For starters, it has a feature called Genius which auto-creates playlists based on what songs ‘go together’. It’s an algorithm developed by Apple. The other notable feature is the built-in accelerometer which allows you to shuffle the songs when you shake it!

The screen on this new nano is a bit larger and you can view your cover art in landscape mode (yes, automatically), as well as in Cover Flow (the moving album covers feature). And back to the accelerometer: this means that you can now play games based on tilting and rotation. To that ends, one of the built-in games is Maze; I’ll let you guess what that’s about.

Apple is also touting this as the ‘greenest’ nano as they’ve stripped most of the hazardous chemicals and plastics out of it. Kudos on that move Apple.

Gimme!

Price: $149 for 8GB, $199 for 16GB model.
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Flatwire – clean up your cabling

Audio/Video, Home Theater, Gizmo of the Day, Networking & Internet / By /

You may love your gadgets, but hate the mess of cables that it typically involves. If you’ve got a bit of extra cash to spend on the ‘problem’, then you should take a look at FlatWire Technologies which is a company that makes FlatWire, ultra-thin, surface mounted wiring for audio, video, data and even low-voltage lighting.

FlatWire boasts the ability to be applied flat against walls and other surfaces non-invasively, then covered up with the same coloring, make 90 degree turns and run all types of signaling over it. Depending on the type of connection you need, there are specific interconnects that you need to buy.

While FlatWire by itself is more expensive than traditional cylindrical wires, the company touts total installation costs as being competitive. Of course, if you put a high value on aesthetics, then FlatWire will definitely win out.

RIP: audio cassettes

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Although the music industry pretty much said goodbye to the audio cassette years ago, once CDs came along, the audio book folks stuck with audio cassettes because they proved a cost-effective alternative to CDs as well as having more than enough audio fidelity for the spoken word.

However, its time has come. Only 400k tapes were sold in 2007, and that number is expected to plummet this year. Audio books on cassettes may still live a few more years as libraries still demand them, but not too much more than that, even though most households still have at least 1 or more cassette players on hand; audio books are also going the way of digital downloads and streams. Many publishers have already completely abandoned cassettes, including some large ones like Random House and Macmillan.

RIP audio cassette – you had your place in history and in my audio collection.

mStation Stereo Orb

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mStation Stereo Orb

Someone sent me a link to this cool little gadget. It is basically an awesome docking station for any iPod. For example, are you wanting to turn on some awesome music for a romantic dinner? Or, are you just wanting to have some awesome dancing music going on during a big party? This little thing will do the trick.

You just put the music on your iPod, dock it onto the Orb and then you can use the 10 key remote to adjust volume, bass, and treble levels. The mStation Stereo Orb has a built in subwoofer to pump out a nice sound. It is great for any area, whether just in the kitchen while you are cooking or in a office while you are working.

Another great feature of the mStation Orb is that you can get it in 7 different colors. You can get black, white, green, blue, pink, red, or silver. You will be able to match the color to fit the room you are in.

Gimme!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $129.95
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Sonicum Iconic Speaker Set

Audio/Video, Home Theater, Gizmo of the Day / By /

This artsy Russian design studio Art Lebedev creation add an incredibly nice form to function as the Sonicum Iconic Speaker Set both looks sharp and sounds great. The speakers were designed to mimic the standard audio volume icons on your computer but even with the unusual shape the speaker set delivers crisp highs.

The frequency range of the sub is 50-250Hz with the output power of 15 watts and the speakers range from 200 Hz up to 18 kHz with an output power of 5 watts. If you have a slick setup at home or work but your speakers don’t make the same statement, it’s time to upgrade to an Art Lebedev.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $99.99

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