Stacked with the same bone conduction technology we've been seeing in Bluetooth headsets for some time now, along with wired and wireless device connectivity, a new class of hearing aids in making its way into patients' ears—or more accurately, their skulls. Bone conduction makes a big difference to hearing aids' core functionality, eliminating all manner of noise issues, but the heart of these new plugs is a powerful processing platform, with a gadgety twist:

[T]he newer processors, costing about $6000 (AUD) each, shut out background noise, giving users up to 25 per cent better hearing, and can be attached directly to MP3 music players or wireless headsets for talking on the phone

This makes a lot of sense—wearing earbuds or a Bluetooth headset on top of hearing aids would feel a little redundant, no? Anyway, as they are, the systems, made by Australian company Cochlear, aren't as cyborgian as you might imagine. The processor, with its headphone jack and wireless radio, isn't actually drilled into your head—that's just the cochlear implant—but instead worn around your ear, headset-style. The company's even got a range of "Freedom Accessories" which, let's be clear here, are consumer tech accessories meant to indirectly plug into your bone. It's a great time to be an old.

UPDATE: It looks like we got a few things wrong first time around. Here's an in-depth explanation of how this tech works:

What your recent article refers to is the Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid or BAHA. This device has been around for at least the last 4 years and is not a fully implantable device nor is it a cochlear implant. The BAHA is designed for people who are unable to wear conventional hearing aids because of chronic ear infections that prevent occlusion of the ear canal, or because they have congenital skull abnormalities including failure of the middle ear and/or ear canal to form.

The BAHA consists of a titanium screw and abutment which is implanted into the skull. Titanium is capable of osseointegration, which basically means that the screw is integrated into the bone when it heals, while the skin grows around the abutment. After the healing process is complete, an external processor is then clipped to the abutment. An external processor allows for regular maintainance, and easy removal and adjustment and battery replacement.

The BAHA processor is amplifies the incoming sound waves and vibrates the skull. These vibrations stimulate surviving hair cells within the inner ear which in turn convert sound into signals that the brain can interpret. They work just like a conventional hearing aid, except vibrations are transferred via the skull, rather than being captured by the eardrum and amplified by the middle ear bones before passing to the inner ear.

A cochlear implant (the picture in your post is of the Nucleus Freedom speech processor which is the external portion of a cochlear implant system) on the other hand converts sound into an electrical signal which is passed across the skin to a receiver-stimulator which provides electrical current to an electrode array implanted into the inner ear, to directly stimulate auditory neurons, providing a perception of sound. Cochlear implants are only recommended when the level of sensory hair cell damage is so severe that even with hearing aids, speech perception cannot be supported.

Cochlear is a manufacturer of both the BAHA and the nucleus implant. That cochlear is touting the 'noise-cancellation abilities' of their new device is more a reflection of the fact that advanced signal processing is now possible with the updated processor, unlike their first generation device. On the other hand, noise cancellation technologies are touted as being the greatest thing since sliced bread by every hearing aid manufacturer, yet no peer-reviewed studies have shown any more than minor improvements in speech understanding with noise cancellation technologies, and these improvements have been limited to very specific listening laboratory testing situations that tend not to generalize well to everyday life.

If you want to find out more, check out Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Anchored_Hearing_Aid They have pictures to help explain things better.

—Thanks, Chris! [Sydney Morning Herald via Neatorama via BoingBoing]

Ditching the dock cord, the Shu-Lip mates directly to the headphone jack on one end for immediate USB insertion. Adding yet another accesory to the the already ridiculously accesory-prone new $80 Shuffle. [Product Page via iLounge]

Unlike most products in this category, the Music Ball was designed with usability in mind. This foamy ball will sit anywhere, dangle or swing during playback, demanding no support beyond your device's headphone jack. The single white wire and range of appealing colors let the Music Ball double as a fashion accessory (though admittedly not the most masculine one), and the powered speaker ensures that you'll actually be able to hear your music. The battery only lasts about two hours, but it's USB-rechargeable.

The only catch is the price: it's kind of expensive even without importing costs, and once it's shipped over from Japan it comes in at just below $80. If that's not too rich for your blood, the Yuen'To ships in February. [Akihabara]

The thing looks like a scaled-down inverted GPS mount, with suction cup there to grab the device, and a clamp to latch onto your tray table, desk, lunch counter, even coffee table, if you're the type who prefers the 3.5" screen over the 42" plasma. It's got a flexible gooseneck, but not a lot of joints, so my guess is, you're going to want to line up your suction cup before latching.

Speaking of that suction cup, I am not sure how crazy I am about the whole saliva thing. In the world of GPS navigators, a little spit is often necessary to get that suction cup to really suck, but here we're talking about spitting on my iPod or Zune, a different matter.

Also, how do I know the suction cup will work on rougher textures, like the leathery backside of the BlackBerry Bold. iFlyz says it's iPhone compatible, so at least the rough aluminum first-gen iPhone shell is covered, but for $30, this thing better stick to anything I want it to stick to. [iFlyz]

Well, its sound has a rather hot high end, but what do you expect from such a puny thing? It built-in rechargeable battery replenishes your iPod's power, and you can plug it in to charge them both. This bauble isn't even announced yet, so you heard it here first, but you'll have to hold your $80 until March or April before you can introduce it to your little nano. Sounds a lot like that JLab MiniBlaster for nano we tested a while ago, which was a whole lot cheaper but sounded pretty good, too.

The iControl watch is offered up an a variety of colors, including gray, black, white, pink, blue, orange and green. Timex sent us a black one, probably thinking that the other colors might be a little too girly for our tastes. The watch looks like most training watches except it's quite a bit smaller, and we mean that in the best way. It's unobtrusive around the wrist, and doesn't stick up too far. Its band is strong yet pliable, and it's nice and open with plenty of perforations, keeping down the perspiration.

We tried plugging in the dongle to both an iPod nano (it doesn't work with the iPod shuffle because that player doesn't have a dock connector) and an iPhone, and it synced up flawlessly with each one as soon as we plugged it in. The iPhone complained that this device wasn't designed for it and offered to go into airplane mode, but after we selected No, it communicated with the watch without incident.

After it's synched up with the iControl watch, the iPod accepts the watch's commands almost instantly. The next/previous track buttons are on either side of the watch, the volume up and down buttons are on the right side, and the play/pause button is front and center, and all are easy to reach and operate. One major disappointment was the lack of fast forward or rewind controls. We find that to be a useful capability when listening to podcasts, because we often zone out and want to back up and hear certain sections again, but you can't do that with iControl—if you want to back up a bit, you'll have to dig out the iPod and do that the old-fashioned way.

Because of that lack of fast-forward and rewind, it hardly makes any sense to use this watch with the iPhone, especially when using the iPhone's included headphones with play/pause and next-track functions available right there on the earphone cable. Once we have our volume set with the iPhone, we rarely need to adjust it again or go to the previous track. But when walking with the iPod nano in a pocket, it was especially convenient to be able to pause and advance the tracks without having to break stride or grope for the iPod.

Besides those iPod features, the watch also contains the full complement of training features of other Timex Ironman watches, including a 50-lap memory recall chronograph, the ability to store training logs with your current workout, a multimode countdown timer, two interval timers for speed and endurance training, and three customizable alarms. It's also water resistant to 100 meters.

The Timex Ironman iControl watch works as advertised, and it looks great, too. However, if you're getting this watch just to control your iPod, or especially your iPhone, $125 is a steep price to pay for the limited convenience it offers.

Looking like a mini boombox, this is a downright cute attachment for your shuffle, measuring just shy of 4 inches long and it's only 1.5 inches deep. It feeds .5 watts of musical juice to each of its two channels, powered by either a couple of AAA batteries or a USB port. And, it charges your shuffle when the dock's plugged into USB. It'll be available later this month for $30.

Corega Portable Speaker System for iPod shuffle [Far East Gizmos, via CrunchGear]

Take the jump for a couple of enlarged pics of this weird design that's aimed at iPod users.

It hangs like a shoulder bag, or you can fasten it around your waist like a belt.

Yeah, it has a fresh and updated design, but the device's designer, Dirk Winkle, needs to consider that a ghetto blaster still forces others to listen to music you've chosen, just like it did in the early '80s.

Although if it were draped over the shoulder of the babe in the white pants, we might give her a pass, especially if she had decent musical taste. – Charlie White

Shoulder Bag Ghetto Blaster [Yanko Design]

Press Release [Philips]

Product Page [contexture design workshop, via treehugger]

Made of polyester microfiber, it's available for men and women in black, navy, black-with-navy-trim, and red for $40 $33.99. – Charlie White

SyncWear MP3 Shirt [Malachi and Company, via Coolness Roundup]

Plunk down your $16 and you get four pairs of these gummy thingamajigs that hook up to your ear buds. Well, not your ear buds, but somebody's. – Charlie White

Product page [PixelGirlShop]

This is not a bad idea for the latest scratch-resistant iPods, freeing them from those dog-ugly cases and tidying up that cable mess until someone invents an ultra-tiny Bluetooth earbud system that actually works. – Charlie White

Product Page [neat.products]

Product Page [Griffin Technology via Crave: The gadget blog]

This might be an important accoutrement to the mating ritual, but we prefer black. Plus, that battery pack looks like it's bigger and weighs more than a nano, and certainly more than a shuffle. No pricing or availability was announced. – Charlie White

Neon cables and headset for iPod [Akihabara News]

The Luna has some excellent features, and compares favorably with the more-expensive $400 Roku SoundBridge Radio which has the greater capability of letting you access Internet radio stations and music on any computer on your network, but can't play any files with iPod DRM. The $150 Luna has a lot more customization features, and might be worth a look if you can wait until it ships on December 18. – Charlie White

Product Page [Xtreme Accessories, LLC]

Let's be honest for a second: the only reason anyone would pick up this $700 glorified iPod dock is because it's got more vacuum tubes in it than your old TV and that makes you happy in that special place. And it's not even the only one to feature such vacuum tubery. – Nicholas Deleon

Product Page [Vuum Audio via iLounge]

In addition to its extended video playback capabilities, a fully-charged Volta can actually charge your iPod three times if you can't get to a hot USB port or AC adapter. Even though it's yet another device to put into your bag of tricks, this one looks like it could keep you watching video until your eyes get crossed.

Beyond that, it can keep that iPod going for 80 hours of music listening. This is great for those of us who whine about the iPod not having enough battery longevity. If that's a priority, it might be worth shelling out $69.95. – Charlie White

Product Page [Sonnet Technologies, Inc.]

This is not the first attempt at such a device; there's the iSee recorder we showed you last January that just came on the market last month to mixed reviews, intended more as a video player enhancement for iPods that aren't equipped for such things.

The iRecord is cool stuff. Compressing into H.264 for $200? Sounds like a bargain. Now if you can just somehow get used to watching video on such a tiny screen, the iRecord might just be worth it. – Charlie White

Product Page [Streaming Networks, via iLounge]