Mp3
”Wave Goodbye To Pocket Billiards with Magnetic Knob MP3 Player
We all know the hassle of digging into a pocket to twiddle the controls on our MP3 players, but until smart clothing becomes mainstream we're stuck with it. Unless someone takes this magnetic control concept and manufactures it for real, that is. The Pocket Pal is simple: the control stays outside, but is magnetically fixed to the body, which sits inside your pants pocket. Twiddling the control is easy, and would let you adjust volume or skip songs. I'm not sure what'll happen if you lose the knob—would any magnet/iron object do?—but I like the lateral thinking here. [Inventables via Gizmowatch]
Wet X-Light Surround Basin: The World's First "Musical" Washbasin
Hood.e Brings Speakers To Your Hoodie Hood
JWD Media-Playing Alarm With Radio, Chumby for Cheapos?
This little box from JWD does pack in a fair number of functions: 2-inch 220 x 176 TFT screen, built-in lithium battery, speakers, 1GB of memory, MP3, WMA and MP4 playback, FM radio and alarm clock. It can even record the radio or a line-in audio source, and has an SD slot for expansion. It doesn't have a touchscreen or Wi-Fi, but this Chumbyesque device is at least fairly reasonably priced: $88 for one, with discounts if you buy in bulk. [Shopkami via Chipchick]BatMP3 Kills Villains as You Listen to Music on Your BatEars
Not having enough with his multi-billion dollar industrial conglomerate, Bruce Wayne keeps whoring his Batman brand for everything that can be manufactured using plastic in China. This the Batman MP3 player, shaped like a 2.75-inch black batshuriken, with 1GB of RAM inside, compatible with Windows and Mac OS X, and stereo headphones shaped as bat ears. More »Question of the Day: How Many iPods Have You Owned?
EMI Says You Can't Backup Your Music Online
Cloud computing is supposed to be the next big tech revolution. One of the basic ideas, for the uninitiated, is that all of your apps and files (docs, pictures, music) are stored online in a digital locker, and you can access them from anywhere, no matter what computer you're using, thus heralding the end of the localized desktop, Windows, etc. MP3Tunes provides a digital locker for backing up music files—it's not a covert file-sharing thing, you can't share a locker with someone, so it's really only for personal backup/place-shifting. The record label EMI says it's illegal and is suing them to turn over all the music stored by the site's users. More »Samsung's YP-S3 Gets the LED Out
Although the S2 pebble may be cuter, Samsung's S3 is a beefed-up PMP for people who need more multimedia support. The 4GB S3 plays audio (MP3, WMA and OGG), video (MPEG4, SVI), JPEGs and even text. Like most other Samsung players, it has an FM radio and games. The coolest thing about the player, which comes in five colors, is the LED-lit controls that seem to disappear when you don't need them. Available for under $130 when it's released in June.[Samsung]Targus Speaker Book Brings Compact Tuneage: No Reading Involved
Finding a way to make portable speakers truly portable has proven difficult for manufacturers over the years. This new Speaker Book represents Targus' stab at a solution. The unique design features flat, foldable NXT speakers that can connect to just about anything using via a standard 3.5-millimeter cable. It can also be powered up via USB, or four AAA batteries. Unfortunately those of us in the States won't be able to test it out anytime soon—the Speaker Book is slated for a UK only release early this summer. [i4u via Crave]Spy Camera Sunglasses With 1.3-Megapixels Means Nothing's a Secret
Sunglass spy cameras were previously relegated to actual spies and weirdos that subscribed to those spy equipment magazines, but ThinkGeek has brought such covert voyeurism to the average man with $99 and change. The camera's triggered wirelessly via remote, which is very discreet, but has a fat camera on either side of the lenses, which isn't. Luckily for you the 1GB storage and MP3 earbud playback gives you a reasonable excuse as to why you're wearing such thick sunglasses in the Gold's Gym women's locker room. [Think Geek via Red Ferret via Boing Boing] More »Egoman PMP Has 4.3-Inch Touchscreen, 16M Color Displaying
Egoman's latest PMP, the MP810RSTD-43 bears an impressive, 4.3-inch touchscreen, which supports 16.7 million colors, and that just about sets it apart from the other iPod touch clones sitting it out in PMP purgatory. The device will playback WVI and RMVB at 30 fps, is just 7.2mm thick and will happily playback MP3, WMA, ADPCM, WAV, APC and FLAC files. With a USB 2.0 port, integrated FM tuner and an onboard TV out port, Egoman haven't done too bad a job here at all. Still, with the product page stating "[all] specifications are subject to change without notice," perhaps we should take the player's planned existence with a touch of salt. [PMP Today]
Charles Manson Cuts Killer Creative Commons Digital Album From Prison
Convicted murderer and future American Idol contestant Charles Manson has used the liberal Creative Commons license to release a new 16-track album from prison. The album, called, ironically, One Mind, is free to download at LimeWire. As an added bonus, the CC license allows listeners to copy the tracks as much as they want and distribute them, so long as they don't use them for commercial purposes-like starting a cult or something. Hear the man himself croon a killer tune after the jump at about the 1:15 mark. More »Recording Compressed to 1,000 Times MP3 Rate Could Be the Future of Music Playback
The University of Rochester has just devised a way of reproducing music in a file that's compressed 1,000 times smaller than an MP3 file. The way they do it—physically modeling an instrument in a computer and then feeding it input variables (breath, tongue, fingers) in order to generate the output tone—seems super obvious. People were making music with MOD files by recording one tone and generating different notes with it back in the '90s. But actually reproducing the instrument wholesale? That's amazing. More »Free Flight of the Conchords MP3 Today
Scary factoid: on my recent vacation, I combed my hair funny as a joke. My wife freaked out a bit, saying that I looked like Murray Hewitt. She was right, so I called her "Brit" for the remainder of the trip. (Unfortunately, she looks nothing like Bret McClegnie.) On the plus side, today you can download Flight of the Conchords' "Ladies of the World" MP3 for 100% free on CNET. You don't remember that song from the series? Then you're fired, reader. Hit the jump for a reminder and reapply to Gizmodo through the tips line.
UPDATE: Business Time is available free as well.





