Music Player

The modern smartphone has quickly become an essential part of modern living. It's a powerful portable computer, a high resolution camera, and a mobile communications center. However, if you're of the school who thinks that just because such a device can also play music, there's no need to spend good money on a separate audio player - the Colorfly Pocket Hi-Fi C4 pro may well be the dedicated music player to change your mind. Hidden within a gorgeous walnut outer shell with hand-carved motif and controlled by deliciously old-school physical buttons and sliding volume pot, the black circuit board heart of this music player is home to some top notch tech with one purpose - to deliver audiophile-pleasing, Hi-Fi-quality audio. Read More

Sony has taken the wraps off its first Android-based Walkman media player - the Z-1000. Running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), Sony's would-be iPod touch rival comes well spec'd with its 4.3-inch WVGA (480x800) touchscreen, NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core CPU platform and 512MB of RAM. Read More

Perhaps you’ve entertained the idea of becoming a dance club DJ, but were intimidated by the thought of those expensive turntables and mixers, not to mention the logistics of lugging them around, along with stacks of LPs and/or CDs. If so, then you’re the part of the target market for Numark’s iDJ Live. The one-piece device features two turntable-like music-cueing decks, a mixer for cross-fading between tracks, and uses your own docked iDevice as its brains. Read More

There’s no denying that listening to some motivating tunes can help make the time fly by, when you’re working out or going for a run. Probably just about everyone who has ever worn a personal music device when doing so, however, has had this happen at least once: you go to move your arm, and it catches on your earphone cord, causing your earphones to be violently yanked out. JayBird’s new JF3 Freedom Bluetooth Buds are designed to keep that from happening. Read More

For many of us, the digital age has resigned our vinyl collection to gather dust in the corner. There are already numerous devices which offer to convert and clean up the crackly sounds coming through the stylus, so why bother with another flavor? Rather than having to load converted files onto my laptop and then onto my MP3 player or phone, the Turntable iPhone Dock would cut out the middle man altogether and transfer encoded files onto the horizontally-docked iPhone. Read More

An essential part of my travel kit is my digital music player. I also carry a small set of speakers in case I want to share some tunes with those I meet along the way, but I'm forever having to worry about batteries and, despite their size, it's all extra weight to have to lug around. I need some fold-away, lightweight, power-free amplification, and that's precisely what the Tembo Trunks speakers offer. The creation of brothers Scott and Mike Norrie, the horn speakers are said to have been born out of frustration in not having an external iPod speaker that was small and light enough to travel with them around Africa. Read More

A recent New York Times print advertisement for the Ford Edge crossover included barcodes that, when scanned by a mobile phone camera, provided readers with access to Times articles on style and technology. It’s part of a techy advertising campaign for the Edge, which will be the first vehicle to feature the likewise-techy MyFord Touch system. Touch is built around Ford’s existing Windows-based SYNC communications and entertainment system, and allows drivers to use the dashboard as... well, pretty much as a big smartphone. Read More

Leading up to Apple's big iPod refresh last week, Sony managed to steal some spotlight as headlines around the Internet proclaimed how the company's Walkman had outsold the iPod for the month of August in Japan. According to a market survey from BCN Ranking, the Walkman holds a 47.8 percent market share, with the iPod now suddenly trailing at 44 percent. Read More

In addition to its recent 7-year / 150,000km warranty announcement, Kia has created further interest with the showing of its UVO in-car voice and touch activated communication and entertainment system. Developed in collaboration with Microsoft, the system offers users an easy to use interactive hands-free alternative that uses speech recognition for making and taking calls, sending text messages and managing in-car music. Featuring a 4.3” full color touchscreen display and built-in 1GB storage with the ability to rip CD’s and MP3’s onto the system’s “Jukebox”, the open platform UVO system also doubles as a rear view camera when the vehicle is in reverse. Read More