Label:Life

A parade of dazzling new digital gadgets that further pushes a trend to give consumers total control over their media — everything from music to movies in the palm of your hand — drew awed gasps from the roughly 400 people attending yesterday’s Leadership Music Digital Summit here.

There was the “Razr Berry,” officially known as the Motorola Q, which is a soon-to-be-released PDA version of the company’s best-selling Razr phone.

Also making a cameo was the Slingbox, a device that allows television junkies to digitally record shows using their TiVo devices and then watch them later over the Internet from virtually any location.

A Pez Candy dispenser that doubles as an MP3 player capable of holding 120 songs, a mobile phone from Nokia that can receive up to 30 cable TV channels and a pair of Oakley sunglasses with a wireless cell phone earpiece all garnered enthusiastic applause from the tech-savvy crowd.

More@tennessean

Nokia, swept the board at this year’s Mobile News Awards held in London, winning the awards for Manufacturer of the Year, Most Innovative Product and Most Technologically Advanced Product.

Nokia picked up the Most Innovative Product award for the Nokia N91. This device has been recognised as a true mobile music experience and is the flagship music device from the groundbreaking high performance multimedia Nokia Nseries range. The Nokia N91 is the first 3G device to include an integrated 4-gigabyte hard disk providing consumers with the largest storage capacity on a handset with up to 3,000 songs and 12.5 hours worth of unparalleled sound quality.

Finland’s Nokia said mobile phones would deal a final blow to makers of music devices and video camcorders, according to an AFP report.

The report said Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia’s multimedia unit, made the forecast on the “death” of the photo industry, and said the same fate was looming for other sectors.

More@americasnetwork

The Samsung SGH-i310 is the world’s first mobile phone equipped with an 8GB hard disk drive and is likely to change the way people manage and use mobile phones.

While other models including those recently launched by Sony Ericsson have opted for flash based systems, Samsung is the first to adopt a hard drive even though the moving parts aren’t considered as robust.

However the company has different opinions and announced three models equipped with a hard disk drive; the SPH-V5400, the world’s first 1.5GB HDD embedded phone, the world’s first 3GB HDD embedded phone called the SCH-V7900 and the world’s first 3GB HDD Music smartphone, the SGH-i300.

More@pocket-lint

Sony Ericsson announced a new music accessory, the Stereo Bluetooth Headset HBH-DS970 at 3GSM in Barcelona, Spain.

The Stereo Bluetooth Headset HBH-DS970 connects wirelessly to a mobile phone, streaming digital music via Bluetooth 2.0.

More@pocket-lint

Apple can expect more competition from moble carriers as they roll out more phones that offer music playback. Samsung’s A900, often called ‘The Blade’ can be used with Sprint’s own music service, which offers downloads for $2.50, while Motorola’s newest iTunes phone, the Slvr, works with Apple’s iTunes; however, downloads on both of these device is limited to 50 and 100, respectively.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nokia plans to launch the N91 phone, which will provide high-fidelity sound, a 3,000-song hard drive, and 12.5 hour battery life for between $500 and $700 (after carrier discounts), while Motorola is expected to introduce Rokr E2 with a capacity of 500 songs and Sony Ericsson in May will debut the W810i Walkman phone, which will store 500 songs and will be priced at $400 (before carrier discount).

More@ipodnn

A little off topic for Label:Life I know, but this has been driving me mental.

Basically the MPEG 4 container that Videora creates (and other various converters) isn’t liked by the new 1.1 firmware. So, open Quicktime Pro, load in your video that stops after 30 seconds, click export as mpeg4, set the video to “pass thru” and the audio to “pass thru” and save. It’ll take a few minutes instead of the eons it takes to re-encode.

This works.

Nokia’s new N-series of mobile phones generated quite a bit of interest this weekend at the Consumer Electronics Show, with the Finnish handset giant showing off the N91 MP3 smartphone.

With a generous 4GB hard drive, built-in FM radio, and support for easy data transfer with USB 2.0, even the mighty iPod Nano might have difficulty competing against the N91’s impressive level of functionality.

In addition to its powerful MP3 playback capability, the N91 also features a 2-megapixel digital camera and wireless web browsing, as well as dual Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.

When this handset is released later this quarter, it likely won’t take too long to become one of Nokia’s best selling new phones.

Source:teleclick

Motorola will base its second-generation music phone for US customers on Linux, along with USB 2.0, a normal (non-iTunes) mp3 player, built-in FM radio, and SD card storage. The company will demonstrate its Rokr E2 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week.

Is this a sign that Apple may have their own Iphone on the horizon? After all 13 million Ipods this christmas is still small fry compared to the millions and millions of mobile phones sold…

More@linuxdevices

Taiwan-based MP3 file-sharing service Kuro recently debuted its Kuro Neo MP3 player for use with its peer-to-peer file-sharing network.

The MP3 player comes with 512MB of flash memory, while also featuring an SD memory card slot so users can expand their storage capacities without having to upgrade the entire device. The company stated that the Neo can also serve as a USB drive and card reader for SD memory cards, and it does not require any driver installation.

Compal Electronics is the OEM manufacturer of the Neo, Kuro stated.

Targeting the 400,000 subscribers to its file-sharing network, Kuro aims to sell about 20,000 Neo MP3 players in 2006. The MP3 player will retail for NT$3,888 (US$117), though the company is marketing it for NT$1, bundled with a NT$3,888 one-year subscription to its file-sharing network.

More@digitimes