Created by AssistiveWare, Proloquo2Go provides users who have difficulties speaking with a mobile text-to-speech system (known as an augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC solution) which allows individuals to quickly verbalize thoughts by pressing on icons on the iPhone’s touchscreen. The system is loaded with a vocabulary of over 7000 words and phrases, and provides an easy-to-use visual interface for finding words.

Proloquo2go features a human-sounding text-to-speech (TTS) engine which provides North American male, female, boy and girl voices. You can also download an update which allows these voices to be swapped out for British ones. There’s also a simple TTS typing interface if you want (and are able) to type words. You can even retrieve recently used phrases at any time and play them back without having to recreate them over and over again. This is a really thoughtful touch.

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While many of you might think $189.99 (USD) is a lot to pay for an app, I can only imagine what a bargain that might seem like if I had difficulty speaking. Especially knowing that traditional AAC devices cost thousands of dollars and are a huge pain to lug around. It’s nice to know that our fun and disposable gadgets can occasionally serve a meaningful purpose. Kudos to AssistiveWare for making a difference.

You can find Proloquo2Go on the iTunes App Store.

The $99 miShare snaps between two iPods and will copy tracks with the press of a button. A single button press copies the last song or video played or a pre-selected photo folder. A longer press duplicates any files you’ve got stored in your current On-The-Go playlist, so you can easily copy multiple files.

The device is perfect for moving non-DRMed tracks between the players, but can also copy iTunes DRM tracks with the caveat that you’ll need to authorize the device using iTunes once they’re copied.

Unfortunately, the miShare doesn’t currently work with the iPhone or iPod Touch, but should work fine with all other iPods with the standard 30-pin dock connector (Mini, Nano, 3G, 4G, Video (5G), and Classic (6G) models).

[via popgadget]

With one of these, you’ll have no shortage of content for your listening pleasure. The radio can handle AM, FM and HD Radio broadcasts along with RDS track information (The European version supports DAB in place of HD Radio). The slot-loading CD player can play standard CDs as well as MP3 and WMA files stored on disc. But for those of us who store our music on our media players or computers, the S-52 takes care of that too. The system can handle audio files stored on your iPod or on any networked computer, and is adept with MP3, AAC, M4A and FLAC file formats. If that’s not enough, you can also tune in one of over 7000 internet streaming radio stations. And if your media player doesn’t happen to be an iPod, there’s a USB port and mini-audio jack for connecting your player. There’s even a dual clock radio on board, in case you want the ultimate bedside stereo.

While it won’t necessarily blow your eardrums, the system is well outfitted in the audio department for a device of its size. A pair of 2.75″ long-throw drivers provide the bulk of the sound, while a passive 3″ radiator on the bottom of the unit helps out on the low end of things. The speakers are backed by 20-watts of amplification and robust digital signal processing and equalization capabilities. If want some extra boom, you can hook up an external subwoofer, thanks to a pre-amp output.

The Denon S-52 is coming to North America later this winter for about $699. Electronics retailer J&R is accepting pre-orders now.

[What Hi-Fi via Audio Junkies]

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It does have an interesting user interface, in which you turn a band at the top end of the “egg” to change tracks, or the one at the bottom to change volume. A motion sensor automatically detects which end is up. To shuffle tracks, you shake the player. There are some good videos of how that all works over on Akihabara News.

The player has built in speaker “ears” which flap along to the music too. It’s also got Bluetooth on board so you can download custom movement sequences from your PC. It can play MP3, ATRAC and AAC tracks, but not WMA files. But most important is its ability to pull of some cute little dance moves.

With a retail price around $350, this isn’t exactly a kids toy. Just 1GB of memory means it’s not going to store your entire music collection either. It’s also just too big and cumbersome to put in your pocket, so it’s not particularly portable. I know that it’s supposed to be cute, but when I can pick up an iPhone or an Xbox 360 for about the same price, I’m just baffled.

The Magnetox V120 features the same white and aluminum accented case design as Apple’s popular compact computer. But the Magnetox V120 is a dedicated media recorder/player designed for use in your living room, so it has more in common with the AppleTV than the Mac Mini.

The little box features hardware MPEG4 playback and recording, and can automatically convert recorded video for playback on your TV, PC, iPod, PSP, GameBoy Micro or mobile phone. To keep its svelte profile, there’s no storage device built-in. Instead you can either record to an SDHC card or to an add-on IDE hard drive if you pick up the matching B200 USB hard drive enclosure.

Similar to the AppleTV, the device can only handle standard definition content, but unlike Apple’s device, the V120 can actually record television programs thanks to a built-in tuner. It’s not clear to me if this is a traditional UHF/VHF/CATV or a digital tuner though. I’d gamble that it’s of the analog ilk. There’s some date and time based scheduling capabilities, but no program guide, which is unfortunate.

Since the V120 is a full-fledged media player it can handle audio playback in MP3, WAV, WMA and AAC formats. There’s also a photo album viewer for JPG, PNG or GIF images.

You can find the Magnetox V120 from Hong Kong exporter GoldenShop for just $179 USD. Be sure to specify whether you want the NTSC or PAL version.

Well, the good news is that the folks over at Digital-Lifestyles managed to get their hands on one for this exclusive video preview, and all I can say is “Wow.”

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The Pacemaker is for real, and it sure has some nifty tricks up its sleeve. The handheld system contains a 120GB hard drive, a color display and touch-sensitive controls for mixing and cueing all your tracks in real time. The company is also working on a free application which lets you create non-destructive edits and effects then download mix sequences to the player.

It’s not inexpensive, at 520€ (about $709 USD), but if you’re seriously into music, you can pre-order one now and be the first on your block to have one when it’s released this November.

[via CrunchGear]

Now SMS is back with a new version of the original, the M500. The watch is a fully functional GSM quad-band mobile phone, along with all the features you’d expect in a modern cell phone.

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The M500 features a touchscreen display which not only offers touch dialing, but can play media files too. It offers playback support for AAC, MP3 and MP4 media files on its 120 x 160 TFT color touchscreen. Bluetooth connectivity lets you use a wireless headset to do your calling, or you can speak right into the watch if you’re really in a pinch. It’s also got a WAP enabled browser and Java application support.

Battery life is pretty good, with talk time rated at 200 minutes and 80 hours of standby time. The phone is unlocked for worldwide use, and costs $999 Australian Dollars (about $856 USD) including a rechargeable Bluetooth headset and a spare battery.

The WordsGear offers an amazingly sharp 5.6-inch TFT display with a 1024×600 pixel resolution (that’s about 211 pixels per inch.) This means reading small type should be no problem, and easy on the eyes. Thanks to a special touch sensitive grip, it’s designed to be controlled with a single hand, so you can even use it while standing up on the train or bus.

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Since the display isn’t one of those electrostatic ones, it can also handle moving images, and cam play MPEG4 video clips. There’s also AAC and WMA audio playback, and you can listen to your tunes while reading. Content is stored on SD cards, providing plenty of expandability. The rechargeable battery should give you about 6 hours of reading on a single charge.

There’s a huge catalog of e-books for the device (all in Japanese, though) available from Saidoku. From what I can tell, you can load up your own PDF documents so you won’t be limited to Japanese content.

The Wordsgear can be ordered from gadget importer Dynamism for $479 (which is a significant premium over the price in Japan, which works out to about $350.) I’m hoping Panasonic will decide to make an English language version at some point, but I’m not holding my breath.

Tonium’s Pacemaker looks like an MP3 player on some serious ‘roids. For starters, it’s got a huge 120GB hard drive, and supports just about every music format known to mankind. DJs will be able to play back tracks in MP3, VBR, AAC, WMA, WMA Lossless, OGG, FLAC and WAV formats.

Unlike typical MP3 players, the Pacemaker will feature touch-sensitive controls for crossfading between tracks. You’ll also be able to bend pitch, cue tracks, add sound effects and more. You’ll even be able to save your mixes for others to share. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, so check back for more details as we get closer to launch.

[via geeksugar]

The Brica ViewArt 1000 is the Swiss Army knife of mobile technology, combining all of the aforementioned features in a single pocket-sized device. In addition to the usual media playback capabilities, it’s got an on-board video encoder which can take an input from a DVD player, satellite or cable box, and record 320 x 240 clips for viewing on the internal 2.5″ LCD screen.

The Brica player can play a wide variety media files including MP3, WMA, WMV, AVI, Quicktime, MPG, RealMedia and AAC formats. The digital still camera claims a 4-megapixel resolution, but is actually just 2 Megapixels, interpolated up. While the Brica is truly a “jack of all trades, master of none,” it’s worth a look if you’d like a single gadget that combines tons of functionality.

Gadget importer Calibryze sells the Brica player for $265, including 512MB of on-board memory and a 2GB SD card for extra storage.

The $199 device lets you wirelessly stream music (ATRAC, AAC and WMA formats) from your PC to your Bravia home entertainment system (assuming you have one of the models with Sony’s proprietary Digital Media Port.) While the tiny 3-inch black cube looks really cool, it does have one significant limitation – it can’t stream DRMed tracks from any place other than the Sony Connect store.

Surprisingly, it also doesn’t appear to stream the files in the ubiquitous MP3 format. This is a clear case where form and function didn’t go hand in hand. Too bad.

[via Le Journal du Geek via Gizmodo]

It features 5.1-channel surround sound, an AM/FM/XM radio, a multi-format CD/DVD player, navigation and on board music server among other things. For starters, the Media System offers the ability to play back content in CD, DVD, SACD, MP3 or AAC formats from discs. It’s also got a hard-drive that can store an additional 200 hours of tunes. Also along for the ride are Bluetooth, USB 2.0 and iPod connectivity.

The system also offers a slick user interface on its full color LCD screen for easy access to track and title information as well as navigation capabilities. The interface even features a proximity sensor which changes the display to show the appropriate contextual information when your hand nears the controls. Bose’s UMusic intelligent music analyzer can learn your playback habits and automatically play tracks based on your personal preferences.

No pricing information is available at this point, but seeing that the first car to feature the system is the Ferarri 612 Scaglietti, I’d bet it’s not cheap.

[via AutoBlog]

The VAIO WA Wireless Digital Music Streamer (VGF-WA1) is a complete bookshelf audio system, featuring built-in stereo amplification, speakers and streaming directly from your Wi-Fi connected PC. The

Enter the Wolverine ESP 5160, a media player that packs a gigantic 160GB hard drive in a portable package. To put it in plain English, the player can store up to 320 hours of standard definition video, or about 50,000 songs.

It can play back a wide variety of audio formats including MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, AAC and CDA. Video playback includes support for MPEG-1, MPEG-4, WMV9 and Xvid files. The player also features a built-in FM radio with program recording, and video/audio outputs to connect to a TV or other external display device. The player’s 3.6-inch LCD color screen offers 320×240 resolution, which should be enough for decent video quality at that size.

An optional docking cradle ($69) adds the ability to record video directly from a TV tuner, DVD player or other video source. It even offers a timer option (

The Pioneer Music Tap system starts with a central base station that can accept inputs from analog audio devices, or a USB-connected PC or hard drive containing WMA, MP3 or AAC format audio files. Remote speakers can be placed around the house, and feature a slick motion sensing capability that can automatically turn on the sound when you enter a room. The system also offers the ability to play back audio from two different sources at the same time, and pipe them to different rooms.

The base system (model XW-PSS01), includes a pair of speakers and will set you back around $600 USD when it starts shipping this Spring. Additional speakers come in two sizes, costing appx. $170 and $230 USD respectively. An optional iPod dock add-on is also available for about $120 USD (yikes!)

[via gearfuse]

Like the earlier silver model, the new iPod Shuffles feature 1GB of flash memory (holding about 240 tracks,) a super compact design and a built-in clip to attach it just about anywhere. Word on the street is that the headphones have also been updated to improve quality over the earlier models. The new Shuffles are available for purchase immediately from the Apple Store for $79.

That all said, if you’re willing to forego the iPod name, you might also want to check out the Sansa Express player which offers a bit more bang for the buck.

When closed, the phone measures just 3.3″ (h) x 1.18″ (w) x .78″(d), and weight just 75 grams (about 2.65 ounces). The SGH-X830 features a 1.3 megapixel digital camera and media playback in MP3, AAC, WMA and MP4 formats. The phone also features Bluetooth connectivity for wireless headsets. 1GB of on board memory is provided for storage of media files and photos. In addition to the black and pink models shown, Samsung says they’ll be offering 4 other colors including blue, white, orange and “lemon green,” whatever that means.

The SGH-X830 should hit Europe by the end of the month, and other GSM markets some time shortly after.