Another tiny music player to enter the market soon is the Kube2. It’s not as thin as the latest generation iPod shuffles, but the company behind it, Bluetree Electronics, has dubbed it as the “world’s smallest touch mp3 player” regardless.

The Kube2 features an aluminum body with a touch sensor to navigate through the screen and menu. A quick swipe will allow the user to switch to the previous or next track. Placing a finger at the top or bottom of the Kube2 will raise or lower the volume, respectively.

And if you’re particular about the look of your Kube2, then you can get some removable sticker skins to customize how it looks.

The Kube2 has a battery life of 6 hours worth of continuous play and charges up to completion in an hour. It’s available in Singapore now with a price tag of approximately $35 (US), and it will be shown off at CES 2012 in January prior to its worldwide release.

[via designboom]

So Boris here isn’t rolling some boulder up a hill, but he’s going to be perpetually crouched in a braced position so that he can support that MP3 player or smartphone that you’re going to be placing on his back. Boris does more than your average stand, as well, because he’s also being dubbed as a charging station.

There’s a ridge at the bottom of the slightly sloped landing that Boris is standing on, which is where you’re supposed to snake the wire of your device’s charger through.

Make your mobile phone or music player the load on Boris’s back by getting one of these Cell Mates from Germany’s Design 3000. He’s available in black, white, and red and retails for 12 Euros (~$17.)

[via Gadgets Matrix]

That same problem must have led industrial designer Rafael Rozenkranz to create this. It’s a kinetic power suit that uses your every move, literally, to power up and charge your music player. It’s more for jogging rather than for workouts of at the gym, but I don’t really see why it couldn’t be used for the latter, either.

The suit is sewn from Lycra with a kinetic motor installed somewhere on the suit. No specific technical specifications yet, so it’s more or less still a concept design from Rozenkranz. For those who love a pop of color, the suit is also available in red.

But this one will probably get more stares than most men are comfortable with. You can check out the video below for more on the kinetic power suit:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Fashioning Tech via Dvice]

Inside this shiny case is an Archos Vision – an mp3 player that’s also an FM radio, video player, voice recorder and flash drive – although Rockwell didn’t say which specific model or what its data capacity is. He didn’t actually mod the Archos Vision, just placed it in a very well-made case. I think the only functional parts of the front cover are the buttons, which as you may have guessed control the device encased within. Rockwell says the case can be easily opened to remove the MP3 player when you need to charge or connect it to a computer.

You can order the Pocket Music Library from Will Rockwell’s Etsy shop for $350 (USD). Yeah it’s pretty expensive, even when you take the bundled headphones, USB connector and fancy tin case into account. That being said, it is a one-of-a-kind device. The fact that the case and player are separate means you can easily replace the latter if it ever breaks, so that adds to the longevity of the case. Still, for that price I’d expect the gauges to work.

[via Uberreview]

He took the guts from the old radio and put an Asus WL-HDD 2.5 inside. This provides an easy way to add network storage and it sports a laptop hard drive, WiFi and Ethernet, as well as a USB port. He added another USB port so that he could also equip it with a Bluetooth dongle and a USB sound card.

Music gets synced with the hard drive using a cat-5 cable. The NAS runs Linux, and to make a remote, he has audio playback software controlled from a Mobile Java app on a beat-up cellphone. Yes, I think this guy’s stuff is safe now. Unless of course he encounters a thief that likes beat up retro radios.

[via Hackaday]

So basically, you have to fold the player in half, thus forming the icon ” ▶” in order to play your music. To rewind, slide one of the triangles away and you get ” ▶▶”. To stop the music, you just unfold it to form ” ■ “.

Ultimately, this looks like a pretty cool design, but it seems like it would be a pain to constantly be folding those icons. And that hinge would probably break all the time. I just hope that it comes with a backup plan.

[via Yanko Design]

The officially-licensed Star Wars Lightsaber Kei MP3 Player (maybe they mean “mou kei“, which refers to a limb-dismembering lightsaber finishing move – let’s go with that) comes to us from the guys over at Japan’s Taito, the same guys responsible for licensing Space Invaders onto every item in the cosmos. These MP3 players look just like the handle off of a lightsaber, and are available in two different designs. Each one measures in at just over 3″ long, and can play songs stored on any microSD memory card. I actually haven’t found an officially-licensed Star Wars microSD memory card yet, but I’m sure there’s one out there. It probably has a picture of Jar-Jar Binks on it.

Want one of these? You’ll have to wait until February to get one. In the mean time, you can pre-order yours over at NCSX for $23.90 (USD).

Of course, the 16GB Latte Espresso PMP can play music and video files, but it’s also got a touchscreen with tactile feedback, so you can actually feel a pronounced “click” when you interact with buttons and controls on the screen. The media player also features a “G-sensor” which automatically rotates the apps and display to match the angle of the player’s 3-inch (420×240 resolution) display.

Audio formats supported include MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE, OGG, and AAC (without DRM). Video can be played back in AVI, WMV, RM, RMVB, 3GP, MPG, MP4 or FLV formats. There’s also a built-in FM radio, but it doesn’t receive HD radio or RDS information like other the new Zune HD does. But what do you want for $99 bucks? On the other hand, it can actually broadcast its audio signal to a nearby FM radio without any extra hardware.

As is often the case with these jack-of-all-trades media players, it also includes other miscellaneous apps like voice recording, a text reader, a stopwatch and a photo browser, but none of them sound like anything special.

Released earlier this year with a list price of $199 (USD), you can now get your hands on a Latte Espresso over on Amazon for just $99.99. If you’re wondering if you should take the plunge, 4dthinker has a detailed review of the Latte Espresso, along with all its pros and cons.

We already featured wooden cases for iPods before, but Josh went way beyond that and made a wooden clickwheel – although he did admit that the clickwheel is only held in place by double-sided tape.

And then Josh went beyond the beyond, dressing up his iTrip and his iPod mini’s dock with their own wooden cases as well:

Check out Josh D’s Flickr page for more lovely pics of his extremely well-made mods.

[via Make via Retro Thing]

Or at least, waterproof MP3 players that look like candles. Even though it looks like a monument in the picture, the player is actually pretty small, approximately 7 in. long and 3 in. wide, so you’ll easily find space for it in your bathroom or tub or pool. The pyramid-shaped thing at the bottom is actually the player’s speaker. The player has a USB port beneath its main body where you can plug-in a flash disk filled with your music. As you can see it also has an LED clock on its body, while the controls are located at the top. Tokyoflash says that it can run for up to 12 hours on 3 AA batteries.

If you’re a peace-loving, music-loving & hygiene-loving techie, you might want to buy this player at the Tokyoflash shop for $145 USD.

[via walyou]

Matt stuffed the innards of a 2GB Sansa Clip into the grenade. This is the original, cute and airport safe Sansa Clip shell:

The default shell looks boring now, but at least it’s more practical, plus it’s easier to load songs into it this way. But I guess we can’t expect people who stuff things into grenades to be practical. Maybe Rambo would want one of this.

Although the current set-up is already functional according to Matt, he also says that he still has to wire up the buttons and then weld the whole thing shut. I don’t know, I guess it’s a lot more awesome if I see it in person, but then again if I see someone take this out of his pocket I’ll be outside the blast radius in a heartbeat. I’ll be Usain Bolt. A shrieking, pants-pissing Usain Bolt.

Matt has more pictures of the grenadification on his Flickr site.

[via anything but ipod]

This clubNAMCO exclusive case actually looks pretty nice too. It’s made from leather and secures your media player on all sides. It comes with both a wrist strap and removable belt clip too offering flexible carrying options. I only wish that the round Pac-Man dial protector would actually let you use your scroll wheel without opening the case. Still, it’s got a side snap that lets you access controls without removing it from the case, so that’s good.

clubNAMCO doesn’t specifically state what MP3 players the $30 case will fit, but to me it looks like it’s ideally suited to older 4G iPods (it looks like the screen on 5G models might be too big for the window).

In addition to the environmentally-friendly reuse of materials, Bird-Electron Kodak Speakers don’t even need a battery to operate. Apparently, the low volume output from a headphone jack is enough to drive these little speakers. They use small mylar drivers to bounce sound into the film canisters, which then project omni-directional sound waves. I wouldn’t expect stellar audio from these, and the maker freely admits that they have a decidedly “retro” sound quality.

Until now, they’ve only been available in Japan, but thanks to gadget importer Audiocubes, you can now pick up a pair stateside. At $55 a pair, they’re not necessarily a bargain, but they sure are different.

Chinavasion’s MP3 Cassette Player is a completely self-contained media player that just happens to slip inside your tape deck for easy playback through your car stereo. It’s not the world’s most feature-packed player, handling only MP3 format files, and zero on-board storage. You’ll have to add your own memory through the player’s SD/MMC slot.

I’ve always thought it would be cool if I could just dock my iPod directly into the cassette player in my car, but for now, this’ll have to do.

First off, at $59.99, the Sansa Express player is 20 bucks cheaper than the 1GB iPod Shuffle. The player even squeezes in a nice (albeit tiny) OLED display that shows track, title and playlist information. While the Sansa only comes with 1GB of storage, it’s got a microSD slot so you can add on more memory when you need it. It even has a built-in microphone and an FM tuner with recording capabilities. Battery life is rated at a solid 15 hours, and it can play MP3, WMA, Protected WMA, WAV, and Audible file formats. If you’re even considering picking up an iPod Shuffle, you’ll want to give this one a look before you buy.

[via Chip Chick]

LG would like us to think that Apple’s beauty really isn’t all that different. With the upcoming release of their KE850 combo mobile phone, they’re certainly covering many of the bases that the iPhone does.

Like the iPhone, the LG KE850 features a large, high resolution touchscreen user interface, video and audio playback and personal organizer features. I’d venture to say that it’s based on the lg ke800 platform, which also includes web browsing, a 2 megapixel camera, FM radio and microSD memory expansion. As you can see by the video below, the user interface isn’t nearly as slick as Apple’s, it does still look improved over most cell phone UIs that I’ve encountered…

Sure, the touchscreen doesn’t feature multi-touch and some of the nicer finishing touches like the iPhone’s motion sensing capabilities, it is likely to be a bit less expensive and should hit streets about 2 to 3 months earlier than Apple’s phone.

[via Engadget]

Priced at $299, the Sansa View features a nice 4-inch widescreen display, and can play music, videos and photos in a variety of popular formats. It comes with 8GB of on-board flash memory, as well as the ability to expand with SD/SDHC memory cards. It features a removable, rechargeable battery and since the player uses flash memory, you can expect better than average battery life too. You can also connect the player to your TV via a docking station and play back files at up to 1080i resolution. The Sansa View comes in a nice slim design that’s only 0.66″ thick (for comparison, the player is about 25% narrower and thinner than a Sony PSP).

The Sansa View should be available sometime before the end of March 2007.

The players feature a built-in FM tuner, FM recording capabilities as well as SRS WOW HD and TruBass sound enhancement. The new models feature an updated industrial design and a single-color OLED display to keep cost lower (the Cube2 version featured a full color OLED). The CUBISTO will be priced at $89.99 for the 1GB version and about 20 bucks more for the 2GB model ($10 less than the Cube2 equivalent models.) The players supports MP3, WMA and WMA DRM formats and are Windows Media PlaysForSure compliant.

Initially available in Korea, no launch date has been announced for North America as of yet.

The MP3 Pillow, is a small pillow ( 9″ x 15″ x 6″) that looks like a giant music player. The pillow has a speaker and amp built in so you can listen to your music player while you drift off to sleep.

A hidden pocket in the back conceals your player and provides a mini connector for hookup. The giant “buttons” on the front can even control volume or change stations on the built-in FM tuner.

It’s just $19.95 USD and available now from ThinkGeek.

With so many rumors pointing to a $299 launch price for Microsoft’s Zune 30gb model, the question is: Are people willing to drop an extra $50 for Microsoft’s as yet unproven social networking and song sharing features? Will Microsoft feel the pressure to drop the price and lose some profit margin? What do you think?