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?

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Note the huge album art, and video playback is done in landscape mode to provide excellent widescreen movie viewing. The video also shows off the FM tuner capability (which now appears to support RDS for track and title information – cool!) and a sneak peek at the ability to share content between devices.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The second video shows off the tune sharing ability a little better, which looks less like the streaming ability that was originally rumored, and more like the ability to download tracks from device to device. The latest word is that DRM will be used to make shared tracks expire or be limited to a certain number of plays.

[via Mobility Today via Gizmodo]

As we reported previously, the initial models will come with a 30GB hard drive, built-in wi-fi, an FM tuner and the ability to stream tunes to other Zune players. In addition, the player will ship in three colors: black, white and a rather odd chocolate brown.

More has been revealed regarding their music store, to be known as “Zune Marketplace.” You’ll be able to buy individual tracks (ala iTunes) or purchase a “Zune Pass” for an unlimited download subscription (ala Napster). The exact details of the DRM policies haven’t yet been revealed.

Pricing and release date haven’t yet been set, but with the new iPods running $249 for 30GB, I’d assume Microsoft will try to match that price rather than charge a rumored $299.

As a side note, Microsoft’s viral marketing site, Comingzune.com has been updated today, but is still as cryptic as ever.

[via Gizmodo]

The Buddha Machine is said to be the “anti-ipod.” The device only plays nine ambient drone tracks (from 2 to 42 seconds in length) over and over and over. The device is based on the work of China’s FM3, a minimalist electronic musical act.

The personal media player was announced today at the IFA 2006 consumer electronics show in Berlin. The Gravel in Pocket features playback in a wide variety of audio, video and image formats including: MP3, WMA, WAV, MP4, MPEG, DivX, Xvid, WMV, streaming WMV, JPEG, BMP and GIF. The device only comes with either 1GB and 2GB of onboard flash memory, plus an SD slot for additional storage. A 2.8″ TFT display is on the small side, just a little larger than an iPod 5G’s screen.

Also announced was Gravel in Home, which provides video on demand, DVR and streaming media capabilities, as well as their CommodoreWorld music and video download service. The devices are expected to be available by November in Europe, but I doubt we’ll see these devices stateside any time soon, if ever.

[via BusinessWire via eHomeUpgrade]

The device has been registered with the FCC as the Toshiba 1089. It’s been confirmed that the player features a 30GB hard drive, a 3″ LCD, USB 2.0 and 802.11 b/g connectivity. Also, we can confirm that what was once thought to be a scroll-wheel (a la iPod) is simply a clickable joypad.

The more and more I read about the Zune, the less I understand about how it’s really different from any other media player out there. I have to keep in mind that Microsoft is still a software company at heart, and maybe the beauty of this device will be the operating interface.

Reportedly, the Toshiba is only the first model to be released, and Microsoft outsourced this manufacturing in order to meet the impending holiday 2006 season. There are plans to release other models, quite possibly manufactured by others including Microsoft, in the future.

A preliminary user manual reveals some functionality planned for the device, including the previously reported ability to share and stream music and photos to other connected Zune users.