There are many biometric devices on the market, but honestly we haven’t seen any of them really hit it big with the masses. Sony is probably hoping to change that with their just announced Mofiria, a high speed, compact biometric solution for mobile devices.

Just like Fujitsu’s PalmSecure, it uses near infrared LEDs and a CMOS sensor to take a picture of your veins. News to me, but apparently vein patterns vary enough from person to person and don’t change through life. So they are a perfect thing to use for authentication. And perfect for Sony to make an extra buck with.

It isn’t any secret that things are tough all over. Every company out there is hurting, but Sony’s 4th quarter numbers are really bad. We’re talking a 95% drop in profits.

They managed to pull in only 10.4 billion yen during the 4th quarter, having done 200.2 billion yen the previous year. The numbers tell you that the holiday season was a complete bust for Sony. TVs, PS3s and PSPs just weren’t on people’s lists. The fault lies with you and I, who did not buy/want Sony products.

Sony Japan just announced its VAIO G3 for the G Series, another ultra portable notebook aimed at business professionals. The body weighs just 898 grams and it has a surprisingly good battery life. The VAIO G3 boasts up to 13 hours according to Sony.

Some specs: Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300/SU9400 processor, 12.1″ XGA (1,024 × 768) widescreen LCD, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth connectivity, and Windows Vista Business.

I have a couple PSPs lying around my house and both of them are boring, shiny black devices. Sure, you can get silver PSP here in the states, but that’s not really any better than black. What I really want is a PSP with a bright color like Nintendo offers with its DS portable.

Sony is offering portable gamers in Japan the option of four new and very bright colors for their gaming enjoyment. The bright shades are called Carnival colors and the machines can be had in blue, red, green, and yellow.

If you’ve been drooling over the 1.5 pound, 8″ VAIO P and want it to be your next netbook, Sony has started taking pre-orders. Like Wimpy from Popeye, who will gladly pay you next week if you buy him a hamburger, Sony is ready to take your money in exchange for the laptop in February.

It starts at $899 and can cost up to $1,499 depending on what you want. You can choose from a color palette of five hues. Me? I’ll pass. Strikes me as kinda girlly and clutch purse like. Some like the long and thin form factor though and it does feature a crazy high resolution on it’s tiny screen. It also sports an instant-boot OS that gives you access to the Internet and your pictures, music and other stuff.

The Sony Cybershot G3 is a true first. It boasts direct web browsing from the camera via WiFi. The camera can upload photos and videos to Web sites through any public hotspot via its built-in Web browser. It comes with complimentary AT&T WiFi access to Sony’s Easy Upload Home Page all the way up until Jan. 31, 2012. It includes Wi-Fi access at thousands of AT&T hotspots across the United States, including participating coffee shops, some bookstores and quick-serve restaurant locations, plus hundreds of upscale hotels and airports. Some specs on the camera include a dedicated WLAN button, direct links to photo sharing sites like Shutterfly and Picasa Web Albums; video sharing sites like YouTube and Dailymotion.

The Sony Cybershot G3 also features a high-resolution 3.5-inch (921,600-dot) LCD screen, support for DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) guidelines, 10-megapixel sensor with 4x optical zoom Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, 4GB of built-in storage (optional expansion is Memory Stick only), and Intelligent Scene Recognition feature with Face Detection technology. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

Looks like Sony has gotten all official on us, even though everyone already knew that this Netbook was real. Sony’s hyped-up Vaio P Netbook weighs under 1.4 pounds, is under an inch thick, and it packs in an 8-inch screen with a 2.08:1 aspect ratio (1600×768!).

The netbook also sports Verizon WWAN 3G mobile broadband, has a keyboard that’s 10% smaller than the Vaio TT and 802.11n wi-fi. It also comes with an instant start OS that lets you access music, internet and email without fully booting Windows Vista. As you might expect, the Sony Vaio P will be available in several colors. Five to be exact. Red, green, black, white and onyx.

Sony’s Walkman NWZ-X1000 is a real looker. It features an OLED touchscreen, Wi-Fi and built-in noise cancellation and once again make the brand the world’s music player of choice, assuming the price is right. Like the iPod Touch, it comes in 16GB and 32GB and can be used to surf the web. The OLED screen’s a half inch smaller, so the colors should be brighter with better contrast.

It also comes with digital noise canceling, which is interesting. The feature, allows your 13.5mm EX headphone to block out ambient noise. It’s got all the right specs, but the price may be it’s downfall. If typical Sony pricing applies, this won’t compete with the iPod Touch.

I talked a bit last week about the Sony P series page on the Sony site that leaked on Christmas Day. The page has since been pulled from the site. It appears that the P Series will be Sony’s first Netbook and it has some interesting specifications, if they prove to be accurate.

Sony has a new teaser page up on its Japanese site that is giving brief glimpses at the keyboard design of what the page calls the VAIO New mobile. The site has a woman walking towards a door carrying a tiny purse as the image of a keyboard with a Lenovo-like tracking nub in the center of the keyboard. The suggestion is that the P Series fits into her tiny bag.

One of the most common ways that new products and gadgets are leaked to the public and geeky writer types is by an overzealous website administrator. Product pages are readied ahead of time and sometimes the go button is hit a little too soon resulting in a glimpse of what’s to come.

Just such a glimpse happened on the Sony website Christmas Day while most of us were happily eating turkey and playing with our new toys. A placeholder page popped up on the Sony website showing a new P Series notebook. Before you get too excited, the specifications and the image of the new system were not very useful.

It’s no secret that the Sony PS3 is expensive to buy and expensive to build. When the console first launched in 2006 it was sold at a significant loss by Sony in order to get consumers to buy the system and then spend money on games.

Research firm iSuppli dismantled one of the PS3 consoles in 2006 that retailed for $599 at the time and found that it cost Sony $840 to build. The same firm has gone back now after the console has had several generations to mature to find out if Sony is still losing big on the PS3 console.

We’ve all had our encounters with clamshell packaging, so it’s nice to hear about manufacturers that abandon the practice. Sony did just that this week, even though this video is pretty lame. Sony is just one of several big name companies that have pledged an end to this wasteful, destructive packaging.

As we reported last month, Amazon took a stand of their own. Other companies are getting on board too, like Microsoft and Best Buy. Once they start saving money on packaging, maybe Sony can make a better video, or give their workers a raise, but in reality it will likely go straight into the hands of the guys at the top. Then they can feel all good about themselves when they too ask for a bailout. To help the little guy of course.

A good way to sell drives is to repackage them with preloaded special edition movies or music content. That’s what Sony is doing with their Microvault USB flash drives. The company has unveiled a number of movie titles that will be available in their MicroVault USB drives, as well as some music.

Microvault drives range from 1GB to 16GB storage capacities. Preloaded content is available from a few popular choices such as Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition, The Da Vinci Code and Men in Black. The special edition Thriller includes the complete re-release version of the original 1982 album, seven bonus tracks and four Billie jean videos.

Sony has been busy as usual. Apparently they’ve been working on a next-generation touch Walkman. Word is that it will feature 16 and 32GB of storage and be the new flagship music player at Sony. This will be the most advanced music, video and photo Walkman music player ever released by Sony to date.

The idea is that it will go head-to-head with Apple’s iPod touch, as it features WIFI and is compatible with most popular music and video formats. It will also sport a web browser and the Walkman is also said to be able to download music from the Amazon store, and you can probably expect some sort of Sony online store too. And just in case you still listen to terrestrial radio, the touchscreen walkman also has FM radio.

Sony is offering this James Bond 007 Sony Vaio TT Series Notebook with carbon fiber black casing that also sports a 007 engraved logo and a leather case. The TT series features an 11.1″ widescreen LCD display, 2GB RAM, a 64GB Solid State Drive, HDMI out, and comes with a pair of noise canceling headphones. If you don’t want to dish out the $2,399 you can always get the Limited Edition 007 8GB Micro Vault Click USB Flash Drive for $29,99.

It allows you to “Gather intelligence for your next mission with the limited edition 007 Quantum of Solace 8GB Micro Vault Click USB flash drive. Featuring a hidden USB connector, it’s easy to transfer and exchange data with colleagues and correspondents. The USM8GL/B also includes Virtual Expander to virtually store three times the information. In addition to the 007 Gun Logo on the side, this flash drive comes preloaded with a Quantum of Solace movie trailer, stills and behind-the-scenes footage.” OMG. This is exactly what you need to become the next James Bond.