Microsoft has announced the price and launch date for its Zune digital music player and service. The new player will be available in the US on November 14th and will be priced at $249 (USD). Microsoft also announced that the monthly subscription to its new music service would cost $14.99 or 79 points per track using Microsoft’s point system.

You won’t be empty handed as the Zune will also come pre-loaded with a variety of songs and music videos. The audio tracks include: Band of Horses, “Wicked Gil” (Sub Pop Records), Bitter:Sweet, “The Mating Game” (Quango Music Group), CSS, “Alala (Microsoft edit)” (Sub Pop Records), Darkel, “At The End of The Sky (edit)” (Astralwerks), Every Move a Picture, “Signs of Life” (V2), Small Sins, “Stay” (Astralwerks), The Adored, “Tell Me Tell Me” (V2), The Rakes, “Open Book” (V2), The Thermals, “A Pillar of …

The iRiver clix is an awesome little multimedia player that has a very easy to use interface and is able to play music, videos, photos and text. You can use it to listen to the radio, as an alarm clock, it’s small enough to hide in your hand and still has a 2.2″ viewing screen.

It has 2G of storage, which lately is a little on the lite side with similar devices, but aside from that and needing to touch the screen a lot with your fingers (comes with a cleaning cloth), the iRiver Clix is a smooth gadget.

The Clix is compatible with the Windows Plays For Sure subscription service and transfers data with USB. The battery lasts up to 25 hours, which could last longer than your media and is quite the opposite compared to many similar media players with more memory than …

The Gigabeat web site alone makes me like this gadget. They have done a good job building a nice interactive Flash site, and of course it has music with an awesome beat, which brings us to the MES60VK Gigabeat multimedia device.

The Gigabeat MES60VK version from Toshiba has a 60GB drive to hold your music, video, TV shows, movies and pictures. You can transfer video through the Windows Media Player, buy movies for the Gigabeat at Vongo, and get music with Microsoft’s Plays For Sure. Al of this is accessible to you through an easy to use navigation control and a 2.4 inch color panel. The only thing that would make this a little cooler is if you could record audio and/or video with it, but at least in this version you cannot.

The battery in the Gigabeat will allow you to play music up to 12 …

In an attempt to win over the minds and money of generation Y consumers, Sony released its latest gadget, Mylo. The Mylo is a Web browser, messaging program, wireless phone and digital music player all rolled into a single handheld gizmo.

The Mylo works on any Wi-Fi wireless Internet connection allowing you to surf the web wherever you can find an 802.11b hotspot.

The Mylo weighs in at just over 5 ounces and has a bright 2×1.5 inch backlit screen running at 320×240 resolution. Some of the other key features of the Mylo include:

1GB of internal storage for music, photos and MPEG-4 video files. The Mylo also includes a slot to add a Memory Stick.
Surf the web using Mylo’s Opera Web browser.
Contact friends using Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk or Skype.
Read your Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft email.
The photo browser can interpret JPEG, PNG and BMP …

RealNetworks recently announced the launch of Rhapsody DNA, a new technology platform that enables device makers to deliver a seamless Rhapsody services to consumers via a broad range of media devices. RealNetworks also announced a partnering with SanDisk to create a digital media player that will utilize the Rhapsody DNA platform and directly compete against Apple Computer’s iPod and the upcoming Zune from Microsoft.

RealNetworks’s newly created Rhapsody DNA media platform is an alternative to Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. The new platform is based on the company’s Helix digital rights management system. Device manufacturers now have another alternative to Media Player, a welcome option considering the upcoming launch of Zune.

Rhapsody DNA offers personalization features to enhance the users’ experience. For example, as part of a music subscription service, users who plug a supporting device into a PC would get an automatic update of music based …

Creative Technology recently launched the Zen Vision W video, photo and music player. This launch comes on the same day former partner and new rival Microsoft unveiled new information on the Zune player. Creative has positioned the Zen media player to compete directly against the Microsoft Zune and Apple iPod players. Creative also discussed its support for Amazon’s Unbox movie and video store.

The Zen line of players will run on Microsoft Windows Media and comes in two models: 30GB and 60GB, costing $300 and $400 respectively. The Zen Vision W also has a 4.3-inch color screen, which is slightly larger than the 3-inch screen on the Zune.

Creative Zen Vision W [Creative]

Microsoft recently announced the most information yet on its upcoming Zune digital music player and service. The latest information focused on the Zune’s capabilities that let users share music with friends. The Zune can store and display video and pictures, comes with a 3-inch liquid-crystal display screen, a 30-GB hard drive, FM tuner, and will be available in three different colors: black, white, and brown.

Microsoft also plans to debut the Zune Marketplace into the Zune ecosystem. The Zune Marketplace is an online music store where customers can import existing music, pictures and videos in many popular formats and purchase millions of songs. The service will offer the standard features such as genre browsing, top songs, albums, artists, new releases, and featured items. Microsoft will also offer Zune Pass, which is an online subscription that allows users to download …

The Archos 604 is a portable multimedia player for all standard video formats in a full DVD resolution, including MPEG-4 ASP, WMV (and protected WMV) as well as MPEG-2 and VOB with a software plug in.

The Archos 604 has a 30G hard drive to store up to 130 hours of encoded video. The screen is a 4.3″ wide screen, which gives quite a bit more view that most portable video players out there. You can view them right on the screen, or output them to a full size television and still view them in DVD quality. Once uploaded you can use features to play the video, video editing and video bookmarking right on the player.

There is an optional DVR station for the Archos 604 that seems to almost be must to get all the benefits from this super thin player. You …

Microsoft has released new information on its Zune wireless MP3 player on Thursday. The release included more details which describe how the business model will work. Microsoft has previously confirmed that the player will be manufactured by Toshiba and will contain a 30GB hard drive with wireless capabilities, a 3-inch screen, and a FM tuner.

The release did not divulge the Zune’s price only saying that it will ship during the holiday season 2006.

Microsoft has positioned Zune as a direct competitor to the iPod. Apple’s recent launch of upgraded iPods and the new iTV product make this an interesting battle.

Zune Release [ABC News]

Apple has come out with its updated version of the iPod Nano that can hold up to 8GB of data. That’s twice as much as the maximum size 4GB of the previous model. That means that the number of estimated songs it would hold doubles too, bringing it up to around 8,000.

The size of the new iPod nano is as small as ever but it has a slightly new design, with more rounded edges. The colors have expanded. Previously all that was available was the black or white. Now you can get bright colors in the new anodized aluminum frame with pink, green, silver, blue and black.

Along with the extended potential playlist also came an extended battery life. The batter in the new iPod nano will let you play music continuously for up to 24 hours, and will charge back to 80% of …

SanDisk has come out with a cool new MP3 player. This player, which is not far behind the iPOD works off of flash memory of course, since SanDisk is way into the flash memory business, and is available in a 1GB and a 2GB version.

The Sansa c200 has a color screen and allows you to play music, view photos and listen to FM radio. The Sansa supports MP3, WMA and WAV files and syncs up to Microsofts PlaysForSure subscription music. It interfaces to your PC with USB and has a MicroSD slot for additional memory.

This is a nice MP3 player and at the time of this post is under $100 which makes it relatively affordable. One thing to note is that the Playforsure music subscription from Microsoft will require Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10+. If you don’t have these you …

As if the iPOD does not already have enough cool accessories, the Miuro has got to be one of the cooler ones. Miuro stands for “Music Innovation based on Utility Robot technology”. Kind of a stretch for an acronym in my opinion, plus the whole web site i not in English, so I’m not sure why the acronym is?

Anyway, this device allows your iPOD to dock into the top of the device and then run on wheels.
The device has speakers built it to project the sound throughout the room, and the “robot” is able to move around the room to the sound of the music.

It has a wireless remote that can operate the Miuro robot, and it has an optional and a sensor which “let the robot map it’s position and remember it’s routes”. I’m not sure what that means, …

XM Satellite Radio has a product called inno which is an MP3 player and live satellite radio player in one. The key to this is the live part. With this product you can listen to live satellite radio through XM Satellite Radio and record up to 50 hours with one-touch recording.

This also has a built in FM transmitter, so you can listen to whatever the Inno player is playing using an ordinary FM radio. Also, it’s integrated with XM and Napster which allows you to manage songs, playlists, transfer MP3 and WMA files and buy music online.

The Pioneer Inno comes with these items:

Remote Control
Home Stand for holding the device and playing.
Power Adapter to recharge the rechargeable battery.
RCA Cable to connect external speakers.
USB Cable to connect to your PC.
Belt Clip
Ear Buds
Rechargeable Battery
Setup CD and Product Manual

Some common Inno accessories:

Vehicle …

Playaway has come out with the newest version of books on tape. These are actually little, digital books! They are about half the size of a deck of cards, have the cover of the book on one side, and the 8 button player control on the other. It runs off of one AA battery that comes with the device, and if you keep a charged battery in it you can listen to the book as many times as you would like. The Playaway “books” also come with a set of headphones and a lanyard to hang it around your neck if you would like.
These little digital books are available from Playaway’s online store, and they are also at a few nationwide retailers, including Borders, OfficeMax and of course Barnes & Noble. Most books price from …

When I first heard of podcasting, I immediately figured it had something to do with the iPod and something to do with radio, but when I looked into it this really isn’t the case. Although you can listen to podcasts with the iPod and get them from iTunes, you can also listen to them with almost any other similar device, and you can get them from many, many sources. It just so happens that the iPod was the most popular hardware at the time and so the phrase was coined.

Podcasts are basically the same medium as any song would be, often an MP3 file, and usually are not songs but are news, interviews, comedy or any other audio distribution.

The Podcast Directory is a great source to find all kinds of different podcasts, and of course if you do have an iPod, …