Another new Wii accessory fresh from E3 is the WiiSpeak community mic and speaker that will let you chat with friends and enemies online. It’s not like an Xbox 360 headset since the emphasis is on group chatting and since it resides not on your head but on top of your TV. It will come bundled with Animal Crossing City Folk and will be out later this year. Pretty cool no? I’m not sure how it will filter out game sounds and such, but it must be pretty good.

Most of you have heard the rumors about a touchpad on the new guitar, well now we get to see it for real. IGN previewed the new gear, and they say that the strip will be used for notes during sustains, tapping to play notes, and interfacing with the new music creator.

Interestingly, the guitar is larger than those that have come before it. Back to the drums. They’re pressure sensitive, with a plain jane mic, and the music creation software is apparently very awesome. Sadly, you can’t record vocals for songs though. The Wii version of the game will have all of the same features, which is good news for Wii owners.

This odd mic is blue, with 2 big ears, which is creepy enough, but the most disturbing thing in conjunction with those features is the lack of any face at all. The ears are supposed to capture sound in stereo just like human ears. At least that’s the idea. Problem is your subject will be so freaked out, they’ll be running in the opposite direction.

The other problem is the price. The Binaural Recording Mic from Otokinoko retails for $3,900. That’s a lot to pay to look like a dork. There is one upside to using this strange device though. If you’re filming in some remote jungle and you meet up with a hostile tribe, just grab this baby, hold it up high and they’ll be worshipping their new God.

Anyone that owns an iPod has probably noticed at one time or another that all of them lack a common feature found in many other media players - an audio input source. This fact has opened up a market for many 3rd parties to create microphone accessories for the iPod including one of the latest designs, this time from Logitec.

The LIC-iREC01 microphone connects to any model iPod that has a docking port and provides dual microphone for stereo recording straight to the device. It also has an input port for bringing in other audio sources to record aside from the ambient noise, and it has a pass through USB port to sync up and charge the iPod without having to remove the microphone accessory. A switch on the side controls high or low levels of recording and the part that we like best is that it’s small and doesn’t need any additional cords or loose parts (aside from the dock cap) to operate.

It was only a short time ago that Harmonix had finally announced the release of standalone instruments for Rock Band. At the time there was no word of a standalone mic. As it turns out, it is already on sale. The packaging teases us with a single word. Wii.

No, that doesn’t simply mean yes in France. It means that Rockstar should be hitting the Wii sometime soon. This isn’t the best picture, but if you look in the top right corner of the package, you’ll note which systems it’s compatible with: Playstation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. This is interesting because so far Harmonix has been strangely silent about a version of the game for Nintendo’s console.