Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on the convergence between cell phones and digital music players and the expected impact (not good) on the Apple iPod.
By way of example they note that Nokia expects to sell 80 million music phones in 2006 alone and pointedly remark that Apple has only sold a grand total of [...]

Sony Ericsson has a new TV phone, model W44S, with a nice 3-inch 240×432 16:9 LCD screen, which is one of the largest on the market. The device uses Sony’s RealityMax image processing enhancement to improve edge definition and image contrast…hence all the sharp edges in the promotional image.
Not bad, but it would have been [...]

Device convergence might be finished. From a manufacturer’s viewpoint, adding more and more features to a given platform makes economic sense - hence we see things like hyper-converged cell phones that have a built-in camera, GPS, TV, a music player, a glucometer, a toaster, can play games, and can manage your office documents. Apple seems [...]

In a surprisingly positive review, ExtremeTech had a look at the new Zune MP3 player and seemed to like almost all of the core features of the product. They complimented the look and feel of the Zune’s soft finish, the large(r) screen, better sound quality (as compared to the iPod), the layout and navigation of [...]

Well, the Swiss and the French seem to be pulling it off…construction of the Large Hadron Collider which is located on the border of Switzerland and France near Geneva, is proceeding apace. The 26.659 Km or 16.565 mile circumference tunnel is complete, the supporting equipment is being installed now, and trials are scheduled to begin [...]

There seems to be a trend towards over-the-top gifts this year… Neiman Marcus has on offer a $7000 dog house uh, pet home, Victoria’s Secret lists the $6.5M Hearts on Fire diamond-studded piece of underwear, and Virgin Galactic is holding a seat for you on their inaugural flight to the edge of space that’s going [...]

The Xinhua News Agency is reporting that The Innovative Design Contest for China Undergarments Elements was held in Beijing Thursday last. The exposition presented a number of updated interpretations of the Cheongsam, the traditional Chinese female dress.
The design highlights of the show included innovative use of materials, bold use of colors and fabrics, as well [...]

Here’s a spot of bad news for hit-and-run drivers…
The 2007 Lexus LS 460 self-parking wonder car has a unique added pre-crash safety feature - namely pedestrian avoidance. Pedestrians are detected by means of 2 video cameras and a millimeter-wave radar, which work together to sound an alarm if there is a danger of collision. If [...]

The brand name of the just-launched Microsoft Zune MP3 player apparently derives from a 3 month exercise earlier this year by sound symbolism specialist Lexicon Branding. Lexicon and their team of sixty PhD linguists pondered many thousands of potential candidates, rejecting names like “Tunz” and “Noiz”, before settling on the eventual winner of “Zune”.
Lexicon seems [...]

In an article in Mac Observer, writer John Martellaro holds forth on the upcoming Zune vs iPod celebrity deathmatch that will be played out in the coming months and years. While many analysts have focused on delivered features as defining the likely success or failure of these products, Martellaro instead tries to surmise some of [...]