Sony Rolly SEP-10BT Sound Entertainment Player

Sony's loving Aibo may have packed it up for the day, but it brings a tear or two to know that some parts of it may still live on in gizmos like the company's upcoming Rolly SEP-10BT Sound Entertainment Player. Innards-wise, this apparently packs the same technology that controls the robots which Sony has been R&Ding on. While this eggshape MP3 player won't wag any tails or flop its ears with adorable cuteness, it sure can roll. Hence, Rolly? According to specs, Rolly can not only dance/roll(?) to music, it will also choreograph its moves, allowing you to share this with pals online. You can catch the video at newlaunches.com. Two onboard wheels and its rotund design let you roll the roll. Too bad it can't roll over and play "dead" to indicate the batteries' dried up.


Price: 40,000 yen (about US$350)
Availability: Japan, from September 29, more info here
Device: Dance bot
Specs: 1GB internal memory, connect/charge via USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0, editable motion, 3.7V 1,560mAh, 5 hrs music playback, 4.5 hrs streaming Bluetooth music, 4 hrs music and motion, 3.5 hrs Bluetooth streaming and motion, supports MP3, ATRAC, AAC up to 300+ kbps, 104 × 65 × 65mm, 300g

New HPs roll into Asia with a boom

Yes, it was Big Bang time again when HP held a regional consumer launch event in Singapore today.

Four product categories saw new entrants, but it was the printer category which dominated the proceedings with a staggering 13 new models along with the announcement of the Snapfish online photo service in Singapore.

The Palo Alto-based company also debuted five new iPaqs--two business-oriented PDA-phones, two PDAs and one GPS navigation device. The hero product of the bunch is the iPaq 612 Business Navigator which includes a raised touch-sensitive circular edge on the keypad for navigation.

Over on the computing side, Chin Hon Cheng, vice president for HP's Consumer Products and Mobile Business Group, elaborated on one of its strategy cornerstones. "We will engage the youth as an emerging segment of our consumers… and this youth will one day become a working adult." Chin explained that HP hoped the impression made on the youth will influence the products and technologies they will be using in working life.

To help its bid to net the youth market, HP has extended three new design finishes--Verve, Influx, Trace--to its laptops. Chin also revealed that Webcams will be a standard feature for its future laptops.

HP goes Print 2.0
HP showcases quad-core Pavilion Elite
HP notebooks undergo a makeover
HP's five latest iPaqs

Wii Zapper to include Zelda-themed crossbow game when it ships in November

When Nintendo announced the Wii Zapper back at July's E3 show, the company promised the US$20 addon would be bundled with a game (a "pack-in," in gamer parlance). And today the company made good on the pledge: The Zapper will include Link's Crossbow Training, a Zelda-themed target shooter. The game will progress from simple bull's-eyes to moving targets (including enemies from the Zelda series), and--while we wouldn't expect much more than a glorified "how to use the Zapper" tutorial--something tells us Crossbow Training could be as infectious as Wii Sports.

Either way, it's nice to see Nintendo adding a bit of value to what's less a controller and more a big hunk of plastic. (The Zapper is simply a housing that places the Wii Remote and Nunchuk into a mounting that's vaguely reminiscent of a Tommy gun.)

In addition to the included crossbow title, three third-party titles will also be Zapper-compatible: EA's Medal of Honor Heroes 2, Capcom's Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and Sega's Ghost Squad. Each of those games are Wii exclusives, and all are due by the end of the year. The Zapper itself will be available in North America on November 19. Asia usually follows suit after about three months to half a year, if we're lucky.

Nokia speakers: A small fashion statement

Undeterred by iPhone mania, Nokia continues to chug along with its own music phone efforts and has just come out with a new portable speaker device for its Xpress handset. That's a good thing, considering some of the unfortunate alternatives we've seen out there for other phone speakers.

Rather than something that looks like a genetic experiment gone awry, Nokia's MD-6 "Pocket Speakers" take on a sleek form that looks something like a cigarette lighter as seen on Krunker.com. Following that theme, it has a hinged top that opens to reveal both speakers at one end of its 4.8-inch-long case.

At this size it won't be breaking any eardrums, but it won't take up nearly as much room as other portable speaker sets either, such as a clamshell version we cited recently. The last thing we need is a speaker accessory that's as big as the handset itself.

Via CNET Crave

New Palm phone is not the Centro

Remember that European teaser site we saw last week, the one saying that a new "smart phone" will be announced on September 12 there? The outline of the image on that site seemed to correspond to leaked images of the rumored Centro device, but now, we know it is not the Centro. This is straight from the horse's mouth actually, really from Stephanie Richardson, a contributor to the official Palm blog.

In her short post titled "It's a Bird, it's a plane, it's not Centro", she mentions a new device which isn't the Centro. Let's deconstruct that. First, we know this confirms there is/was something called the Centro. Second, it could be that what's being launched is a different PDA-phone altogether, something we haven't seen. Third, there's a possibility that it's a smokescreen--the leaked image is the right one, just that they ain't calling it Centro.

Who knows? It's just a few days till then and we're not holding our breath for Palm to knock us over, in any case.

Official Palm Blog (via Crave)

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