There was be alot speculation about the upcoming Sony Rolly robotic music player. If you haven’t heard…where have you been?  Bluetooth streaming, programmable movement, amazing sound, and a heck of a design.

Rolly has two stereo 20mm active speakers with an output of 1.2W each, but the best part is its movement. Rolly will move all over your room, roaming and playing your favorite tunes via 1BG flash memory or streaming from your PC via Bluetooth!

While moving to the music, Rolly also lights to the tunes with blue, orange, and green LEDs that bounce right along as Rolly does. It’s volume controls are on the rotators, whose movements can also be customized with the “Motion Editor” software that comes with it.

All in all, this is one of the most exciting audio accessories to come this year
Rolly Specifications:
• Size: Approximately 104 x 65 x 65mm
• Weight: Approximately 300g
• Speakers: 20mm installed capacity: 1.2W + 1.2W
• Frequency range: 20-20,000Hz
• Interface: USB terminal: MiniB/Hi-Speed
• Memory: 1GB flash (built in)
• File compatibility: MP3, ATRAC, AAC
• Power: Rechargeable Lithium ion battery / USB
• Battery power duration: 3-5 hours depending on use
• Corresponding Bluetooth profile: A2DP and AVRCP
• Corresponding Bluetooth codec: SBC and MP3

Rolly comes with:
• USB cable (75cm)
• Lithium ion battery
• Sonicstage CP
• Motion Editor (Japanese)
• Stand
• Manual (Japanese)

You can order it here for $499.00

Every time I rip a CD and wait for the painstaking process to be done (listening to the horrific grinding spinning noise the whole time), I think about how many CDs I’ve collected over the years and conclude that I’ll probably be listening to CDs even when everyone else has all their music stored on holographic jewels around their necks (-_-;). Digital storage offers so many advantages, but unless you’re a real young’un, you likely have much of your music collection stored in boxes, not a hard drive. There are actually services available for people who want to have someone else transfer their entire music collections in one go (and who don’t want to spend a weekend in a ripping frenzy) but they’re expensive. RipDigital, probably the best known of these companies, charges $199 for 200 CDs, enough to buy you 199 brand-new iTunes tracks.

Of course, those guys at RipDigital don’t have employees sitting there ripping each CD one by one; they’ve got the big honking machines that you throw a whole box of CDs into which spit out mp3s. The large capacity rippers tended to be prohibitively expensive for home use, not to mention being bigger than my washing machine, but a new one, the Pico MP3 ripper, weighs just 6.5 lbs. and costs $699. Yes, you could get about 700 CDs converted by RipDigital for you for that much, but the Pico will let you start your own neighborhood or family racket, letting you rip 25 CDs in a go, totally hands-free. The Pico will rip into mp3, wav, aiff, or flac files, and will retrieve all your CD track information from CDDB just like an application like iTunes will do.

The Pico is also a disc duplicator, so you can make up to 12 CDs or 6 DVDs an hour, a big advantage if you’re the type who likes to share the “wealth” when you’ve compiled all your home movies onto DVD.

The Pico super-duper drive connects through USB 2.0, and rips right into any home computer. The $699 price includes 50 blank recordable DVDs and a lifetime discount on Disk Makers other compatible blank media.

The Venzero LifeSaver is a USB stick with a 8GB microdrive bundled with the Ceedo backup software.

The LifeSaver measures 60×36x10mm and features a swivel style USB plug. The Ceedo mobile desktop software is pre-installed on the new Venzero device.
The Venzero LifeSaver will sell for $149.
More details about the Venzero LifeSaver on the Venzero site.

Check out the new curvy LG Flash based MP3 player MFFM20. Features include PlayForSure support, FM radio, 20 hrs of battery life, 512MB and 1GB versions and a weird “Music Therapy” function.

In fact the MFFM20 looks like the love child of the Pebble MP3 player and the Sony NW-A3000 Walkman, with its sleek curves and luminescent display. When it comes to features, the player gives nothing more than the industry standard features. It has PlayForSure support for stores such as Napster, FM radio and 20 hrs of battery life. It will be available in 512MB and 1GB versions and sports an interesting feature called “Music Therapy” which LG does not wish to elaborate on which also appears on the 8GB MFJM53.

Sanyo will soon sell the DMP-M400SD, a SD based mP3 player which accept SD cards up to 2GB. Our new little Player (69×55x15mm for 29g) support Mp3 files as well as both DRM and none DMR WMA ones.

Sanyo

Microsoft has given up some details on the Zune, the most significant detail being the confirmation that it exists. In an article in Billboard Magazine, the company reveals that Zune is much more than just a digital media player, but rather a family of hardware and software products which integrate various forms of digital entertainment services. The first implementation of this will be the portable music player and digital music service, which is essentially Microsoft’s first real attempt at going head to head with the Apple’s iTunes and iPod one-two punch combo. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can put a dent in Apple’s 70% market share in digital music downloads, and 75% of the entire digital music player scene. If anyone has the pockets to do it, it’s them.

GOD save us all, the squid USB Hubs are back.. Buffalo just released an update of their USB HUB with a squid look, the new stuff here is that it is possible to lego-like “stick” together the female ports either vertically or horizontally.

Buffalo