Gearfuse

Last month, we discussed SanDisk’s latest new format SlotMusic. While it’s simply just a microSD card with songs on it, SanDisk feels that’s enough to try to make a push for a place in the digital music industry. To make matters worse now, SanDisk is selling a $20 MP3 player that will play SlotMusic or microSD cards. Some of the players will cost $35 but those will include a full album of music with the purchase.

To be honest, I see SlotMusic dying in under 8 months unless SanDisk puts out a Katy Perry-themed player. Dead serious.

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Right now, in a time where the economy is complete shit and corporate raiding is nothing new, Samsung is trying to buy SanDisk, one of the largest manufacturers of flash memory. SanDisk is being resistant, so what’s a troubled company to do? In this case, SanDisk decided to launch SlotMusic, a microSD card equipped with a full album’s worth of songs from a major label recording artist. These “albums” will be available in stores like Best Buy and WalMart, ensuring they’ll collect dust for years to come.

You must remember, dear reader, that no one buys CDs anymore, let alone some fucked up microSD format. Only 29 albums will be launching with SlotMusic, making selection very limited. Om Malik has a hell of a point when he brings up that this is exactly like MiniDisk. Except that was the 1990s and everything was cool in the ’90s.

I love the above image from the SlotMusic website. I had no idea the iPod/Zune had microSD slots! Oh wait…

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Alliteration aside, the Bluetrek Bizz is looking to blend the world of USB devices and Bluetooth headsets. It’s a Bluetooth headset combined with a USB drive that accepts microSD cards for storage (thus turning it into a microSD card reader as well.)

While it may not be as fashionable as other Bluetooth devices, it gets the job done and the extra functionality it packs makes it worthwhile. Scoop one up for $55 or rob a Best Buy. I wouldn’t recommend the latter.

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This sexy Liquid Image Digital Underwater Camera records images and video as you swim around your swimming pool or in the ocean. Nobody is safe anymore. Available in two difference varieties. An adult-version which features a 5 MP CMOS camera, and a smaller version featuring a 3 MP camera.

The lenses of the goggles feature cross hairs which help you focus your shot underwater, and it even offers support for microSD and USB ports for extended memory storage, as well as offering some on-board storage. We can all expect a lot of pictures of old lady butts popping up on Flickr soon. Powered by 2 AAA batteries. Available for $100. — Andrew Dobrow

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While many modern PC’s have SD card compatibility, the ones that don’t kind of leave the user out of the loop. Loas has introduced their small ultra-lightweight USB-powered SD card reader which gives any computer with USB 2.0 SC card compatibility.

The device is compatible with the SD, miniSD, microSD, SDHC card formats, giving you pretty much full reign over the SD collection of storage options. Suggested price for this little guy is 1,780 yen (about $16). — Andrew Dobrow

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Chinese company QLA released its V88 GSM mobile phone and it looks like a nice change compared to the iPhone rip-offs we’ve seen recently. With a battery time of 200 hours, and a talk time of 300 minutes, you can spend hours yapping on the V88 or simply listening to MP3, AAC, WAV, and MPEG4 files on its automatic lyric syncing media capabilities.

The V88 is compatible with microSD for on the go storage options and includes a 1.3 megapixel camera. It measures in at 90.7 x 45.5 x 20.8 mm at a weight of 96.5 g. The V88 also supports Bluetooth and oddly enough, Java 2.0. The phone is available for around 8,800 yuan (approx. $1,136), which seems mighty expensive. But that’s our info until proven otherwise. — Andrew Dobrow

Link (translated from Chinese)

Designer cellphones have been popping up out of the woodwork for the last year or so. They’ve shown an intriguing sense of mobile style and design. This special edition 3250 joins skateboard fashion company, WESC with mobile manufacture, Nokia, to produce a very pretty looking new model.

This special edition of the popular Nokia 3250 with camera and music capabilities, will be released later this month and will come with a full line of accessories. Included will be a WESC passport holder, a WESC phone strap, a WESC travel guide, eye mask, Sennheiser PX 100 headphones, a microSD memory chip which holds a digital version of the travel guide, and a spare skateboard wheel.

The 3250 has a stylish design on the back of the phone with the words “Welcome to our world” etched into the black panel. A quote which is both rebellious for the extreme sport market, and reminiscent of geeky talk. Take it how you will, this phone is just cool. The WESC x Nokia 3250 phone will be available on March 31st at select WESC stores in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmoe, Copenhagen, New York, London, and Tokyo for $520. With a very limited number of only 500 kits worldwide. (more…)

While making our rounds scourging the Internet, we came across this spiffy hack for your Nintendo DS. Using an asymmetric wavelet codec specifically made to playback video on the DS ARM-based hardware (whatever the hell that means), this Flickr member has managed to capture this image of the Nintendo DS video hack, running on his handheld.

Flickr member, Gwire, says this:

It’s not ready for release yet – the touchscreen controls aren’t yet functional and there’s still some work to do on the dithering, but it’s looking pretty cool. The video files are stored on MicroSD, which has the capacity for a full movie in this codec, but Dom also mentioned he’s working on a symetric (sic) codec that’ll allow live video sources to be streamed to the unit via WiFi.

Bravo for Dom! — Andrew Dobrow

DS video [Flickr, via Wonderland]

 

iRiver Japan announced the X20 multimedia player this afternoon. The X20 is reasonably small and light (98.5×49.0×14.8mm 71g), it spots a 2.2″ QVGA screen, stereo speaker and micoSD slot. The model will come in 2GB and 4GB, and to our excitement the company is also releasing a 8GB version that was not reported at CES.

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These days, computers are becoming small enough to fit in your pocket, if you consider cell phones to be computers, that is. One of the major problems with cell phones acting as computers, however, is that the screen is just too dang small to share things with anyone. Spectec jumped this hurdle with the release of the video-out adaptor which is connected via MiniSD or MicroSD card slots. This allows you to connect anything with a MiniSD or MicroSD card slot to a TV, monitor, or projector through an s-video or VGA hookup. One drawback is that it will only reach a maximum resolution of 1024 by 768, meaning that this won’t look so hot on your new 50 inch plasma. Control your presentations with the 10 button IR remote that comes included with the video-out adaptor. One other feature they brag about is that you can view a preview on the device itself; why would you want to view it on the device if it’s on a TV or monitor? Spectec took a big step in removing the need of computers with our modern cell phones. — Nick Rice

Spectec’s MiniSD & MicroSD Video-Out Adaptor [via OhGizmo!]