Griffin Technology’s iTalk Pro Voice Recorder for iPod Video and nano attaches securely to your iPod via the dock port. Now you can use your iPod to record memos, lectures, and personal journals as well as play them back.

The black color iTalk Pro also has two high-quality omnidirectional microphones built in for optimal sound quality. This adaptable, fun piece of equipment also allows you to adjust the gain level so you can get quality recordings in any environment.

B&H price: $26.95 + shipping

Any Gnomies have a take on this product? Good or bad, we’d love to hear about it! Comments are absolutely welcome.

Stories at CNN, Ars Technica, and CNET are covering the fact that Apple is working on a plan that would allow unlimited “free” access to the iTunes music library — if users paid more up-front for their iPod devices.

This sounds interesting, but it seems like an up-front charge (when you buy the device, as a one-time fee) might have some legal (not to mention business viability) challenges associated with it. Now, if they were to go with a Zune-like monthly subscription model, that would be a whole different story. It would actually make a lot of sense.

Group-think/conventional wisdom seems to be that since the average iPod/Phone user spends about $20 total on music through the iTunes store, it would make sense to charge everyone that much up front. Others say something more like $80 is more reasonable. I think they’re all wrong: Charge me $20 up front, and I will do everything I can to maximize — in a big way — that mandatory investment. People only spend an average of $20 because they have to keep paying. Charge that up front and grant them unlimited access, and they’ll download more music than you can possibly imagine.

That’s where the Zune Pass idea is a better one. Recurring monthly revenue of a predictable, fixed amount (which is great from a business standpoint) and a happy customer base. I just don’t see a one-time fixed fee model holding water for very long. But then again, if your intent (hypothetically) is to launch a firestorm campaign to (further) monopolize the market and then dump it as unviable… well, you might actually succeed at one goal by failing at another. Just a thought. :)

Do you remember when the first generation of iPod shuffles were called small? When Apple’s designers were dreaming up the iPod shuffle 1GB MP3 Player 2nd Generation, they had one thing on their minds: how can we make this small and compact 1GB player even smaller? The next step in the shuffle generation is 1/3 the length of its predecessor! Having your 1GB iPod shuffle is like carrying an entire 80-pack CD-case clipped to your belt.

Featuring iTunes autofill which will automatically fill your iPod shuffle with your own or new downloaded music, you don’t even have to pick and choose if you don’t want to. Easy-to-use buttons and a slider switch make the iPod shuffle a player that’s a joy to handle as well as jam to.

Deal price: $49 + free shipping

Any Gnomies have a take on this product? Good or bad, we’d love to hear about it! Comments are absolutely welcome.

The Sansa Connect MP3 Player from SanDisk mates a flash-based memory MP3 player with Wi-Fi connectivity for unlimited media options.

All you need is an open Wi-Fi network and a Yahoo! ID to listen to LAUNCHcast Internet radio. View your photos via MicroSD card or Flickr via Wi-Fi. The Sansa Connect also allows you see what your friends are listening to. The Sansa Connect has a card slot for MicroSD to access even more music and picture files. Listen with the included earphones or the internal speaker.

Special price: $79.95 (after $40 instant rebate) + shipping

Any Gnomies have a take on this product? Good or bad, we’d love to hear about it! Comments are absolutely welcome.

A few days ago, we declared iPod the ultimate winner with no portable music players to take it down. However, we need to make an exception for Microsoft. As surprising as it is, at CES 2008, Microsoft’s Zune is really starting to emerge as a serious threat to Apple’s crown jewel. Sure, it’s not going to capture the market rapidly and growth will be gradual, but Microsoft has the right ingredients. Just when Microsoft announced Xbox and its official entry in the gaming space, everybody laughed at the idea. And the joke become even hilarious after Microsoft announced its loss on a per unit basis, and how wide that was. Look at Xbox 360 now and the ever-successful Halo franchise that has made Microsoft a running star in gaming consoles. The gaming industry would now feel empty without Microsoft. After interviewing with Zune reps at CES, we got the same sense of ongoing developments and a long-term strategy from them.

Naturally, they weren’t as overconfident this year as they were last year at CES 2007. In fact, they were more appreciative of Apple and its developments. We think the technology industry was more humble this year for whatever reason, and a lot of companies were giving credit to their competitors. And justifiably so. If a particular company has done well, it deserves to be credited. It doesn’t matter if it’s a competitor or not. We are glad the technology sector is starting to become more humble with a clear acceptance for its competitors as industry movers and shakers.

Microsoft displayed a new version of its Zune social networking site, and it was impressive. The company is looking to overhaul its social networking site at least once a year with a substantial list of features. On top of that, they will continue to update it with incremental feature updates once every quarter. These will be “soft” upgrades.

The company continues to be on a track to personalize their music players with very intricate designs, and Microsoft acknowledged it might let users create their own designs, upload them and have them printed and shipped accordingly. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The world’s number two music maker was quiet about its Zune developments, but considering how rapidly Microsoft is learning from its previous mistakes, we are hopeful of their capabilities. It can only get better for Microsoft from this point forward, or at least we hope.

[Gundeep Hora]

This article has been republished with the kind permission of our friends at CoolTechZone. For more news about the gadgets that make the world go ’round, go give ‘em a look or Subscribe to CoolTechZone’s RSS Feed!

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Since we had a lot of time at CES this year thanks to lackluster exhibitors, we talked a lot about the future (like we wouldn’t normally). These days, music players are aplenty, but there’s nothing that’s truly disruptive about them. Even the cheapest (and we mean that with utmost respect) of the bunch can display photos, play back audio/video, and support in-line recording. What makes one better than the other? Audio quality could be a distinguishing factor only if mainstream consumers could hear the difference. Many of them continue to sport stock earphones, so asking them to compare audio quality between two MP3 players is stretching too much. Besides, who really buys anything other than the iconic iPod these days anyways?

At CES, we went around to SanDisk, Creative, and a slew of other companies to see if they could reveal anything about the future of these commodity devices. Obviously convergence with cell phones is an obvious one. It has been happening for years now, but what took us for a surprise was talk of high-definition video on MP3 players. Seriously? It only makes sense with HD DVD and Blu-ray making their way into our hearts gradually. Besides, with TV signals going digital early next year, we won’t be impressed with anything less than spectacular. Picture perfect, if you will.

Look, storage isn’t an issue. We’ve got plenty of storage options, and we could rip Blu-ray or HD DVD discs, downsize them (convert them), and play them back on our music players. Why not? Sure, the capacity-per-movie is going to be on the high-end, but we could swap out discs everyday if it means crystal clear quality. After all, many of us connect our music players to our computers at least once a day anyway. It’s not extra effort on our parts. Movies aren’t a problem either. As said before, Blu-ray and HD DVD are making their way to store shelves and picking between a slew of titles won’t be an issue as we progress through the years.

However, for high-definition MP3 players, we can expect the prices to rise again, maybe even sharply, thanks to the R&D investments for displays that can bring pictures to real life. It’s only natural to expect. Don’t get me wrong, picture quality on music players looks impressive for what it’s worth, but it’s not quite there. We don’t even believe it’s DVD quality. Of course, we are talking about music players here, like the ones from SanDisk and Creative, not dedicated PMPs with comparatively better features and display for true quality video playback.

With music players going full screen, namely Apple’s iPod Touch, could PMPs and MP3 players converge to become all-in-one devices? Absolutely! However, iPod Touch-like devices need time to take off, but expecting prices to be somewhere in that range shouldn’t be out of the question. All in all, though, HD is making its way to portable devices, and this ride is going to be very interesting. Finally, a push to make these everyday gadgets a little spicy. You could expect to start seeing these devices in Q4, 2008 and in 2009, if they ever get out. Do understand this is just a grand vision for a lot of companies, and acting on this vision may be more difficult than they currently predict.

[Gundeep Hora]

This article has been republished with the kind permission of our friends at CoolTechZone. For more news about the gadgets that make the world go ’round, go give ‘em a look or Subscribe to CoolTechZone’s RSS Feed!

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