Oooohhhh - I missed news of the Odyssey 1000 portable audio player while I was gone!

"The Odyssey 1000, which will be available to consumers this fall, boasts superb sound quality and outstanding battery life, with a minimum of 13 hours of playback time. The feature-rich Odyssey 1000 has a 20 Gigabyte hard drive for optimum MP3 and Windows Media^TM WMA playback and doubles as a data storage unit for movies, spreadsheets, e- books, and more. Its stainless steel, sleek industrial design only enhances the aesthetic appeal of this digital audio powerhouse, which is small enough to fit in a pocket or purse.

The Odyssey 1000’s high-speed USB 2.0 connection and remarkable ease of use make downloading and transferring music a breeze. With the Odyssey 1000’s USB 2.0 connection, users can transfer an entire CD to their player in about 5 seconds. And e.Digital’s Drag ‘n Rip technology enables users to transfer music in one easy step simply by dragging tracks directly from a CD directory onto their player’s hard drive. Drag ‘n Rip optionally enables users to create a mirror library of music on their computer. The Odyssey 1000 also is compatible with Mac iTunes ^TM.

Another outstanding feature is the Odyssey 1000’s voice navigation capabilities. The Odyssey 1000 uses e.Digital’s VoiceNav^TM user interface based on Lucent’s speech recognition technology so users can navigate through their libraries of music simply by the power of their own voice. It also has an easy-to-use scroll wheel for effortless manual navigation. In addition, the Odyssey 1000 is a voice recorder that comes with a built-in microphone for hours of voice recording on its massive hard drive....

The Odyssey 1000 also has an FM tuner with 12 available station presets and 16 MB DRAM buffering for robust anti-skip protection and increased battery life.

The standard Odyssey 1000 package will include e.Digital Music Explorer^TM 2.0 software for PC (featuring Drag ‘n Rip technology), carrying case with belt clip, an installation CD and manual, stereo earphones, USB 2.0 cable with standard and mini connectors, a universal DC adaptor/battery charger, and RCA audio cable for home stereo connection."

All for (supposedly) $349. As we say at my house, no cuts, no buts, no coconuts. Quit shoving and step back because I WAS IN LINE FIRST!

Addendum: Saw this little gem over on WillConsult4Food after Will left me a comment noting that I should live after eating the questionable M&Ms. Seems he's right, and that sigh you heard was from Gloria because she ate them, too.

And thanks to Will, you, too, can learn about M&Ms and GI Joe.

"It requires the ethernet adapter due out at the end of the month, but the BroadQ - QCast Tuner looks very slick. It will play mp3s and divx videos off of your computer over your PS2. I'm seriously considering picking this up so I can watch DiVX files on my TV. How very cool." [life - listed chronologically]

Hurry and order one today before the company is sent to court and shut down! This may actually spur me to upgrade to the PS2, especially since I already have a wireless network in place.

Camera Makers Unveil New Media Format

"The new xD-Picture Card will be less than an inch square and will be capable of storage capacities of up to 8GB....

Fuji and Olympus will begin selling cameras with xD-Picture Card this fall, along with Fuji-branded cards in 16MB, 32MB, 64MB and 128MB capacities. Adapters that allow the cards to work in PC card and Compact Flash slots will also be available.

Advantages of the new format include its compact size and significantly faster data transfer speeds. A card with capacity of 64MB or higher can record data at 3MB per second, according to Fuji, six times faster than a comparable SmartMedia card....

'To be honest, Fuji and Olympus don't have the clout to make this catch on,' [Niebel] said. 'It's going to be a very niche market.' " [CNET News.com]

Agreed. More format choices = bad, although when you get beyond 128 MB, there's some incentive. Smaller memory cards worry me because I have a difficult enough time keeping track of my Sony memory sticks. Anything smaller (the xD-Picture Card is about the size of a penny) and I might accidentally eat it thinking I'm grabbing a breath mint out of my bag.

Besides, the user interface for tracking 8 GB worth of pictures would be unreal. I have problems organizing the 6 GB on my Archos Jukebox MP3 player, so 8 GB of anything that I'd have to wade through on  a small device would probably make my head explode. The industry needs some serious usability testing and implementation before introducing this much memory in a package that small.