Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Portable Audio

Back in our day we had to use these things called “laptops” to make music, but now it seems like any kid off the street can rock out with a jailbroken iPhone and some Red Bull. Put two of these ADD-addled youngsters together with a DS Phat-toting friend and you’ve got New York avant-garde out the wazoo. We hear Matthew Barney is designing the iconic cover art as we speak. Video is after the break.

[Thanks, Basar]

Continue reading iBand: like the Velvet Underground, but with iPhones

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless

Maybe it’s just us, but the integration of Bluetooth into a CB radio is long, long overdue. Thankfully, Cobra is stepping up to the plate and introducing the 29 LTD BT, which will go down as its first ever CB radio to include integrated BT technology. Essentially, it allows users to accept and terminate calls with a simple button press on the radio itself, and also enables handsfree conversations — undoubtedly littered with 10-4s and good buddies — via the noise canceling microphone and five-watt speaker. Granted, the transmission was a touch fuzzy, but we heard it’ll be available at travel centers and dealers this summer for $189.95. Copy?

[Via Blast Magazine]

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Filed under: Features, Gaming

We got a chance to check out the first functioning games for Zune and were able to answer a few — but not many — questions about how this thing’s bound to play out.

• For starters, first-gen Zunes don’t appear to be ruled out by any means, but it’s going to be dependent on the game controls. Zauri, the sample space shooter game demoed today, uses the Zunepad, thus wouldn’t work (as well) on a Zune 30. Nothing has been decided as to whether games will universally require 2nd-gen Zunes, though.
• Use of the Zunepad in Zauri was as a trackpad and omnidirectional — it wasn’t just up / down / left / right, as in the menus.
• Right now the system partitions a mere 16MB for storing games, although this might change.
• Right now there isn’t a professional-grade SDK to announce; all titles should initially be done up in XNA Studio.
• Means of distribution (i.e. games loaded through an installer, through the Zune desktop app, or through Zune Marketplace?) has not yet been decided.
• The first beta development tools will be out this Spring.
• There are no plans for Zune game sharing (yet), so to play with a friend wirelessly you both must have the game on your Zune.

There was plenty more we wanted to know but Microsoft definitely stressed that this is an incredibly early announcement, and many of the details we’re all lusting after are still being hammered out. Again, we’ll know more in Spring and Summer.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

After the European PR agency seemingly jumped the gun, we finally get some actual hands-on shots of Sony’s newest video Walkman. The NW-A820 series as it’s known in Japan does everything its other NWZ-A820 brother can do in Europe (and presumably the US) only with that icky ATRAC and SonicStage baggage in tow. Sony also announced a new ¥20,000 (about $186) VRC-NW10 cradle with video-out and trick little video-in capability for real-time MPEG-4 recordings straight back to your A820-series player. A SRS-NWT10M external speaker is priced low enough at ¥3,000 ($28) that every teen-age jackass riding the subway will have one. Japan will see the new players in black, white and pink and in 16GB and 8GB models priced at ¥38,000 ($354) and ¥28,000 ($260), respectively. Check the gallery for hot A820 on iPod touch action.

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