Sony’s MDR-AS100W are their flagship sports/outdoor headphones, water resistant, and fit with a two-foot cord best used with arm-mounted MP3 players. US$100 is a lot of money for a headset you plan to sweat on in your Tae Bo classes. So, Sony’s spammed us with cool submodels, too, each with a unique flavour of ear-fitting yoga and price points unexplainably positioned from US$20 to US$100:
Sony’s NWZ-A720, A820 and A820K Walkman players all look alike, but the 8-series has added Bluetooth to sweeten the deal. It’s quite similar to their NW-A829 and NW-A828 brothers that were announced in Japan, in fact. And yes, they have noise cancellation.
The updated Sony MDR-EX700LP earbud headphones sport new 16mm drivers to give you ear-drum-shattering action (108dB) with “more precise sound” (4-28KHz) than before. Sony says the magnesium-housed MDR-EX700LP earbuds have a new “multi-layer diaphragm for reproducing high resolution sound.” For US$300, that better be a lot of layers and a lot of high-res sounds.
PS3 aside, the Blu-ray players Sony sold up until now are worthy of only your garbage can. Now that HD DVD is dead like a doornail, the 300kg gorilla is getting serious. The US$400 BDP-S350 will feature an Ethernet port, USB port for connecting external storage and “BonusView” picture-in-picture capability (from the leapfrogged profile 1.1). Even better, it will be “BD-Live ready,” meaning an over-the-network software update will make the player compatible with net-friendly titles when they hit the market. Later on, the US$500 BDP-S550 will arrive with nearly identical features. The differences:
Sony figured out two reasons people don’t buy flagship noise-cancelling headphones—whether Bose or Sony or others: they’re awfully expensive and freakin’ huuuuge. The MDR-NC40 coming out in March costs US$100, and is both cheaper and slimmer than the bulky US$400 NC500D. This set runs for 40 hours on a single AAA battery and can be used as passive headphones when the battery runs dry. Most importantly, you can fold them up into their leather case and slip them into your bag without causing a massive luggage hemorrhage. [Sony]
Sony’s latest venture into wireless home-theater-in-a-box 5.1 systems includes options for wireless rear speakers and a new system called S-AIR that can transmit audio from your home theater to smaller clock-radio receivers in other rooms, up to a precise-sounding 164 feet away (50 metres). They all have five-disc 1080p-upconverting HDMI DVD players and an included TDM-iP10 iPod dock. (Tellingly, the dock for Sony Network Walkmans is sold separately.) Here’s the product breakdown:
Either Sony’s trying to tell us that vinyl will never die, or that vinyl is finally dead. After years of quietly selling regular old turntables, Sony is now offering what some niche brands already sell: a USB-connected turntable for converting records to MP3s. We don’t have a lot of detail on the PS-LX300USB, except for the fact that it comes with Sound Forge Audio Studio and will cost US$150, placing it performance-wise somewhere between the $100 LX250 and $150 LX350 non-USB players. I don’t know—it almost makes more sense for Sony to have gone whole hog like Teac, and built an all-in-one vinyl-to-CD machine.
If Sony exists for anything, it’s synergy, so its latest quickie home theaters are made to match its Blu-ray players—you’ll notice only one of this fourfer has an upscaling DVD player—you’ve gotta bring the vid (Blu-ray) goods (Blu-ray) yourself. The US$400 5.1 HT-SS2300 is the top audio-only, which pumps out 1000W and has three HDMI ports. Its lesser bro, the 3.1 HT-CT100 is a puny 250W soundbar setup that’ll go for US$300, and finally the 5.1 surround HT-DDWG rocks 800W and an iPod dock for US$200. The sole do-it-all, the 5.1 surround, 900W HT-7200DH, has a 1080p-upscaling DVD player and three HDMI ports—it’ll go for US$500.
The DRC-BT815 (love them truly unique product names) is a little US$130 stereo Bluetooth receiver that you plug your headphones into—bam, instant Bluetooth headset. The mic’s onboard the dongle, which has a clippy to attach it to your shirt (or earlobe). The sucky part is that battery life is only six hours, and it’s, you know, 130 bucks.
Spam is horrible. Phishing is evil. Computer Viruses are potentially deadly (to your computer). They’re also exsquisitely breathtaking, if you look at the work of Alex Dragulescu.
Security Firm MessageLabs commissioned the digital artist to create 15 interpretations of different viruses, trojans, spam, worms and spyware code. What you’re looking at above is the MyDoom email worm.
The images were created by inserting part of the actual code from the various online threat into a proprietary algorithm which twisted it, turned it, shook it around and turned it into art. We’ve got more pics, plus the artist’s own explanation below.
