At any rate, the Panda head can connect to any computer via USB, or directly to your MP3 player via a 3.5mm audio plug. Rotating the Panda’s ears controls volume and bass. [Gadget4all via Geekalerts via Technabob]

A few days ago, we found out that Apple Corps and EMI would finally release the Beatles’ catalogue in a digital format. It’s not that we couldn’t have just purchased CDs and ripped them – that’s what everyone’s been doing for years now – it’s just that it felt like progress. In reality, it was just the near-random actions of someone who has no idea what’s going on, at all. From the Guardian via Ars, Paul McCartney’s view on selling the Beatles’ music online:

“I met [EMI's chief executive] on a plane once,” said McCartney. I said: ‘What is the problem? I want to do it, we all want to do it.’ And he explained that in the deal that we want, they feel exposed. If [digitised Beatles music] gets out, if one employee decides to take it home and wap it on to the internet, we would have the right to say, ‘Now you recompense us for that.’ And they’re scared of that.”

Just to be clear, Paul McCartney says he wants to sell music online, but the he’s worried that someone could conceivably download it, upload it back to the internet, and open the floodgates to piracy. As opposed to just uploading the higher-quality digital files you’re selling to people on Apple-shaped USB drives right now, or on CDs, more than a decade ago. Poor Paul! Someone should tell him, you know, about all the wapping. [Ars Technica]

[Make]

For sale November 30 in a limited run of 200 units, the kits run around $US125 (plus the cost of buttons, as I understand). As for the final built product, it features 16 programmable buttons and LEDs that allow you to cue your MIDI samples with all the finesse of button-mashing Shredder to death.

The only possible point of improvement would be a coin slot mandating occasional quarter-purchased continues. Or, you know, the addition of even more buttons (which is technically feasible with some modification to the kit). [djtechtools via MAKE]

Too bad they can only play German folk music and tangos. [Santa Fe via Likecool]

This vintage Swedish jukebox, the AMI I (1958), was photographed by Flickr user woodztream with an almost divine level of hipness through HDR (high dynamic range) techniques.

And for a moment, I wonder if my iPhone has destroyed style, not defined it. [flickr via Unplggd]

Olive’s music players are the kind of crazy high-end AV hardware that peasants like you and I shouldn’t even be reading about, let alone contemplating. The 4 HD rips CDs to its huge 2TB hard drive, in addition to streaming from a PC to be played through crazy high-end speakers. It’s got a nice 4.3-inch touchscreen, and it’s pretty nice-looking. So what’s new? Well, the ports are all gold-plated, and the 4 HD adds a DAC the Opus N4 didn’t have:

* Proprietary, high resolution DAC featuring Texas Instrument’s 192khz/24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1792A.
* DAC may be used as an outboard DAC for any digital music source. With 24-bit/192kHz oversampling, noise and distortion are ultra low resulting in incredible purity in both high frequencies and low-level detail.

Basically it’s a super simplified music player (just music, mind you, no other media) for incredibly rich old people for whom the CD is something they’ve just gotten comfortable with in the last six months or so. It’s pretty, we’ll give it that. It’s available now for $US2000. [Olive]

David Pogue instantly found a fan in me with his Apple-themed rendition of Britney Spears’ “Oops…I did it again” as memories of mornings spent singing into a hairbrush flooded back. Granted Pogue actually sounds better than both Britney and I.

[Brainstorm Tech]

As Unplgged noted, it’s kind of like “an audio version of a lava lamp”, which seems like a good way to describe a speaker that utilises light and water. It’s only a concept at the moment, but I like the visual approach to music. [Yuki Yamamoto via Designboom via MocoLoco via Unplgged]

*DISCLAIMER: That’s Strapya’s official promotional YouTube video title. I wanted to tell you all about Strapya’s ultra-thin Music Card player, but I’m having an extremely hard time concentrating after watching this spot. Advertising genius or marketing suicide? You decide.

I don’t know if they are going to sell a lot of these 5mm thin, 318g 2GB MP3 players — which come with a built-in speaker and headphones — but after watching the video, my faith in Humanity has dropped from negative to imaginary numbers. [Strapya via Crunchgear]