MP3 Players in the Year 2000 Were Not So Good

This is the Creative Nomad Jukebox from the year 2000. It may have been shaped like a CD player to mentally ease technophobes, but it actually had a 6GB hard drive on board. And boy did we love it.

That's not to say that this thing was great—because it wasn't; not by today's standards. It had only a USB 1.1 connection, so uploading all 6GB worth of music took hours and hours. Imagine filling up a 1TB hard drive over a USB 2 connection today, if that gives you any idea of how long the process was. Oh, and it cost $420.

But you know what? It actually a pretty decent player for the year 2000. The 6GB is adequate even now (the lowest iPod Nano today has 8GB), and that 8GB of 5-minute skip protection was good enough for continuous music most of the time, except when you were off-roading or running away from cougars.

Hell, because it was so early in the MP3 player era, it even had extraneous features that were eventually ditched for cost cutting reasons because only a small portion of people used it. There was the stereo line input for recording, dual stereo output for 4-point surround sound as well as WAV and WMA support. Creative did do a good job with firmware support after the thing was released, actually adding functionality to the player when they could have just released a new hardware revision.

So yes, the Creative Nomad Jukebox was heavy, and lost in every way to any Android, Windows Mobile or Apple smartphone today in both price and feature set, but it was pretty damn good in the year 2000. [Product Page (Price dropped to $300 by 2001)]

Decades: where we revisit gadgets we loved from the start of the decade and see how they compare to what we use today.

Gizmodo. Dec 30, 2009.

Solar-powered FM Radio

Flexio is this really awesome radio that’s solar powered and portable. I’m willing to overlook the “only one fixed FM channel” stand for the cute little paper packaging it comes in. I’m sure the dynamics of manufacturing this are going to be reasonable, because one can even use it for promotions and gifts…like ask someone to advertise on its package. The innovative factor comes from the flexible speaker & flexible solar cell. It’s designed to be used within the station-waves range, but could be modified to receive internet radio via WiFi or WiMax.


Designers: Wu Kun-chia, Wang Shih-ju, Chen Ming-daw & Liou Chang-ho

Yanko Design. Nov 30, 2009.

Japan gets the Pentax K-x in “robotic colors” (limited edition)

The Pentax K-x was announced last month, and it seems to be a very decent entry-level camera. It has been reported the device will be available in a few different colors in Japan, while the US only gets black, white, and red models. And today Pentax said in Tokyo that they are ready to roll out a very special version of the K-x, which is a particularly colorful model inspired by the so-called Kore Ja Nai robo toy [Japanese].

The robot was introduced in Japan in 2001 and is available in different variations (the one you see in the pic above is a cell phone strap). Spec-wise, the K-x isn’t any different from the conventional models so the design is the main selling point.

Pentax plans to sell the robo K-x exclusively in its own online store [Japanese] (price: US$880), and the model is restricted to just 100 units. Pre-orders begin in early November. People living outside Japan might want to contact the Japan Trend Shop or Geek Stuff 4 U and ask if they can help with the purchase.

Crunchgear. Oct 16, 2009.

Japan's NTT DoCoMo introduces two prototype phones made of waste wood

Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo on Thursday announced it has created two prototype handsets constructed of excess wood from trees felled during thinning operations designed to ensure a healthy forest. The devices were built through collaboration between Sharp, Olympus and More Trees, a reforestation project in Japan. Either prototype handset sports cypress wood and goes by the Touch Wood name. Despite the wood construction, the bodies are resistant to water, insects and mildew thanks to 3D compression molding technology developed by Olympus.
No artificial colors or paints are used, so the natural grain pattern, color and smell of the cypress wood are retained. Further hardware specs have yet to be announced, although the user interface sports photographic art from More Trees advocate Mikiya Takimoto.

The prototype phones will be shown at ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva and CEATEC Japan 2009 in early October.

Electronista. Sep. 24, 2009.