sonic

The future of Sony Connect

Care to take a stab at guessing this one? I'll give you a hint: it's fabulous news. As you may have gathered from Sony's abandonment of SonicStage, the company is giving its Connect music store the ax as well. Considering the new Walkmans are now PlaysForSure devices capable of playing both purchased and subscription WMAs--and they support unprotected AACs purchased from iTunes--it only makes sense to get rid of the faltering (and horrifically designed) store. For my part, I'm pleased as punch by the death of SonicStage and Connect. Yes, I'm a little bit sadistic...… Read more

Because your monitor needs crystals too

Well, that should teach us. Just minutes after making sport of Swarovski, we came across yet another another category of products that the infectious crystals are attacking: computer screens.

ViewSonic, a respectable manufacturer, has apparently succumbed to market madness by allowing customers to "beautify and customize" their LCDs with "original Swarovski crystals," according to PCLaunches. (As opposed to unoriginal ones?) And you can scream bad taste in grand fashion with a full 22-inch widescreen with 1680x1050 resolution. But you might have to wear sunglasses to cut down on the crystal reflection.

Sony: Good riddance, SonicStage

OK, OK, two Sony products in two days doesn't mean Crave's all loved-up with the Japanese Walkmanites, but considering how much we bash its media-manager software SonicStage, we felt compelled to mention that the company's ickle new MP3 player--the NWD-B100--doesn't require it. About time, too.

The NWD-B100 is possibly the most respectable Sony Walkman product to see the light of day in 2007. Yeah, the NW-A808 is a superb piece of audio gadgetry, and the E series earned kudos points for including a system very similar to iTunes' Cover Flow on a tiny colour display. But … Read more

SonicLiving and ITMS (iPhone App)

Get the latest concert and event information on your iPhone with this social network tracking tool for live shows. As an extra bonus, you can browse the iTunes Store for music and listen to sample clips. We suppose it won't be an extra bonus if Apple migrates the real iTunes Store to iPhone in a later version, but for now, we have to admit it's pretty cool.

iPhone Link: http://iphone.sonicliving.com/

Web site link http://sonicliving.com/

Sega's E3 2007 Nintendo lineup: Sonic and Mario, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

Sega and Nintendo working together still vaguely weirds me out. I grew up when children became bitter enemies or best friends depending on whether they thought the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis was the better system. To this day, Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario working together just feels wrong, somehow.

That's not stopping Sega, chummier than ever with Nintendo, from showing off its upcoming Wii and DS titles at E3. We've heard about these games before, but E3 will bring more screenshots, more trailers, hands-on impressions, and harder release dates for all of these games.

First on deck … Read more

Slide show: Sony's noise-canceling MP3 player, up close

Earlier this month we wrote that Sony would be releasing an iPod Nano-style MP3 player in the US with a built-in active noise-cancellation feature. Well, the Sony NW-S705F is here, and CNET's review has just posted along with a slide show.

Sony releases its noise-canceling answer to the iPod Nano

Sony's NW-S705F Noise Canceling MP3 player is now on sale in the U.S. for about $199 for 2GB version and $169 for 1GB. You may remember when Crave reported on Sony's announcement of this player back in October. The big hullabaloo is that the NW-S705F has active noise-cancellation integrated into the player. Before you get too excited, the active noise-cancellation system will still require you to use Sony's proprietary earbuds. Even though the noise-canceling circuitry is in the player, microphones located on the outside of the earbuds are necessary for the function to work properly. The … Read more