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It’s been described as the ‘must-have’’ accessory for your iPod or iPhone and - although it’s not on direct sale here in Japan - SendStation’s PocketDock adapter packs so much at such a low cost, it’s hard not to crave one.

If actual karaoke in the nasty ole world beyond your bedroom is a bit too scary, then how about doing it in front of a computer with any Tom, Dick or Taro looking in? Best of all, you can even do it in Japanese.

Voice-powered technology can be pretty hit and miss at the best of times, but a new approach to creating remote controls that hang on our every word looks promising.

Adding external speakers to portable music players like iPods or even cellphones is a dubious prospect at the best of times (an accessory too far?), but at least the new set from Logicool has a little extra to offer.

Thanko, everyone’s favourite purveyor of all things wackily Japanese, has come up with a product that is either as daft as usual or very canny – I really can’t decide.

The principle behind noise-cancelling headphones is as elegant as it is simple – sample the noise to be cancelled out and use small speakers to create an equal, but opposite, sound that effectively erases the problem.

The field of disability aids has seen many devices controlled by computers that visually track the eye movements of paralysed people, but none that reads the electricity given off by swiveling eyeballs.

Twinbird’s MP3-loving Zabady costs ¥21,000 ($180) and can handle boring old audio CDs as well as disks burned with new-fangled MP3 and WMA files; just not the type with DRM slapped on. The most useful feature is a USB port inside the sealed case that allows the Zabady to play back tunes from a connected drive of up to 2GB.

We’ve seen a few bone-conduction devices before, including a cellphone, a sports headband and an industrial safety helmet, but this is definitely the first we’ve come across that sends the good vibes by Bluetooth.

Sony Japan has been busy of late on the Walkman front, so it’s no surprise to see yet another new lineup announced in Japan this morning - the 1-seg digital TV toting, credit-card sized NW-A910 series.

Let’s stick to the basics - NHC’s 34g Ecolong plays MP3 and WMA, comes in a choice of white or camouflage designs, makes a single AAA battery last 85 hours and is as ugly as sin.

Sony Japan has just posted a short video and press release detailing its latest fuel cell - a device that uses not ethanol or methanol this time, but glucose extracted from grape juice and sports drinks.

What looks like the latest attempt by Sony to knock the iPod off its throne appears to have kicked off in Japan this morning with the launch of a new website called Rolly World.

Not many DAPs come with line-in recording for converting music from external sources to MP3 files, least of all cheap-looking plastic models that weigh just 37g.

We all know how feeble tiny speakers can sound, especially those of the kind used on certain mobile products, so it’s heartening to hear of a new technique from Panasonic that claims to get high-fidelity bass notes from compact speakers.

Most so-called ‘designer’ gadgets for women are thinly veiled attempts to flog existing products at the end of their life-cycles, so it’s a pleasant surprise to see a decent-looking - albeit technologically old-hat - feminine flash Walkman from Sony in Japan.

The marketing suits who gave the latest DAP/speaker combo from Sofmap the name ‘DigitalOlive’ presumably wanted to drive customers away with their wackiness, which is a shame as it looks to be a capable little product.

Here in Japan, we’re slap bang in the middle of rainy season, so the newest waterproof MP3 player from Century Japan fits the bill perfectly.

Learning a new language isn’t always the most fun activity for many people, especially during the endless hours of repetitive listening to tapes or CDs needed to learn how to understand the spoken word. Fortunately, a novel study aid from Japanese firm Imajinsha aims to make the time-consuming donkey work a little easier with its new polyglot pen.

Reports from Japan say the first incident in a predicted wave of iPhone-centric street robberies has occurred a full two days before the US launch of Apple’s world-changing, famine-ending, disease-curing ‘Jesus phone’ that is destined to be all things to all men.

Trading on nostalgia never hurt any company with an eye on the bottom line, which is obviously what Digital Cowboy had in mind when it created its ‘iPod shuffle Randoseru Carrying Case’ - a faux leather shuffle cover in the style of an elementary-school satchel.

We’ve seen SD memory cards appearing in everything from toy robots to high-definition video cameras, but Logitec’s latest device represents the first time for one to appear in a devious conversation-recording add-on for domestic phones.

Although Japan has a reputation as a pretty sophisticated high-tech wonderland, there’s no shortage of garbage products designed to appeal to the wallets of the gullible or the plain bored, so the latest bizarre gadget barely caused us to wrinkle an eyebrow.

Clarion Japan’s newest in-car satellite navigation system may just be the most advanced driver aid seen since the last episode of 24 and its host of BS technologies. The MAX9700DT is both a full entertainment system and a GPS unit, but costs more than many second-hand cars.

We’ve all seen dozens of tedious attempts at piping internet connections through the home using existing electrical wiring and power sockets, but this is the first-real world product to use the concept to deliver music through the same channels.

With increasing hard drive sizes and falling costs per gigabyte, it’s inevitable that uncompressed digital audio, which has been the preserve of bearded audio buffs until now, will become more mainstream. Players like Sony’s new NAC-HD1 are part of that trend.

Ever wanted to have an alarm clock that can play the ringtones from your phone to wake you up in the morning? No, thought not, but that hasn’t stopped Citizen Japan from producing a clock which does exactly that.

Products, such as digital music players, that rely on flash memory have until now typically peaked at 8GB of storage simply because memory manufacturers have been producing ‘packages’ of memory chips only up to that size.

Nowhere does cutesy like Japan, with even faceless mega-corps like Sony throwing their weight behind the infantilization of every product possible. The latest goofy promotion from Sony is a green Walkman accompanied by a green dinosaur character from a children’s TV show.

Gym rats, rejoice! Sony is aiming for the fit set with its latest flash-based S2 Sports Walkman, which will pound out a knee-killing, ligament-pulling workout beat while displaying how many steps you’ve taken, distance traveled, calories burned, etc. The only thing the bloody device won’t warn you of is your impending coronary.

Sony Ericsson will soon complete the worldwide roll-out of Walkman-brand cellphones with the launch of its first model for Japan, it said Monday.

The phone is the company’s 11th to carry the Walkman brand name and will go on sale just under a year since the first Walkman model was launched in Europe in August 2005.

So it was true. Sony has gone from a state of ignorance (or perhaps the flacks were fibbing) to full propaganda mode when it comes to the new flash-based Walkman.

After yesterday’s rumors about the impending new flash-memory Sony Walkman, a company spokesperson in Tokyo has denied all knowledge of the E/A series.

These rumored new Walkman-branded flash memory DAPs from Sony have appeared in Sweden, although nothing is official yet.

Today marks the end of an era: Sony announced that by the end of March it will end domestic output of its Walkman portable audio players. The move comes as part of a restructuring plan announced last September by the company’s non-Japanese boss, Sir Howard Stringer.

Sony’s having a hard time selling its Walkman DAPs, which have consistently failed to challenge the iPod even in the Japanese market. The company’s latest ploy is to toughen up its A-series — literally, in the form of dirt- and scratch-resistant cases.

With about the same predictability as night following day, a Japanese company has come up with a Peanuts-themed iPod. Runa is offering a run of 1,000 of these customized 2GB nanos.

We just spotted this super shiny display of Sony’s newly released Walkman-branded DAPs in a downtown Tokyo branch of Bic Camera, the largest electronics retailer in Japan.

(Via IDG News Service)