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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.

With the new version of the PlayStation Portable less than a month away, Sony Japan has announced that it will sell a separate slimline battery for the handheld there.

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.

There has been plenty of talk about the power of the Cell processor at the heart of Sony’s PlayStation 3 since the chip project began in 2000, but precious little in the way of end results until today, when Sony announced a prototype computer board using the powerhouse processor.

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.

In a move that surprises no one, Sony has finally admitted that the PlayStation 3 really is getting a price cut of $100 in the US. Moreover, the 80GB model that SCEA had previously said was going nowhere outside Korea is also due to hit North America next month.

Numbers like $800 million, or even $2 billion, tend to focus the attention rather sharply, which is why - in a bid to better understand in-game advertising - Sony US is planning to allow TV-ratings company Nielsen to track the games its customers play.

Confirming the promise we saw in Sony’s GPS-shunning PlaceEngine application recently, comes the news that Japanese mapping giant Edia will use it in its next round of navigation software.

If you’re even just marginally into video games, you’ll know that Nintendo has been taking all the plaudits over the last year or two thanks to the runaway success of its DS handheld machines and the more-recent Wii console.

We all know Sony for its games hardware, TVs, cameras and other audio-visual products, but it’s not such common knowledge that the company has a bleeding-edge research laboratory dedicated to exploring the technology of tomorrow just for the heck of it.

Sony’s Vaio PCs hit their tenth birthday this year and to celebrate the company is releasing anniversary special editions in Japan, with the flagship model being the Vaio VGN-TZ50B.

Five months after being moved upstairs at the Sony division responsible for the PlayStation, Ken Kutaragi – the console’s original inventor – has agreed to step down entirely.

Sony chose a rainy afternoon in downtown Tokyo today to unveil a revolution in digital cinema – a projector that can show full cinema-size movies at four times the resolution of standard high definition, with an anti-piracy server system on the side.

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.

European readers with an eye for design and a free afternoon might like to know about the latest Sony Design event being held in Milan, Italy, this week that combines technology with old-fashioned Italian craftsmanship.

The hope for a single format for flash memory cards, or at least for plenty fewer than there are now, took a blow over the weekend when Sony and SanDisk announced another new medium intended for use mainly in high-definition video cameras.

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.

Sony’s new camcorders based on the AVCHD format can record 1080i high-def to standard DVDs, HDDs and memory cards were launched last week and we were there to bring you the first shots of the intriguing new technology in action.

Sony is expanding its line-up of high-definition camcorders to quickly transition its Japanese sales from standard-definition to HD, the company said Wednesday.

Sony plans to take the wraps off its first high-definition camcorder compatible with the new AVCHD format tomorrow here in Tokyo and we’ll bring it to you as it happens.