Multi-Touch Musical “LinnStrument” Demoed on YouTube [Music]

Inventor Roger Linn is famous for creating the drum machine as we know it today, so there’s good reason to be excited about his latest creation; it has just been revealed. It’s a multi-touch surface not all that dissimilar to an iPad. Take a look at the video here to see for yourself.
The instrument — which Linn calls the “LinnStrument” — can take input from all of your fingers, so you can form chords in addition to sounding individual notes. Each space is pressure sensitive to allow for maximum range of expression. Sliding your finger vertically adjusts the timbre while horizontal motions change the pitch.
The final product would take the best elements from the layouts of the piano (chromatic increments) and the guitar (“parallel rows of semitones offset by fourths”). It will look a little different from the prototype, and it’ll be wearable vertically over your torso. You could also just leave it on the table like this prototype, though. We’ve included the render of what Linn imagines below.
The LinnStrument looks like an improvement over those fun-but-limited iPhone instrument apps, and you can be sure that you’ll be able to play Poker Face on the LinnStrument too… if you really want to.

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Video Demonstration

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Finished Product Design

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[Mashable]

Nokia launches 16GB X6

A somewhat tame version of the X6 has been announced by Nokia today and will become available this quarter. The new 16GB X6 has half the memory capacity of the 32GB version, and it’s also missing the Comes With Music feature. If you think you can live with that, the 16GB X6 has an impressive battery life of 11.5 hours talk time and 18 days of standby, 4.5 hours of video playback and 35 hours of music playback. Of course, Nokia doesn’t cut any corners with cameras on its high-end devices, and this one features a 5 megapixel shooter with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash — pretty much par for the course on Nokia devices these days. The new X6 also has in-phone video editing capabilities and TV out support so you can watch your amateur cinematography on a big screen. No details on pricing, but we’d imagine it to be less than the full-fledged 32GB version.
[BGR]

Strings? Where We're Going We Don't Need Strings [Guitars]

Strings? Nope. Frets? Not really. The Misa Digital Guitar, an open source, Linux-powered MIDI controller, brings shredding to the 21st century by dumping traditional guitar strings for buttons and a futuristic touch screen.
Before you wooden-guitar purists get all bent out of shape, the Misa's creator wants to make this perfectly clear: the digital guitar is intended to complement the traditional guitar, not replace it.
Intended as a tool for making electronic music, the Misa is played by pressing the 144 note buttons with the left hand and tapping a touch screen control pad with the right. As a MIDI controller, the Misa can play any instrument pack you happen to have on your computer.
The Misa's creator, Michael, explains:

In electronic music, the timbre (or colour) of the sound can be morphed in an infinite number of ways. For a guitar to accommodate this, the right hand needs more control than just plucking strings. You need to be able to control elements of the sound, such as sustain, pitch, filter cutoffs, contour or any other synthesizer parameter, in a way that has no physical constraints.

To take your solos back to the future, check out the Misa Digital homepage.
[Gizmodo via Misa Digital via Engadget]

Robots add new arsenal in their war against humanity: singing!

Way back in March I wrote about the HRP-4C robot that walks and talks. At CEATEC today I saw this thing in person. And now it sings!

An upgraded version of the VOCALOID, with an added conversation function and a new voice, help to make movement of the HRP-4C a bit more sophisticated. And as you can see here, a humanoid robot with human-like singing with an accompanying performance is sure to attract much attention.

VOCALOID is Yamaha’s proprietary vocal-processing technology developed for the manufacture of desktop music.
[CrunchGear]

Sony Ericsson MH907 "Motion Activated" Headphones [Headphones]

They won't change how we listen to music forever, but these earbuds are pretty cool. Listen to music normally with one in each ear, but pull one side out and music automatically pauses. Calls are received/ended in the same way.
You don't need to press any buttons, as the earphones use Sony Ericsson's 'SensMe' technology to sense your body. They come in chrome and yellow/white, and will be available worldwide this week for about $55 (39 Euros). The one bummer: you'll need a Sony Erisson phone with a 'Fast port' connector. You can check for compatibility here: [Sony Ericsson]

Zune HD Promo Video Offers Quick Peek at Hardware's 3D Gaming Capabilities [Zune Hd]

As the Zune HD launch looms ever closer, a smorgasbord of purported launch videos have offered up what appears to be the best demonstration yet of the sleek, sexy portable's 3D gaming capabilities.
The 3D gaming example, Forza 3, debuts at about the 30 second mark in the video above. It's a fleeting glimpse, but it's solid evidence nevertheless.
For authenticity's sake, we tell you that Microsoft PR reportedly asked the leak's originator, Buy TV, to take the videos down, but not before brigands at sites like Neowin were able to upload them to YouTube, where they spread like a New York Times homepage virus.
Zune HD drops in two days. [Neowin, Buy TV via ars technica]

All the iPod news, right here, in table form

In case you missed 'em, here are all of our Apple cheat sheets for every announcement today. Each one details every important change Apple made from the previous generation of product, at a glance.
Among the top new features: The Nano getting a video camera, the Touch not getting a camera, and Steve Jobs donning a belt. Check out our cheat sheets below.

New iPod Nano Hands On [Apple]

Here's the new iPod Nano. The paint is less matte, more shiny. The corners seem less sharp (a previous complaint of mine). But physically, it's about the same. The differences are inside.
The camera hole is on the bottom left of the face, so you end up putting your fingers over the lens and mic a lot if you're right handed. Slightly annoying.
The video recording is a capable 640x480, and there are 16 or so video effects you can overlay in real time onto your video. There's no zooming or editing, so this is barebones, but for quick video that you can take when you need it, it's pretty decent.
Its pedometer functionality works as you'd expect. Same with the voice recorder—they're both straightforward, and the voice recorder is basically the same one you've seen on the iPhone.
The FM radio has the same problem that small devices have with radio in that you need to have your headphones in to get reception. Not a huge deal with the Nano, since you're going to always have your headphones in anyway. But we didn't get a chance to test FM reception since there were no headphones available.
All in all it feels exactly like the old Nano, except with new features—which is the point. So yeah, the polished/glossy finish looks very nice, and the new features like voiceover are useful if you're into that.

Creative Zen X-Fi 2 Trades Buttons for a Touchscreen, High Price for Low [PMPs]

It's a new model name, sure, and the distinctive button panel has been booted in favor of a touchscreen, but the most important part of the X-Fi update has nothing to do with hardware, and everything to do with dollars.
Aside from the slightly larger, ever-more-fingerable TFT screen, the X-Fi 2 supposedly adds improvements to sound quality, which are down to murky machinations inside Creative's X-Fi audio processing system, as well as TV-out, which is particularly useful considering the player's generous video codec support. The rest of the specs are more or less unchanged: There's an FM radio, built-in mic, a microSD expansion slot, and syncable calendar, task list, contacts and RSS reader apps. It actually looks like the player has lost a feature since v1 too, since the prior model's Wi-Fi access is nowhere to be found. Not that it ever did much, but still.

Anyway, price! It's pretty low, considering what you get: It's 230 for the 32GB model, $180 for the 16GB and $130 for the 8GB. The highest price point seems like a dig at the iPod Touch, and it could be a clever one: The two players offer completely different things, and if you want to do more than play music and videos, the iPod is the clear choice. On the other hand, if that's all you want to do, a 32GB touchscreen PMP makes a case, if not a particularly strong one. It's available for preorder now, and should ship within a few weeks. [Creative]