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Shure have been making recording studio equipment for years, and if you have eagle eyes, you’ll spot the twisted cord of their monitor earphones sneaking behind the ears of many of your favorite singers. A little over a year ago, Shure introduced two consumer versions of their in-ear monitor, the $130 e2c and the $500 e5c, and now they’ve lowered the price of the e2c and introduced a new set of midrange headphones. The e3c has better sound and a new design with a little white on the ear beds to complement your iPod (something which will also supposedly get you mugged in the UK). While the e3cs lack the twin-speaker design of the e5cs, they offer nearly the same quality at one-third the price. Time to trade up. Source: http://www.engadget.com/

1.8-inch portable hard disk Not a Japanese product, but this 1.8-inch external drive from Taiwan's Transcend looks like a useful piece of kit. The USB 2.0-compatible drive comes in 20GB and 40GB varieties, both of which measure 72 x 95 x 15 mm; weights are 118 g and 130 g, respectively. Works with all recent flavours of Windows and Mac OS 9.1 or later. Comes (at least in Japan) with backup software, a leather carrying case and a USB cable. No info on pricing yet, as the drives don't seem to have been released yet (the company press release says they'll be out "in April"). Looks like they should be available pretty much anywhere. Source: http://www.dottocomu.com/b/

NH Japan has announced the latest of its V@MP range of silicon audio players, the iOPS-F300 series (did someone type their password into the "product name" field by mistake?). Plays MP3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis files and records MP3s. Also includes an FM tuner with MP3 recording. Comes in 128/256/512/1,024 MB versions (256 MB version shown; the 128 is white, 512 is black, and 1,024 is titanium). The 96 x 64 dot blue/orange electroluminescent display handles English/Japanese/Korean/Chinese and will also show ID3 tags.

JVC has had one of these out for a while now, but Sony has finally gotten around to introducing a consumer/prosumer high-definition digital camcorder. The camera is only a prototype for now, but it looks like it’ll be better than JVC’s GR-HD1. No word yet on when it will be out or how much it will cost, but we do know that recording those family vacations in HD is definitely overkill.

Mortal Kombat: Deception Revealed We have the first details for the next Mortal Kombat.

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Jay-Z has teamed up with Nokia to create the Black Phone, a limited-edition version of the Nokia 3300 music phone. The Black Phone comes loaded with the entirety of Jay-Z's recently released The Black Album (as MP3s) plus Jigga ring tones. Nokia says registered users of the phone will receive regular text and voice messages from the rapper himself for a limited time, as well — no doubt reminding you to pay your bill. The Black Phone will retail for $124 and hits select Sam Goody and Media Play stores on Friday, Deceber 19th. ...

Sony announced the PSX, a new hardware platform scheduled for Japanese release this year and American/European release next year (try not to confuse it with the code-name for the original PlayStation system). The PSX includes the PlayStation 2's Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer chips and will allow you to play PS2 games. But this isn't just a games system. The PSX also comes with a TV tuner, DVD recording capability and a 120 gigabyte hard disk. On top of this are USB 2.0 and memory stick support and a built-in Ethernet adapter.