Sony's missteps in the world of digital music players provide lyrics for enough blues albums to populate, well, an iPod. But while the electronics behemoth may never script another legend like the Walkman, it refuses to shuffle quietly off the stage. Sony is set to bring out the B100 series of MP3 players. Looking rather like USB keys, the B100s are flash-based devices, ala the iPod Nano. They are notable for being Sony's first drag-and-drop MP3 players supporting MP3s, non-DRM'd WMAs and, very likely, AAC formats. The glaring omission is Sony's own digital music format, ATRAC. The Sony format just never took off, in large part weighed down by the clunky SonicStage software. Ditching SonicStage, B100 users will simply plug in their devices and load their songs straight from their computers. The new gizmos will come in 1-, 2- and 4-gigabyte sizes, be available in three different colors and come with OLED color displays. Voice recording will be included and FM-radio variants are in the pipeline as well with the new players expected to hit the shelves in Maysk

Keeping an eye on the game: Game consoles are one field of electronics where, the Nintendo Wii challenge notwithstanding, Sony is dominant. In line with the aim of making the PlayStation 3 more than just a games console, Sony has brought out a next-generation version of its PlayStation Eye Toy camera. The PlayStation Eye looks rather like a conventional eyeball-like video camera for attaching to a computer, but with a sizable microphone grafted on to the top of it like an afro hairdo. Interesting looks aside, the Eye will allow users to record video straight to their PlayStation 3. It features a four-microphone array that Sony calims will reduce background noise and do a better job of capturing human speech. The camera also sports low-light sensitivity, a two-position zoom lens and can capture video at up to 120 frames per second. There is no official release date or pricing as yet.

Stylish phone: Audio quality is also one of the selling points for Buffalo Japan with its BSKP-CU202/SV speakerphone. Fortunately the device overcomes its horrendous alpha-numeric botch of a title and offers an elegant design in shades of grey and silver that even Apple's style gurus would gladly hang their moniker on. Going below the surface, it offers 6W in audio output through three channels, making it a decent speaker system. Moreover, it includes both echo- and noise-canceling circuitry, to negate the sound quality problems too endemic to Internet telephoning. The desk-phone needs no drivers, you just plug it into a USB port. And since it is USB-powered, it doesn't need an AC adapter. The phone comes with a pricetag of 9,800 yen with more information available at: buffalo.jp/products/catalog/multimedia/bskp-cu202/