DIGITECH

In-dash CD players have been a staple of car audio for nearly two
decades now. But, with CD sales declining and digital music sales
soaring, it seems the in-car CD player is going the way of the cassette
deck (and the 8-track before it). German car audio manufacturer
Blaupunkt — popular with the ‘Pimp My Ride’ set — has ditched the CD player in its new Melbourne SD27 head unit in favor of a slot for SD or MMC memory cards.

The
unit will play both MP3 and WMA songs directly from the SD card,
displaying song information on a 30-character front-panel display,
which, to be honest, we find a bit small by today’s standards –
especially given the room freed up by the lack of a CD slot. It won’t
play AAC songs, so iTunes fans who don’t want to convert their tracks
will need to hook up their iPods through the line-in jack, which also
works with any other media player, of course. The SD27 is also
Bluetooth-compatible, so it can do hands-free calls and even stream
music directly from other Bluetooth-compatible devices.

The big story
out of this week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco is Intel’s
upcoming ultra mobile platforms codenamed Menlow and Moorestown. The
technologies will be the basis for future generations of UMPCs (Ultra
Mobile PCs) and MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) — the difference
between the two product classes being that UMPCs run on Windows while
MIDs use Linux.

It’s the MID that have caught many people’s
attention. The versatility, level of customization and low power
requirements (which leads to longer battery life and cheaper hardware)
of the Linux operating system make it a prime candidate for building an
iPhone killer around. Intel showed off an iPhone-like MID with an
ultra-wide screen form factor (pictured above). The touch screen device
is never going to be mass produced, but was merely intended to show
what would be possible with the Moorestown platform.

Its not out
of the question that Intel’s Moorestown could power a future version of
the iPhone either, but we’ll have to wait till about mid-2009 to find
out what manufacturers will be able to squeeze Moorsetown into.