What It Is: A self-contained media center for music, movies, video games and web browsing.

Who It’s For: Anyone who wants to experience widescreen-style immersion but can’t get access to a forty inch LCD TV. It’s perfect for serious media-geeks who don’t want to bother their wives. (more…)

What It Is: A portable, one-piece wireless speaker system that blasts music from your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, MP3 player or laptop.

Who It’s For: Travelers who need need better sound quality than their tinny laptop speakers can provide, even if it’s next to the shower or on the night table, since Bluetooth’s range is about thirty feet. (more…)

What It Is: The world’s smallest 32-gigabyte media player (so far), which means this little credit-card-sized device can play up to 120 hours of video or about 8,000 songs (you can even add up to 8 gigabytes to that, thanks to an included SDHC memory-card-slot). (more…)

What It Is: The world’s first handheld, portable DJ system.

Who It’s For: DJs, mashup-artists and amateurs, and pretty much anyone who’s looking to create a dance mix while riding the bus. Also, music lovers who want to mix their playlists up live. (more…)

Last year at Macworld—the convention that helps consumers figure out how to surround themselves with gadgets stamped with an Apple logo—Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, which created bulges in the pants of technophiles everywhere. At today’s 2008 keynote, entitled “Something in the Air,” Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, an aneroxic laptop that can fit snugly in a manila envelope and is almost half as thin as the already-skinny rivals out there today. There’s no CD drive, but it comes with all the bells and whistles found in a MacBook Pro, weighs three pounds, boasts five hours of battery life, and will be released in two weeks for $1,799. (more…)

What It Is: A high-end music-management system in the form of a touch screen that’s connected to a set-top box with a CD player/ripper/burner and up to 1-terabyte of storage.

Who It’s For: Wall Street types, lawyers, Internet moguls or anybody else who likes to spend tens of thousands of dollars on custom installation audio-video setups in their homes.

Why It’s Worthy: The system is designed to play and digitize music in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) Lossless format, which is essentially equal to CDs and perfect for those with discerning, audiophile systems. (more…)

What It Is: A nicely priced, two-piece instant home-theater speaker system.

Who It’s For: Anybody who wants a compact, home theater with minimal wires for less than $500, as well as those who want a quick upgrade from bad-quality built-in TV speakers.

Why It’s Worthy: It doesn’t take up a lot of space or clutter your place up with a bunch of wires, since the system consists of just a soundbar that connects to your TV via a standard R/L stereo cable and a wireless subwoofer. Plus, it lets you use your TV remote to control volume and the on/off function. The TVee Model Two offers instant detailed, quasi-surround sound and bass-oomph with minimal set-up.

Our Only Complaint: Though it works well for the dialogue, sound effects and action noise of movies and TV, it’s less than ideal for music (too much bass, too little mid-range detail). TVee Model 2 might disappoint audiophiles looking for a music-system replacement.

Where to Get It/Cost: $399.99, bostonacoustics.com

From Zeppelin speakers to Rock Band to the Slacker Portable Radio, here’s a rundown of fifteen of the year’s must-have tech wonders. Click here to check out high-ends phones like the Nokia N95, the Bose Portable SoundDock and more.

What It Is: A high resolution, super slim and portable camcorder for about $150.

Who It’s For: Anybody who’s intimidated by the many buttons and options on traditional video cameras or who can’t be bothered with transferring video to a PC via a dedicated wire. Also perfect for those who forget to bring the camcorder and want to get high-quality movies right away, because the Flip Ultra is available at most national chain stores.

Why It’s Worthy: Since it requires the pressing of only one central button, shooting on this thing is about as easy as it gets. (more…)

What It Is: The world’s first HD-capable Webcam. That’s right, it will let you have real-time video conversations over Skype with other QuickCam-Pro-9000 owners.

Who It’s For: Anybody in a long-distance relationship, particularly one that’s happening over international borders, as well as early-adopters who want state-of-the-art video on their state-of-the-art PCs.

Why It’s Worthy: What’s not to like — it’s got a Carl Zeiss lens (pretty high-end for a Webcam) and can do up to 7.2-megapixel still shots from your videoconferences (so make sure you can trust the person you’re chatting with). Plus, it comes with goofy video effect software (everything from the old Groucho mask on your live face to trippy fisheye effects) and image editing software. It’s small enough for your laptop as well as good enough for your desktop.

Our Only Complaint: Though it’ll play standard video with Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and AIM, the QuickCam Pro only does HD with Skype.

Cost: $99, Logitech.com

What It Is: Amadana Illuminating Alarm Clock

Who It’s For: Design-heads, nippon-o-philes and retro jet-setters.

Why It’s Worthy: Besides the retro-modern design that evokes the late Fifties and early Sixties, this simple clock brightens up its faceplate with cool blue lighting whenever the alarm goes off or you press a button. But the coolest thing is the alarm, which starts off with a mellow lounge tune and the sound of a distant jet taking off. If you press “snooze,” you get a slightly more upbeat hip-hop-esque ditty the next go-around. If that higher BPM still hasn’t gotten you out of bed, you’ll get a catchy house tune as a third alarm (and so on …).

Our Only Complaint: Heavy sleepers might need alarm sounds that are a bit more loud and jarring.

Price: $80, momastore.org.

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What It Is: A portable media player that somehow manages to squeeze in a 3-inch, 16:9 touchscreen.

Who It’s For: Anyone who watches too much TV or loves to show people pictures of their kids.

Why It’s Worthy: With a slickly animated interface, a slim profile, and a black, white, or burgundy body color, this player is about as stylish as it gets without being made by Apple. In fact, it’s arguably more stylish. But it’s the features that impress the most, from the roomy widescreen’s crisp images to the built-in stereo Bluetooth that lets you use the P2, essentially, as a wireless handset up to thirty feet away from your phone (or pair it with a pair of wireless speakers or headphones). (more…)

What It Is: An Internet-based movie download service with more than 5,000 films available for purchase or rent — the difference here is that you download everything into a glossy, black, minimalist box that’s about the size (and shape) of an Apple TV or Airport Extreme.

Who It’s For: Surround-sound-equipped, movie and music junkies who are bored by their cable company’s on-demand features and don’t feel like schlepping to the local blockbuster (or waiting for Netflix movies to come in the mail).

Why It’s Worthy: Since it uses peer-to-peer technology (the same as BitTorrent), Vudu’s download process is fast, meaning if you have a decent broadband connection, you can usually start watching movies instantly (while the rest of the movie downloads in the background). (more…)

What It Is: The Zen, Creative’s credit-card-sized answer to the iPod Nano.

Who It’s For: Anyone with subscription tunes from Napster, Rhapsody and their ilk, or TV shows and movies purchased and downloaded from Amazon Unbox or Wal-Mart.

Why It’s Worthy: You can get thousands of songs onto it for the nice price of $12 or so a month (the average subscription rate for most online music services), and increasingly the selection of TV shows available on sites like Amazon Unbox is beginning to rival, if not surpass, the selection on the iTunes store. Plus, the horizontally oriented screen is bigger and wider than the one on the new iPod Nano. Besides, 16-gigabytes (GB) of memory on the premium model is twice the size of the biggest Nano (at 8GB). And it works not only with the proprietary Creative music management software, but also with WIndows Media Player (right out of the box).

Our Only Complaint: The plastic exterior and light weight feels cheap, compared to the metallic Nano, and we had some glitchy performance with our test unit (it kept crashing!).

Price/Where to Get It: $129.99 (4GB); $199.99 (8GB); $249.99 (16GB); www.creative.com/products/mp3/zen/

Since iTunes Plus launched with cautious fanfare in late May, things have been relatively quiet on the Plus front. The service, which mainly featured EMI’s stacked catalogue (sans Beatles and Radiohead), offers higher-quality, DRM-free MP3s at a greater cost than the normal iTunes store. That has changed: As of today, Apple lowered the price on DRM-free tracks from $1.29 to $0.99. Price-cutting isn’t the only news over on the Plus side: the service will also add more independent labels to their roster of DRM-free tracks. iTunes’ latest moves are likely a response to the prices on Amazon.com’s digital music service, which offers DRM-free tracks for 89¢ to 99¢.

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