Daily deal – 2GB Creative Labs MP3 player with FM Radio for $29.99

by Scott Carmichael on

The daily deal for today is for the highly rated Creative Labs Zen Stone Plus 2GB MP3 player. This player is about the same size as the Apple iPod Shuffle, but unlike the Shuffle, this player has a small display. The Zen Stone Plus even has an FM radio, stopwatch, countdown timer and a clock. And if that is not enough, you even get a voice memo recorder.

This player normally sells for just under $60, but if you don’t mind buying a refurbished product, you can buy one today for just $29.99. Refurbished products are usually items that have been returned to the manufacturer and are returned to their “as new” condition. Creative Labs include a 90 day warranty with their refurbished products.

The Zen Stone is available in black, white and blue. The red and pink versions are currently out of stock, but may be available later this week.

At this price, you could pick up a player for your kids and load it with their favorite music to keep them entertained in the car or plane. The Zen Stone features a volume restriction control, to protect their ears and with 2GB of storage space, you should be able to fit up to 500 songs on the player.

The Creative Labs Zen Stone is available in their web store. Shipping is a pretty unreasonable $9.95 for one player, or (oddly enough), just $4.99 for 2. Orders of $90 or more ship for free.

(Hotel) room filling sound from a portable speaker

by Scott Carmichael on

For my first review here on Gadling, I’m going to show off one of my personal favorites. The Altec Lansing Orbit-MP3 is a 5 ounce (144 grams) portable speaker and it is powered by 3 AAA batteries. It can connect to any device with a standard headphone jack, including the iPod, iPhone and many Blackberry smartphones.

The sound coming out of this thing can only be described as “astounding”. When you play your tunes at full volume, you’ll be staring at the little speaker wondering how on earth it’s able to produce such loud music without sounding like a tin can.

When you set your player to “max”, it really is loud enough to fill a large room, or even keep a group of people entertained outdoors. The speaker can be placed flat on a table or upright, thanks to a small flat spot on the side that prevents it from rolling around. If you take it to the beach, you can even put the speaker along with your music player inside a Ziploc bag to help keep the sand out.

The speaker itself is the epitome of simplicity; there is only one button (on/off) and no volume control (volume is set on your device). The audio cord is 9 inches long, so your device will always be close to the speaker. Battery life is fantastic, Altec Lansing quote 24 hours of continuous use, and in my experience it really does last that long. Batteries are the only way to power the speaker as it does not have a power jack, so be sure to carry a spare set of AAA’s.

There are several minor issues; The unit does not have a power indicator light, so the only way to tell whether it’s on, is to check the markings on the side of the switch. You’ll also notice that it’s a single speaker, which means you don’t get full stereo audio, but the speaker mixes the left and right channels, so in reality you won’t really notice a thing. And finally, the battery compartment is pretty hard to open, it’ll take a couple of attempts to find the easiest way to remove the back cover to swap out the batteries. Other than those minor quirks, it’s a brilliant way to listen to music when you are on the road, it’s small and light enough to add to any carry on bag.

The Altec Lansing Orbit-MP3 costs $29.95 (MSRP) and you can find it at your local Bestbuy or at Amazon.com for just $24.94 (price at time of posting).

Listen to the World with Google Earth

by Justin Glow on

Following the Where 2.0 conference (bringing together “the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry”) on May 29th, an enhancement to Google Earth will be available for download which enables binary sound files to be linked to geo-coordinates within the program. This means that along with all of the other cool features Google Earth offers, you’ll be able to hear what a place sounds like — from “the cracking of glaciers to midnight in the jungle.”

The sound files will be provided by Wild Sanctuary, a company whose “worldwide collection represents over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species.” Hopefully future versions of Google Earth will allow user-submitted sounds, or integration with other GeoTag-supported sound file websites like Freesound. While we’re at it, allow video too!

(Thanks, Mike!)