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Music

Public Hardware Beta Tests 131

Posted by CowboyNeal from the first-one-is-free dept.
orangerobot writes "Commercial software companies have performed public beta tests of their products for quite some time but more recently Philips Electronics has started holding public betas of new consumer hardware gadgets. A few months ago it was the Streamium MC-i250, and now it's their iPod clone the HDD-100. Public hardware betas seem like a great way to do a bit of marketing and user testing at the same time maybe more companies will pick up the same idea." This seems like a great idea for a company wanting to collect usability data on their interfaces, so that the release version can be tweaked.
Music

Wi-Fi Enabled Stereo From Philips In Beta 98

Posted by timothy from the get-in-on-the-ground-floor dept.
Orangerobot writes "Philips Electronics is undergoing the beta test for the latest model in the Streamium line called the MC-i250. You have to trudge through a cheesy Flash presentation to get all the details, but it looks pretty good: Wi-Fi, CDDB support, online playlist management and more. It looks like they might actually get it right." Reader UVWarning's review of the current generation of Streamium indicates plenty of ways the next generation could improve on the current one.
Toys

New Philips eXpanium Will Use 3" CDs 318

Posted by timothy from the finally- dept.
SpunOne writes: "Phillips is gearing up to release their new eXpanium mp3 player. Unlike most players in the past that use proprietary storage technology, Phillips is turning to the use of those cute little 3 inch CDs that have been around forever, but never really used for much. Apparently most existing CD burners can already write to them, and the rest can do so with an adapter. Phillips even has a beta test available if you're interested in giving it a try." If you should get into the beta group (50 people), why not write up a report for us on this little device? If it only played .ogg files, I would try to pre-order from somewhere.

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