The latest Logitech VX mouse offers even better portability than its sibling, along with the same innovative scroll wheel. But its software may need some work.

Sony's attempts at a turnaround have been pretty slowgoing, but their latest quarterly results -- showing profits double last year's -- generated some enthusiasm that things were on the right track. Although some parts of the company's business have picked up, the biggest factor in the increased profits was a weakening yen, which boosted the value of overseas sales. Investors shouldn't discount the currency effect, but they do have some other reasons to be upbeat: the company's movie unit is doing well, and its Sony Ericsson mobile phone joint venture continues to grow its market share. While the electronic business overall is looking healthier, Sony's TV unit is still underperforming, and the gaming business is still in the can. Sony's video-game unit boosted its sales by 60 percent over the same quarter last year, which is great, except that its losses grew as well, partly because it's still selling the PS3 for less than it costs to build. The game unit got a new boss a little while ago, but it doesn't yet look like he's making a lot of progress. Sony announced a price cut for the US on one PS3 model, and also said it will deliver a new high-end version and a load of new games. But it's hard to see those small changes making a big difference in terms of getting the mass market to buy into the PS3, particularly when you contrast Sony's strategy to that of Nintendo, whose business is booming. Still, Sony's problems are far from solved -- but it is showing some signs of life.

We've noted in the past how every once in a while, some good internet laws turn up, even though they're still far outweighed by the bad ones. One of the good laws has been the moratorium on taxes on internet service, which keep states from increasing the total cost of internet access for consumers. The only hiccup, though, is that this ban has never been made permanent, mostly thanks to the objections of the states. The current moratorium expires November 1, and discussions to extend it or make it permanent are ongoing. While there's bipartisan support for keeping internet access bills free from the morass of taxes and regulatory recovery fees that plague telephone and cable TV bills, a lobbying group representing the states say they current ban should only be extended temporarily, so that legislators can "return to this issue and make sure we've gotten it right." It's not entirely clear why they can't "get it right" now, particularly as two bills that would make the ban permanent have already been introduced in the House. What's heartening about the discussion, though, is that it seems to focus on legislators' desire to make the ban more broad, potentially covering backbone services and even basic cable. For the time being, the worst-case scenario appears to be that the taxes are banned for four more years, but it looks like there's too much momentum behind the ban eventually becoming permanent to stop it at this point.

Filed under: Portable Audio

We mentioned this workstation back in 2006 when it was only in prototype form, but the Trinity appears to be heading into production (see pic) with some minor changes in specs. The portable DAW sports an 8-inch LCD monitor and runs a custom build of Linux called Transmission, which is loaded with a handful of audio tracking and editing apps, as well as soft-synths, plugins, and sequencers, while control of the OS is handled by a touchpad and two buttons on either side of the screen. The system runs on a 500MHz CPU, with 256MB of RAM, a 20GB or 40GB hard drive, 802.11g, and it's all jammed into a fanless aluminum case (which definitely raises some temperature questions) that kind of looks like an elongated Korg KAOSS Pad. The box has two XLR / TRS jacks for input, and two more TRS jacks to get audio out, which doesn't provide a lot of options for multi-tracking (which appears to be its main use), and the provided USB port is only used for control of the built-in apps. There are still plenty of questions, not the least of which is why the "buy now" link on the company's website is broken, and Linux doesn't really have any presence in the recording world, but it's still an interesting development in portable audio.

[Via Pro Audio News and Reviews]

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