Jasmine and Donald talk about their favorite portable audio discoveries from the 2009 Macworld Expo and the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This episode is recorded live from the CNET stage at CES 2009.

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The Sony B-Series Walkman. What's that B stand for, anyway?

(Credit: CNET Networks/Corinne Schulze)

House of Representatives passes a bill that will protect Webcasters from royalty-related death for at least a bit longer. Also, Donald and Jasmine review the Iriver Spinn, Archos 5, and Sony B-Series Walkman.
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As we've been reporting for some time now, Swarovski disease has been spreading fast. But with the arrival of iRiver's Swarovski-encrusted Mickey Mouse-shaped audio player (site in Japanese), we fear the affliction can now officially be called a pandemic. Does the World Health Organization know about this?!

(Credit: iRiver )

Swarovski disease, as defined by the Physicians' Desk Reference, is a condition in which Swarovski crystals attach themselves to every gadget known to man--even those that would seem most incompatible with shiny jewels, such as cable connectors.

In the latest outbreak, the glitter is appearing on a version of iRiver's Mplayer, a cute little kids' product that's licensed from Disney and shaped like the head of its iconic mouse. At 1GB and weighing about three quarters of an ounce, it can hold 240 songs. Users can change tracks, add shuffle, skip folders, and adjust the volume by rotating the gadget's ears.

The Swarovski editions come studded in 133 to 210 crystals in colors including pink, blue, green, black, and silver--and OMG, you can even get them with ribbons attached! They sell online for about $135.

In trying not to be too cynical here, we acknowledge that young gearheads will likely find the bejeweled version of the Mplayer quite charming. At the same time, we have to worry about exposing consumers to this highly contagious ailment at such a young age.

Click on the image above for the full lowdown in the iRiver Spinn.

(Credit: Crave UK )

Crave UK got its hands on a fully working iRiver Spinn in its ready-for-sale state Thursday, and man were they excited! This is one of the most hotly anticipated MP3 players of the year, and has been since the world got its first glimpse of a dummy model back in January. Click the photo above for the full scoop from our British compatriots.

Many non-iPod MP3 players are compatible with Rhapsody's subscription music service, but a handful of them really go the extra mile.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

For serious music junkies, there are few things in life more satisfying than having unlimited access to Rhapsody's all-you-can-download subscription music service. For a flat monthly fee, Rhapsody users can gorge on music downloads such as Kobayashi at a hot dog eating contest.

If you really want to get the most from a Rhapsody music subscription, however, you'll want to sync it to an MP3 player with Rhapsody DNA. These players typically offer a Rhapsody menu option right from their main menu, display Rhapsody files tagged with album art, and have proven themselves worthy of Rhapsody's stamp of approval.

See our editors' top Rhapsody-friendly MP3 players.

If you reel in a small sub instead of a rainbow trout from the Sacramento River this summer, don't call Homeland Security.

It belongs to a team of researchers from the University of California at Berkeley trying to learn more about the river currents in the delta.

The researchers are working with propelled 4-foot-long submarines and floating drifters equipped with GPS-receivers for positioning, GSM-modules for communication, and sensors inside for recording temperature, salinity, and currents.

Researchers prepare to launch a submarine.

(Credit: UC Berkeley)

"We are prototyping an infrastructure and testing it in the delta," said Professor Alexander Bayen, who leads the team at UC Berkeley's Civil Systems Department.

The purpose of all this is to collect data to help the state better understand the river. And researchers have good reason to believe there's urgency to their work. With drought looming for most of California, understanding the state's water supply (much of the state's population drinks run-off from snow melting in the Sierra Nevada range) and how the system works is critical.

The Sacramento River is already monitored by 50 permanent water stations in about 1,000 miles of water channels, but that collection of data is not designed to handle emergency situations, according to the researchers.

"It's totally undersampled if you want a precise, online, real-time measurement of the whole state of the delta," Bayen said.

Heavy rains, levee breaches, or contaminant spills are situations when accurate and up-to-date data is needed. In the river delta in 2004, for example, one of the levees breached and a large agricultural area was flooded. Pumps normally move fresh water from sources in the north down to the south, but silt was confounding in the system. The pumps had to be shut down for a whole month at a cost of around $1 million a day.

"In retrospect, that was too long. But given the information they had, they were forced to act very conservatively. They could not turn the pumps on," said graduate student and researcher Andrew Tinka.

Floaters equipped with sensors deployed on site could have provided real-time information on how the water was flowing and where the silt was heading.

Development of the floating devices starts from scratch at a UC Berkeley workshop.

(Credit: Carl-Gustav Linden/CNET News.com)

In a recent workshop at UC Berkeley, undergraduate students and university staff worked on floater prototypes that will be tested this summer in the river. Inside the floaters are a GSM-module, a GPS-receiver and a $120 Gumstix computer running on Linux. (A Gumstix is a computer the size of a stick of gum.)

"They are great little computers that are about as powerful as a 1996-era Pentium. All the power you had at your disposal can be yours in a floating sensor for very little money now, and that's really cool as far as I'm concerned," Tinka said.

The self-guided submarines are developed in Portugal by the University of Porto.

That is the hardware involved. The other part of the project are the algorithms calculated for the complex hydrodynamics models. The software is based on two commercial packages, Telemac and Mike 21, with programs for GPS tracking added.

Bayen said that the combination of the hardware and software is the novelty here. He calls it a "cyber physical system," where the cyber part monitors the flow of information and the physics is the hardware--the floaters.

"In five years, cyber physical system is going to be a tech buzz word," Bayen said.

If the research project is successful, the innovations can be put to use in other parts of the world where there is a need for improved river management. The Berkeley team is already cooperating with Professor Linda Bushnell of the University of Washington on a project in the Mekong--the troubled river that floats through China, Laos, and Cambodia out in its delta in Vietnam.

This week's virtual console releases feature a classic beat-'em-up along with a sci-fi RPG--what do they have in common? Both games have you chasing the bad guys so you can get your girl back.

• River City Ransom (1989, NES, 500 Wii points): River City Ransom is a classic beat-'em-up action game that takes you into the fictional town of River City. A dude named Slick has taken your girlfriend and the rest of River City hostage. Take him on solo or with a friend.
  
  
• Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom (1990, Sega Genesis, 800 Wii points): In this third installment, your bride gets kidnapped on your wedding day. Bummer. Explore the Phantasy Star universe in search for her so you guys won't miss the honeymoon.

What games do you think are missing from the Wii virtual console? Sound off here!

(Credit: Dvice)

We know about the whole obsession with kawaii (translation: cute) in Japan, but how much Mickey can any culture stand? Already they've gotten silver, gold, and even Swarovski-diseased 1GB "Mplayers," and now Disney and Iriver Japan are introducing "Season 2" of the eared one in even more colors, patterns, and designs, according to Dvice. Between this and High School Musical, we may need a set of blinders as well as earplugs.

Earlier this year, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke explained to the AP that the band was going to take concrete steps to minimize its contribution to global warming, including traveling by airplane only when necessary and using solar-powered generators. But the biggest contributor, by far, to the band's global carbon footprint are its fans, who drive by the millions to its shows every time Radiohead tours. Hence, Yorke said that the band would play only "in places that have municipal transport systems in place or that we can persuade promoters to put on transport."

Radiohead is playing a venue (3) located halfway between Seattle (1) and Mt. Rainier National Park (2).

(Credit: Screenshot (Live Search Maps))

Apparently this dictate doesn't apply in Seattle. Most touring acts of Radiohead's popularity play in Key Arena, the basketball stadium (at least for another year, until the Sonics move to Oklahoma), which holds about 17,000 people. It's owned by the city, located in the middle of Seattle, and is easily accessible via the city's Metro bus system. But according to stories in today's Billboard and elsewhere, Radiohead will play the same venue they played last time, the White River Amphitheatre, a Live Nation venue located on the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation 35 miles southeast of town. (See a map with both venues here.)

White River's about five years old. It's a fairly small (maybe 12,000 capacity) outdoor venue in a pleasant setting, but it's plagued by a complete disregard for traffic planning. If every car disappeared from the road, it would take about 40 minutes to drive there from downtown Seattle. But because the last five miles leading to the arena are on a two-lane rural road, and because it is in a particularly sprawling exurban part of of King County where growth has gone more or less unmanaged for the last 15 years, it actually takes much longer--the one time I drove there, after work on a weekday, it took me a little more than two hours. Most of the time I was standing still, emitting great gouts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The venue is aware of the problem, and has put up a Web site with driving directions and instituted a free shuttle from the relatively nearby Auburn Supermall. But for the 550,000+ folks who live in Seattle, they'd have to drive 30 minutes to Auburn, park, then take the shuttle, which (according to people I know who've taken it) still takes about 30 minutes to creep the last few miles to the venue.

Draw your own conclusions. I'm prone to think that Yorke and the band are trying to do the right thing, but are too busy to worry about the details of every venue on the tour, and one of their promoters or assistants saw the note about the free shuttle and thought "sounds like public transit to me."