Hello Kitty is 35 years old now, and she still continues to be the dream cartoon cat of millions of teenage girls. If you’re one of these people and have a penchant for gadgets on top of that, this new and strictly limited music player might be the right thing for you. The so-called Hello Kitty Music Player Crystal [JP] is the result of a cooperation between iriver Japan, Hello Kitty company Sanrio and luxury brand Swarovski Crystal.

The player is sized at 47.2×18.0×37.5mm, weighs 19g and comes with 300 of Swarovski crystals that just boost the cuteness a little more. It features 2GB of storage, which is enough for around 480 songs and can play MP3 and WMA files. It supports Windows PC only (via USB 2.0).

The player is Japan-only and will cost $150 when it goes on sale (exclusively online) on October 30. I suggest you contact the Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya in case you live outside Japan and you’re interested in getting one.

Do you remember the iriver Story, the company’s first stab at an e-book reader? Of course you don’t, especially since it’s still only slated for release in Asia. Be that as it may, it’s now available for pre-order for a hot $281, or thereabouts, fiat currencies being what they are.

Like the IREX e-reader that I played with for a hot minute, it supports memory cards (presumably SD cards), this time all the way up to 32GB.

Just think, only two years ago, we were all “e-books? what’s that?” Then Kindle came out, and now everyone hates paper books.

The Story has a 6-inch screen and appears to be extremely thin, maybe a quarter of an inch (specs aren’t available yet). It lacks any obvious buttons for next page, home, and that sort of thing, but the keyboard in this shots isn’t very clear so they could easily be down there. iRiver is an interesting company and frequently comes out with elegant and untried designs, though, so I wouldn’t rule out something subtle or hidden on the device.

It does have a dedicated comic book mode, I suppose for black and white comics primarily, and it’ll likely support all the popular e-book and e-publishing formats out there. iRiver’s always been good with format support. I’m sure we’ll get more official word soon — in the meantime, all we can say is hey, it looks nice.

Sometime this year iriver, which will soon change its name to MouseComputer, will release its very own e-book reader in Japan. It’ll be called the Libre, and it’ll probably be priced around ¥29,800 ($312).

Like every other e-book reader on the planet, it’ll use eInk. Unlike the Amazon Kindle, it won’t be able to transfer books via any sort of wireless connection; it only transfers data via USB.

Iriver is currently negotiating with Japanese newspaper companies… you know, to help ship the device with any sort of content.

The six inch-screen has a resolution of 800×600.

via OLED Display

You might want to know that iRiver is making Bluetooth headsets now. Granted, the don’t look anything special; does any headset? Also, the first model, the A100, is currently only set for release in China.

There’s very little to address here. It supports Bluetooth 2.0, which means that most any phone purchased in the last five years should work with it just fine. Yes, including that fancy, new iPhone 3G S.

What I will address, briefly, is: why isn’t iRiver more popular in the U.S.? (I can’t speak to what happens, say, in Russia or the UK.) Look at the LPlayer. Looks pretty slick to me; it plays MP3s. What more do you want in a player? My guess is that, somehow, we’ve gotten used to the idea that iPod/iPhone = MP3 Player, and anything else is pure garbage. It’s unfortunate, I think. There’s plenty of cool stuff out there that doesn’t have an Apple logo on it.

The B30 is a sexy-looking slab (though rather thick) and its UI is a slick and squared-off. No touchscreen, unfortunately, and the screen isn’t 16:9, but hey, that’s what the Zune HD is for, right? Good-looking devices like this should be the standard; the Sansa, while it’s a decent device, is far from imaginative yet is fairly popular. Come on, people, demand more!

[via Crave]

Alright. This is good news. The fantastic iriver P35 is coming to America this Fall. We still don’t know exactly what the US-spec model be like, but hopefully it will be at least close to the Asian model.

The Korean model comes with a 4.3-inch WQVGA display, 8 or 16GB options, a DMB TV tuner, and WiFi. The integrated TV tuner isn’t likely to make the cut as we use ATSC signal instead of DMB over here. Hopefully we’ll at least see the WiFi option though. We can probably expect the Korean price of $289 to stay about the same for our model.

iriver via SlashGear

iriver’s Mplayer, a super-cute portable MP3 player, is on sale for about 2 years now and has proven to be a big hit particularly in East Asia. Now, the player that’s shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head gets a quite important upgrade and is renamed Mplayer+ [JP].

The difference between the “+” and the normal version is that the new model supports WMA DRM, meaning that you can play WMA files you downloaded from the web on the DAP without any problems. Spec-wise, you still get 2GB of internal memory, Windows XP/Vista support and a  USB interface. The player weighs just 18g.

It’s already on sale in Japan where it costs $60 and is available in lavender, black, white and red. People living outside Japan should try and ask the Japan Trend Shop, Gizmine, Geek Stuff 4 U to get one for them.

Via Gizmodo Japan [JP]

You’re looking at the P7, iRiver’s latest portable media player that runs circles around the iPod. The big thing this go-around is that it automatically converts your videos to make sure they playback flawlessly (so iRiver tells us). How well that actually works, in the Real World, isn’t quite known yet; it’s new, you see.

The screen isn’t too bad, either. It’s a 4.3-inch touchscreen; the user interface is described as “widget-like.” Oh, widgets, what would we do without you?

It looks to be compatible with most of the file formats out there, including h.264 video and FLAC audio. It even plays Ogg Vorbis, satisfying a popular Slashdot complaint from 2004.

Throw in decent battery life—50 hours of audio, seven hours of video—and you’ve got a solid player. At least I think.

I don’t know, I’m Mr. let’s-give-something-other-than-the-iPod-a-chance these days, so perhaps I’m partial to iRiver stuff by default.

There’s two versions: an 8GB one for $179 and a 16GB one for $209.

Unrelated: Liverpool for the league, Chelsea or Barça for the Champions

iriver yesterday announced Japan will  get their P20 [JP], a new PMP, on February 27. The problem: Only 200 Japanese buyers will be able to lay their hands on the player and iriver didn’t say anything about a possible release outside Nippon.

The Korean company first showcased the device last summer during the IFA 2008 exhibition in Berlin. It features 80GB of storage, a 4.1-AMOLED touchscreen with 480×272 resolution, an FM tuner with recording function, a rechargeable battery, a voice recording function and a USB 2.0 port.

The P20 can be used to view MS Office documents, HTML pages or PDFs. It’s also compatible to MPEG-1,2,4/ Xvid/JPEG/BMP/GIF/PNG/WMV/MP3/OGG/WMA and FLAC files. Windows 2000/XP/Vista is supported.

The P20 weighs 300g and measures 79.7×130×20.5mm. Japanese buyers can order it online only [JP] and will be set back $440.

The iriver Wave-Home is one snazzy piece of gadget goodness and it can now be had from KT Telecom in Korea. We spied the Wave-Home at CES 2009 (hands-on video after the break) and after playing around with the sexy kit for a bit, we came away awful impressed. If only we lived in Korea.

The Wave-Home features a VoIP handset paired with a 1.3 megapixel video conferencing camera along with a whole array of home appliance applications. KT Telecom subs can purchase the Wave-Home for 297,000 Won ($210 USD). Verizon Hub or Wave-Home? Same price; totally different sex appeal.

iRiver has managed to take the Chumby, add a sweet remote/phone, and throw it into a slick matte white package. This desktop touchscreen is arguably one of the hottest products at CES primarily ’cause info didn’t leak about it before hand and its a pleasant surprise in the mix of gadgets we already know about. The company expects to add a VoIP service like Skype and if they do, this would be a killer desktop companion. Pricing isn’t set in stone yet but expect it to drop around $400 when it hits Korean shelves next month and US stores in six months.

iRiver Japan today unveiled a new photo frame, which comes in two designs (”Minnie Style” and “Micky Style”) and is officially licensed by Disney.

The so-called Framee-M measures 3.5 inches in size and next to displaying photos, it can be used as a digital alarm clock or calendar. The frame features a resolution of 320×240 (QVGA),  JPEG/MPEG-4/MP3support, a contrast ratio of 350:1, 1 GB of internal memory and stereo speakers (0.5W×2ch).

The device comes out in Japan this week and will be only available in Toys ‘R’ US stores for $120. Akihabara News promises their shop will list both designs as well, which is good news for all people living outside Nippon.

Digital picture frames aren’t exactly the hottest gadget item anymore, but maybe iriver can somewhat breath new life in the totally overproduced niche item. The 7-inch Framee-L has a bit of understated art deco look, while at the same time sport’n the standard fare of digiframe features. It has a 720 x 480 resolution display, 1GB of internal memory, a full array of memory card slots, a USB port, and can handle just about every video file. Japanese peeps can get their hands on the frame starting on December 20t at an estimated price of 17,800 yen ($198).

AV Watch via SG

Well would you look at this? Seems iRiver’s getting into the cell phone game – in Korea, at least. The maker of pretty-slick MP3 players does plenty of business over here, though, so it wouldn’t be a total shock to see one or more of the phones picked up by domestic carriers.

The first handset is set to hit the Korean market in March and will be available on the KTF network. According to Electronista, the phone will have a large touchscreen with handwriting recognition along with a Wi-Fi connection, but little else is known. Here’s to hoping that the finished version will be cooler-looking than it is in the above photo. iRiver makes some nice portables so it’ll be fun to see what it can do with a phone.

There’s a small sale on iRiver doodads that might interest you, especially with the holiday shopping season coming. From November 1 to December 31, the iRiver Spinn, Lplayer and E100 are all getting their prices slashed anywhere from $30-$60. For example, you can grab the 8GB model of the E100 for $99. If you’re looking for something a little more flexible, the 8GB Spinn is now $229.

Why would you want an iRiver instead of, say, an iPod?

• You realize being seen with an iPod stopped being impressive by early 2004

• You encode your own music in formats like FLAC and Ogg

Non-sequitor: Anyone else think the name iRiver is a little on the silly side?

We’ve been waiting for the sexy iRiver SPINN for months and finally the gorgeous PMP is shipping Friday. The 8GB flavor carries a $289.99 price while the smaller, but still attractive, 4GB option is going for $249. If you wanna one of the first units, head over to iRiver’s website and place a pre-order. 

[Thanks for the tip, Ron]

IFA is quickly coming up and in standard trade show fashion, some gadgets leak out early. The iriver P20 first made headlines during CES ‘08 and that was only a prototype. We’re hoping for some real hands-on action once the PMP launches in Germany. Thankfully, iriver has kept the 4.1-inch touchscreen and is still capable of doing the whole music, DMB TV, Flash games, and video thing via the sexy Spinn OS. Pricing is of course absent but is sure to pop up within the coming days.

iriverFans via Engadget

We saw this thing last week and it looked sweet, but it’s so hard to tell about an interface without seeing it in action. Looks to me like the touchscreen works well, and although the interface doesn’t look as clean as other players, iRiver gadgets have historically done more stuff out of the box. I really can’t wait to get a hands-on with one of these things — hint hint, iRiver. [via iRiverfans forum]

Prices are in Won and Euros, but it looks like the 8GB will run you somewhere under $300 and the 4GB about $250. I’d say that thing is easily $300 worth of sexy.