When Steve Jobs convened the “Let’s Rock” event to unveil the new iPod Nano in September, he made a point of whetting our appetites for premium in-ear headphones with remote and mic that were said, at the time, to be shipping in October. It’s now December and the Apple website still says “Coming Soon.”

Apple engineers were ordered to revise the design, which required Apple’s overseas contractors to retool their manufacturing process, resulting in the extended delay, according to sources cited by MacBloz on Monday.

The premium headphones, slated to retail for $79, are intended to compete with high-end audiophile headsets costing two and three times that amount from the likes of Bose and Sony, and according to the MacBlogz sources, that standard has not yet been achieved. On the other hand, it should be premature to rule out a splashy marketing deployment of the eagerly anticipated headphones just in time for last minute holiday shopping.

Via MacBlogz.

Retailers reported Xbox 360 console sales over the Black Friday weekend were on pace to beat previous years, outselling the PlayStation 3 by a three-to-one ratio and estimating a 25 percent increase from Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figures from 2007.

Not bad. But given Microsoft is making no mention of Nintendo's (NTDOY) Wii, we're guessing the Wii continued its dominance of the game console market.

In October, Nintendo sold more Wiis than sales of the Xbox 360 and PS3 combined, and eBay (EBAY) recently said the Wii was the site's most popular product on Black Friday.

See Also:
October Game Sales: Nintendo Wii Kicking PS3 Butt
Sony Cuts PS3 Prices By $150 -- If You Have Good Credit

Double Fusion today announced it would be the exclusive ad provider for THQ's PS3 games. That's just one part of a series of deals Double Fusion scored: The company will also be the exclusive ad vendor for PS3 games by publishers SEGA, Eidos Interactive, and Midway (MWY).

Standard disclaimers apply: The ads-in-video-games market remains miniscule. But hopes are high the fledgling industry will grow quickly -- one report by the Yankee Group predicts the market will grow from below $200 million currently to approach $1 billion by 2011.

See Also:
Microsoft And THQ Team Up For More Ads In Video Games
Electronic Arts And Massive Promise To Shove More Ads Into "Madden"
Why In-Game Ads May Be (Slightly) Bigger Than We Thought

It's possible, of course, that Amazon's chart is broken. Or that third-party "used and new" Kindle transactions are occurring so rapidly that they're pushing it to the top. Some 34 used Kindles start at $450 and go up to $1,500. Maybe people are buying today to avoid paying twice as much in two weeks. (We're asking Amazon for clarification on how they calculate their lists. It's also listed as their "most wished for" and "most gifted" electronic gadget.)

But since you can't really reliably give a new Kindle as a gift this Christmas, we assume that sales are at least somewhat depressed. Which means it probably can't be great news for Amazon that its sold-out Kindle is leading gadget sales -- ahead of in-stock, discounted Garmin GPS devices, Apple (AAPL) iPods, a Sony (SNE) Blu-ray player, and Canon digital cameras.

See Also:
Hey, Amazon: Start Selling Kindle 2.0 Tomorrow
Amazon Kindle Sold Out Through Christmas
Kindle A Year Old, Hasn't Changed Reading... Yet

Accessing the internet, reading news, checking the mail and being connected has become very important for us these days.I just wrote about how SmartPhones could help us recess and save costs. And now I say about the boom that these SmartPhones are making in many areas, one area particularly being of the readily available broadband technology. These high tech gadgets being the IPhone 3G, Samsung Instinct, BlackBerry Bold, Google Phone, and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X-1.

The digital boom is everywhere, even in third world countries like Pakistan where Blackberry’s are being sold under contract’s from Mobilink, till the US where a 7.3% increase in broadband usage was observed generating $8.8 billion in revenues in data services.

Analysys Mason, a London-based research firm predicts that mobile network operators in developed regions should prepare for a tenfold increase in wireless network traffic by 2015. The report had a few interesting points…

• • By 2015, developed regions will account for about 25 percent of the cellular user population but those users will generate 65 percent of total global wireless network traffic.

  • Average wireless network traffic per cellular user (for all voice and data services) in developed regions will increase to eight times its 2008 level by 2015, rising from 56MB per month to 455MB per month.
  • By 2015, data will account for 94 percent of total wireless network traffic in developed regions.

This certainly means that high end data services will be offered to users along with a strong healthy competition between service providers.

What do you think….

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While Apple may no be interested in giving discounts on its prime products, Sony is ready to give discounts of up to $150 ‘if’ The ‘if’ was there because this discount comes at a condition that says the interested gamers can avail the discount by applying for a Sony credit card. I mean why in the world would some one need another credit card? That too at such times and what about someone who doesn’t have a good credit record? I don’t get the idea behind this, all this complication when people need to simplify lives. But let’s just appreciate that Sony has decided to cut down price in order to better compete in a market where the Xbox 360 sales for $200 and the Nintendo Wii for $250.

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The Top 500 SuperComputers Sites has released the list of world’s TOP500 supercomputers. Linux computers have again topped the list. The top spot was grabbed by 1.105 petaflop/s IBM supercomputer. Some of the highlights of the report are as follows:

• A total of 379 systems (75.8 percent) are now using Intel processors. This is virtually unchanged from six months ago (375 systems, 75 percent). Intel continues to provide the processors for the largest share of TOP500 systems.
• The IBM Power processors and the AMD Opteron family are almost tied as second most common processor family with 60 and 59 systems each (12 percent and 11.8 percent). Both had only minor changes from six months ago.
• Quad-core processor based systems have taken over the TOP500 quite rapidly. Already 336 systems are using them. 153 systems are using dual-core processors, and only four systems still use single core processors. Already seven systems use IBMs advanced Sony PlayStation 3 processor with nine cores.
• HP took over the lead in systems with 209 systems (41.8 percent) over IBM with 188 systems (37.6 percent).  IBM had 210 systems (42.0 percent) six months ago, compared to HP with 183 systems (36.6 percent). But IBM still stays ahead by overall installed performance.

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Still wanting to experience HD Radio as inexpensively as possible, I recently purchased a Sony XDR-F1HD HD Radio Tuner and, despite owning every cable known to human-kind, I lacked the RCA-male-to-3.5mm-female cable required to directly connect the tuner to my desktop speakers. Not wanting to trudge down to the family room to hook it up to the stereo for testing, I got out my trusty Griffin iMic but did not want to crank up anything as complex as Garage Band just to do listen to the radio. While I could have used something like Audacity, that program is overkill for the task I wanted to perform.
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To get a discount, prospective gamers have to apply for a Sony credit card, and once the card arrives they can buy a console to get a $150 credit on their statement. (Or they can get an immediate discount at Sony's online store -- which offers a far worse deal than Amazon's (AMZN) PS3 bundles.)

Sony needs to compete more aggressively on price in the game console market, but this is probably the wrong way to do it. There's a credit crunch going on, and a lot of people with marginal credit who might have been approved for a credit card only a few months ago might get rejected now. We can't think of anything more likely to make prospective customers hate you than to promise them a discount, only then turn them down for it after applying. (Plus, who really wants another credit card -- especially a Sony credit card?)

Far better for Sony to cut prices $100 across the board, and get the consoles in more homes. Then if someone buys a PS3 but can't pay for it, it's someone else's problem.

See Also:
Wii Fit Frenzy: So Popular Nintendo Can't Meet Christmas Demand
Xbox Selling Like Gangbusters Since Price Cut
Sony: What Recession? No Price Cuts For PS3