NEC today unveiled a 3.5in LCD it claims can reproduce colours "clearly and vividly" in brightly lit conditions. It does the trick by increasing the amount of light the display reflects back through its screen and also by boosting its luminance beyond that of any other panel of its kind.

The iBuzz, the infamous iPod-enhanced vibrator, has...er...come to the US. Already on sale in the UK, the device has now gone one sale to North Americans keen to really 'feel' the music, movies or even video games...

Why did no one think of this before? Like all other mouse makers, Japan's Elecom ships its new wireless input device, dubbed the "M-MBDUR", in a box. But this time it's no ordinary case - the plastic packaging doubles up as the rodent's recharger and its wireless transceiver.

German MP3 player specialist Maxfield has launched a digital music player for kids. Pitched at children between the ages of six and 12, the primary colour player sports a playground-safe water-resistant shell and limits the decibels lest the young ones' passion for loud metal play havoc with their wee ear-drums.

Yesterday, we reported on Memorex's disk-shaped 16MB USB Flash drive, the company's newly announced bit to bring those few remaining floppy disk users into the sold-state storage era. Today, we learn Verbatim is getting in on the act too - with exactly the same product.

Memorex thinks it has the key to success in the state-of-the-art USB Flash drive market: make products that look like outdated technology. It's FlashDisc, announced less than 24 hours ago, fits drive and USB connector into a casing that looks like a magnetic tape reel from the early 1970s.

MSI has unveiled what it has been claimed to be the first solar-powered, hard drive-equipped MP3 player, though it appears a custom job kitted out to wow the crowds at the CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany this week.

Yes, it looks like something that landed near Roswell, but this Skype-certified speakerphone will land in the UK later this month, its manufacturer, US Robotics, said this week. Officially dubbed the USR9610, the £50 gadget connects to a host PC's USB port and then via the VoIP network to callers around the globe.

Last week we told you about a neat new adaptor that allows iPod Nano users to connect a host of older iPod accessories to their slimline music player. Now, thanks to Kensington - better known for its ubiquitous notebook lock port - so too can Shuffle owners.

Want an MP3 player that doesn't look like an MP3 player? Norway's Asono may have the answer: the Play, a low-cost version of its Mica device. iPod Shuffle-like in its simplicity, the Play has no screen and a single joystick for control. It even clips into its own design-integrated neck lanyard.

Fujitsu Siemens (FS) today unveiled what it claims is "the world's most desirable laptop" - so desirable, in point of fact, that the company is making the €4,000-plus ($4,743/£2,724) product available in "limited quantities only". Among its appealing features: it's 2cm thick and is decked out in a "black piano lacquer" finish.

British shirt-maker Thomas Pink has begun selling a limited edition tie with an integrated iPod holder, the better to allow City gents to groove to their favourite beat combos as they battle their way to work every morning.

Exclusive Asus has shelved plans to develop the PC of the future - literally. The Taiwanese vendor's Green PC concept computer, shown to Reg Hardware this week, is just that: a shelf. And some clever wireless connectivity and non-contact inductive power source.

Squeakerphone™ Sony UK has introduced an optical mouse that doubles up as a VoIP handset. The VN-CX1 is kitted out in Vaio styling and colours - black, blue and silver - though its angular edges suggest it's not the most comfortable controller around. There's an LED on top, next to the scrollwheel, that flashes when someone's trying to get in touch. It rings too.

Can you take the act of demonstrating your support for Apple's diminutive iPod Shuffle too far? The latest in iPod-oriented apparel, the PodShirt, might well prove that you can. PodShirt's new t-shirt incorporates a magnetic clasp on the right breast to hold your Shuffle exactly where the 'i' in the screen-printed iShirt caption appears.

Japanese peripherals specialist Elecom has introduced what it claims is the world's smallest external hard drive. Its MF-DU204G packs in 4GB of storage capacity yet is sufficiently small to warrant its own, integrated USB connector.

Posh gents outfitters Bamford & Sons has followed Selfridges down the expensive iPod-related services path by offering to paint any new iPod bought at one of its London stores with a custom colour scheme of the buyer's choice. It's a snip at between £121 and £196, excluding the cost of the music player.

What do you give the iPod owner who has everything? An opportunity to listen to their favourite digital music player while they sleep with none of that tangled-in-the-duvet earphone misery, that's what. And now you can, courtesy of New Zealand bed maker Design Mobel. The company's Pause bed incorporates not only an iPod dock, but a pair of Bose speakers and - just for the truly media obsessive - a built-in LCD TV.

Russian hardware designer Artemy Lebedev has announced his second OLED-illuminated keyboard, a three-key unit designed to sit alongside a regular keyboard or one of his own picture-key jobs.

Lebedev's product, the Optimus Mini, comprises three large buttons, each with its own colour OLED screen. The idea is the buttons show a colour icon, in some cases an animated one, that indicates what will happen when you push the button.

Samsung has developed a fuel cell capable of powering a personal media player for four hours - almost double the video playback time of the rechargeable batteries that usually ship with such devices.

For now, that is. Samsung said the fuel cell won't go into mass-production until 2008, by which time rechargeable battery technology may have caught up. Still, empty fuel cells will only require a new methanol tank, not a lengthy recharge, and Samsung expects those to become as commonplace as ordinary batteries are today, South Korea's Joong Ang Daily reports.