The Sony Walkman has come a long way since the early days when they owned the market with the Discman and slowly lost ground to the iPod. Shown above could be the early illustrations of a new touchscreen Walkman to compete with the iPod Touch. The player would feature a 3-inch OLED display which as you can see from the scale compared to the hand would be smaller than the current iPod Touch. It would also include WiFi and built-in access to Amazon’s MP3 Store. Although it’s currently just a rumor, I think it’s a good idea for Sony to focus on a product like this in order to compete for portable music market share.

So instead of just buying more bookshelfs as your books outgrow your current one, why not just expand the bookshelf you have? The Platzhalter bookshelf does just that, forming a capital V in the process of your book expansion, which adds an elegant design element to your library in the process. The exposed boards that open up the bookshelf as it expands are also hidden when the bookshelf is level vertically. Nice design as long as those expansion boards are secure.

In case you got bored with CubeECraft Papercraft Toys and are interested in something new, you may want to check out Marshall Alexander’s website which offers diagrams you can print out, cut out and have fun with. The one-piece papertoys consist of a single flat piece of paper, which by folding is transformed into a 3-dimensional model. There’s some really neat stuff on the site including all kinds of monster characters, robots, insects, fish, even 1970’s video game consoles.

Check out marshallalexander.net.

It used to be that you had to be on your PS3 or PSP to see what was going on in the PlayStation Store but Sony has changed that. You can now view the store in front of any monitor with internet access. The PlayStation Store features games, movies, and free demos - all available for easy and quick download on your PSP or PS3 systems. You’re not going to be able to download them from your computer directly to your PS3 yet but that would be nice if renting movies or buying games after researching them on your computer.

PlayStation Store

With more and more people transitioning from older 4:3 televisions to newer LCD and Plasma 16:9 TVs, you knew it was only so long before YouTube would make the transition also. Earlier this week (as an early holiday present) YouTube went from a standard 4:3 screen ratio to a 16:9 screen ratio, making it too widescreen. What that means is that all the videos you’ve uploaded or seen in the past will have the black bars on the left and right side of the video. From here on out though more and more people will be shot and uploaded in HD widescreen making the black bars more and more uncommon over time.

If you’re looking to save some cash this year on a PlayStation 3 and dont mind signing up for a new credit card, Sony is making you an offer you can’t refuse. With the PlayStation credit card, not only do you earn points towards the purchase of PlayStation and Sony products with every dollar you spend but you will get $150 off a new PS3! That would bring the price down to the $250 range. You can order your PS3 directly through the Sony store or you can use it at an authorized PlayStation retailer and send in your reciept. Offer expires December 31, 2008.

You can read all about it here.

The original Doom which was released way back in 1994, showed me that computers can be valid machines to play video games on. Someone has created the game using Flash and it’s now playable on NewGrounds. The music isn’t all there but the graphics are just as I remembered in all their low-res goodness. You will need to download Flash Player 10 if you haven’t already done so. Enjoy Flash Doom!

I got an e-mail invite last night saying that I can login to PSN and download PlayStation Home Beta. Apparently a lot of people in good standing with PlayStation Network have received the same e-mail. I didn’t even know about this invite until I read online that the Beta would be open. I went back through my e-mails that I usually ignore and read through the PSN one and sure enough the code was there. I only got to fool around in Home for about 30 minutes. I created a character, went outside of my virtual apartment, walked around and inside the mall. I probably saw about 500 people using Home when I logged in around 9:00PM. It has potentional to be great but it needs more content.

On the official PlayStation Blog, Sony has announce some more info on the latest Capcom game, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. We now have a release date of November 25, 2008 that you will be able to download the game via PSN. The price will be $14.99. The game will feature 1080p, online play, original and rebalanced modes and eventually, trophies. Also, as an exclusive to the PlayStation Network, fans will have the opportunity to download the Street Fighter Underground Remix Soundtrack for free. The soundtarck features hip hop artists including Redman, Hieroglyphics, DJ Qbert, DJ Toure, Zion I, Mistah F.A.B. and Oh No who have created original songs inspired by the Street Fighter series.

More @ PlayStation Blog.

Logging into Google earlier today I noticed a new feature: Themes. Themes let you customize your Gmail experience with a distinct look. There are currently about 35 themes to choose from and I’m sure Google will add more in the future. Some of the themes are even customized to you depending on your location. To choose a theme, go to Gmail and click a thumbnail on the Themes tab of your Settings page.

More on Gmail themes.