Creative Technology Ltd, today introduced Creative ZEN™, the credit card-sized music, video and photo player with a stunning 2.5-inch colour screen that supports up to 16.7 million colours. The Creative ZEN is the first Creative player to support AAC music and unprotected iTunes Plus tracks from the iTunes store, in addition to MP3 and WMA formats. You can now listen to up to 4,000* of your favorite tracks that you have ripped from CDs through your iTunes software.

The Creative ZEN can carry of up to 60** hours of video or thousands of photos, and it features a SD memory slot, so you can add virtually limitless additional storage capacity and easily bring new music, video or photos to the player.

“The Creative ZEN immediately gets your attention because it has the same size screen as our award-winning Creative ZEN Vision:M, but it’s so much smaller, lighter and thinner,” said Craig McHugh, president of Creative Labs Inc. “With the vibrant 2.5-inch screen, you can now have a great video watching or photo viewing experience with a very compact player.”

The Creative ZEN supports a wide selection of video formats, including WMV9, MJPEG, MPEG4-SP***, compatible DivX*** 4/5, and XviD***. One charge of the built-in rechargeable battery provides up to 5 hours of video entertainment or up to 25 hours of music playback****.

You can choose from popular subscription services such as Napster to Go or purchase tracks from popular download sites. At up to 97dB SNR, the audio quality of the Creative ZEN is outstanding. It sounds as good as or better than many home music systems.

The player’s patented ZEN user interface has a fresh new look for a more stunning visual experience, enabling more information to be viewed on the screen. The Creative ZEN also includes a built-in FM radio with 32 station presets, a voice recorder, and a personal organiser to sync contacts, to do lists, and your calendar to Microsoft Outlook.

Website: Zen Ultra Slim Player

Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr.

Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. A Mac version called Adium is available.

Windows and Linux users get it here: Pidgin

Mac users get the Mac version (Adium) here: Adium

The Microsoft® SideWinder Mouse was created to meets gamers’ individual needs, providing custom tuning tools and a design for ultimate handling. The first mouse to wear the coveted SideWinder name, this top-of-the-line gaming machine sets itself apart from the competition with never-before-seen features that gamers want, uncovered during worldwide research.

Features include one-touch access to Windows Vista® Games Explorer, Quick Turn — a performance-enhancing macro that lets users check their perimeter from wherever they are in-game — the first-ever LCD on a gaming mouse, and a cable anchor that doubles as an accessories storage box.

The SideWinder Mouse lets gamers create an individual gaming system with tuning options that allow them to personalize their SideWinder Mouse, including an adjustable weight tray, changeable mice feet with three materials for glide preference, DPI control and new software features. The SideWinder Mouse lets gamers record their own macros by tying a sequence of actions into one press of a button. With all the features in this new mouse, gamers can transform their mouse into nearly 5,000 different mice from a single system.

Website: SideWinder