The iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 2G, and iPod Nano 4G now has an external microphone available for purchase.  This device makes it easier to record conversations, meetings, and interviews.  The mini microphone plugs directly into a headphone jack.  Its about $15.

It is available for purchase at USBfever.

[via Get USB]

The Samsung P3 has been chilling in Korea for a while, but still has yet to make it to the U.S.  Even the U.K. got it before U.S.  The device has native video playback of up to 800×600 resolution.  The P3 has SMI format and a mosaic video browser.  The Korean version has a drawing notepad, a Korean dictionary, and mirror album art.  The P3′s performance has been increased by about 30% from previous Samsung devices.

[via ABi, Engadget]

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) that recently took a 6 month leave is missing the annual meeting for the first time since he returned back to the company 10 years ago.  The meeting will be held on Feb. 25, one day after Jobs’ 54th birthday.  Shareholders will have the opportunity to ask questions about excutives and directors.

External directors of the company include Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.  Jobs is considering a liver transplant after complications from treatment of pancreatic cancer.

I think that this is a good idea for Jobs.  Being barraged with questions isn’t exactly the best way to spend leave time from the company.  He needs to rest up and when he gets back to work, it is time to keep on innovating.

Mario Batali of Iron Chef America has a wind-up toy that looks just like him.  He actually flips spaghetti and meatballs too.  Check out the animated gif above to see how it is done.  To get him started, wind up the toy and flip the on switch.   This makes the perfect coffee table toy to have running while watching Iron Chef.

Buy it for $10 at Robotoys.

[via NerdApproved]

BeamBox is best known for selling pocket projectors and the Evolution R-1 pico projector is their newest creation.  The R-1 has a LCoS chip, is 30 lumens in brightness, and has a 200:1 contrast ratio.  The Evolution R-1 is capable of projecting a 100 inche image.  There is also 4GB Flash memory and a microSD slot.  The pico weighs about 175g and runs about £250 ($360).  The colors of the device are black, red, silver, and white.

To get your hands on this device, go to BeamBox’s reserve now section.

[via Engadget]

According to a tip received at TechCrunch, Last.fm handed data over to the RIAA about their users.  Erick Schonfeld published an article regarding the tip and it was homepaged on Digg.  The rumor was Last.fm handed data to the RIAA so they could find out who listened to the leaked U2 album.  Many Last.fm executives denied the allegations in the TechCrunch blog post and Ars Technica even wrote an article that the RIAA didn’t know where that rumor came from.

“When you signup to Last.fm and scrobble what you listen to, you are trusting us with your listening data. We take this very seriously. The old-timers on Last.fm who’ve been with us since the early days can attest to this – we’ve always been very open and transparent about how your data is used. This hasn’t changed,” stated Richard Jones, a founder of Audioscrobbler.  Audioscrobbler was merged with Last.fm before it was acquired by CBS Interactive for $280 million.  “We never share personally identifiable data such as email and IP addresses. The only type of data we make available to labels and artists, other than what you see on the site, is aggregate data of listeners and number of plays.”

The blog post for Last.fm’s response was “Techcrunch are full of sh**.” It is good to see how quickly Last.fm responded to rumors like that.  TechCrunch is often times seen as a credible source for other news outlets to syndicate.  TechCrunch could really taint the images of companies, but this time the tables have turned on them.

To learn more about the PR for CBS Interactive, I recommend following Katie Gunion on Twitter.

Capcom Co. is having a great week.  Last week The Legend of Chun Li hit theaters and Street Fighter IV has shipped 2 million units across the world for the Xbox 360 and PS3.  It is not yet known how many units were actually sold, but it is expected to do very well judging by the hype.  Street Fighter IV has been released in North America, Europe, and Japan.  A PC version should be coming in June.

The first Street Fighter game was introduced in 1987.  The second Street Fighter game was a smashing success in 1991.  “The series revolutionized combat systems in games, and established the fighting game genre. Since then, Street Fighter has been a global hit, selling over 500,000 arcade machines and 27 million console games,” stated Capcom.

[via Ars]

This year, ads on the Super Bowl costed about $2.6 million for a 30-second spot.  Getting an ad on the Oscars costs about $1 million less at between $1.4-$1.7 million.  NBC hosted the Superbowl and ABC hosts the Academy Awards.  Both media companies had to slash rates quite a bit after finding there was unsold inventory.

Last year, ABC sold commercial time for about $1.8 million.  In advertising revenue, about $68 million is expected to be brought in for ABC.  That is about a 16% decline from last year.  Last year about $81 million in revenue was made.

Peter Sealy, marketing professor at Claremont Graduate University and former movie industry executive believes that the ad revenue slow down for the Oscars is because the show is just too long.  He also said that the films this year are not spectacular.

I have to agree with Sealy here.  The Oscars this year just doesn’t seem fun as they used to be.  I think in terms of movies made this year, Slumdog Millionaire and Tropic Thunder helped save the industry.

[via LAT]