SingTel added Justin Timberlake, Jay Chou and a number of other Sony Music artistes to its AMPed mobile music download catalogue last Wednesday, boosting the number of tracks on sale to its users to over 1 million.

The 150,000 new tracks will be accessible to more than 70 different mobile devices, including the Apple iPhone and Android numbers such as the Samsung Galaxy S and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Why I wanted to post this piece of news, despite missing out on it last week, is the fact that SingTel has pressed ahead when other music stores that employ DRM (digital rights management), such as Soundbuzz, died a long-overdue death in the past couple of years.

Here’s something for all you sweaty joggers and gym regulars – a “wearable” Walkman MP3 player that is not just water-resistant and but also washable.

The latest Sony Walkman W, launched today, also comes without a long wire dangling down the side. The S$129 device appears like a one-piece construction that wraps around the back of your head and is secured onto the ears with ear buds that remind one of Bluetooth headsets.

This means no more getting tangled with an irritating wire either running to your iPod hooked up on your arm or stored in your shorts pocket.

When you are slaying monsters in World of Warcraft that require the coordination of 20 or more people to keep to their tasks specifically, you don’t want your voice commands to break up mid-battle. You want everyone to be able to talk clearly to get clear instructions.

Well, that’s exactly what Creative has in mind, with its World of Warcraft Wireless Headset. Said to come with uncompressed wireless audio, it also comes with THX-branded TruStudio PC audio technologies, which Creative claims offers better audio over similar gaming headsets.

The headphones, unveiled earlier this year, is going on sale now for S$249.

As Christmas comes and the year draws to a close, what would a geek want in his Christmas stocking, or rather, in a nice FedEx box?

In my own unrealistic mind, I have keys to an Audi A4 2.0T, an Intel six-core Gulftown CPU (though that’s only officially out next year) and a Classè integrated amp for my music.

But I’m being greedy. I’m a PC geek, a car lover and a hi-fi buff (I refuse to call myself a pretentious audiophile).

Just how do you buy a gift for a geek? Let’s be fair and agree that there are different goondus, or well, geeks who might be differently pleasured with different gifts. Here’s what the various types of goondus might want.

In an age when stupid restrictions from content owners prevent you from watching what you want on the Net because you are not in the right “geographical region”, it’s great to know pop group U2 is streaming its concert from the United States live on YouTube.

If you are reading this now on a Monday afternoon in Singapore, the concert is going on live at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California – the scene of many a great concert, including my favourite ’80s band Depeche Mode.

Can you believe this:

• This is U2 and it’s free
• This is a live concert, so you are joining the 90,000+ who are watching it live at the Rose Bowl, interacting through Twitter or the comments page
• The quality is great – not  your usual YouTube stuff, but well streamed and buffered to ensure smooth and sharp images
  Read the full story >>

You can actually walk through the halls without squeezing past sweaty people – well, in most parts – at this year’s Comex show at Suntec City.

At nearby Raffles City, there was even ample parking – many empty lots – at about 6pm on Friday when I visited this year’s third quarterly computer and electronics bazaar.

So, what are the good deals that Techgoondu recommends you check out? I’d say the usual stuff were in store – large-screen TVs and portable hard disks – but there were one of two surprises, like Audio Technica’s headphones.

What do you gain by upgrading from a pair of $100 earphones, say my trusty Sony MDR EX85LP, to a pair of cans worth some $2,200, like the Sennheiser HD800? To picky ears, things to watch out for are many, including such aural qualities as warmth, punchiness, frequency extension, detail, soundstaging and, well, you name it, the audiophile lexicon is a very large one.

To me though, there are two crucial qualities, and they are – if you allow me to indulge in more audiophile jargon – timbre reproduction and air.

Having the right timbre, simply put, means sounding right. For instance, the percussive tap of each grand piano key ringing true with sumptuous overtones. Or the singing human voice having body, bite and breath. Of course, naturalness does not tend to excite, and hence top-end headphones may be underwhelming at first. But they reward with an unfatiguing sound and long-term listening pleasure.

Soundbuzz, one of the first online music sources in Singapore, is officially shutting its store come July 15, even as more online music stores are opening with a wave of optimism surrounding music downloads.

In a note to subscribers last Friday, as well as on its website, the company said everything will be taken down after July 15 midnight, marking a sorry end to a bright dot.com poster boy of yesteryear.

Creative has just unveiled its new Aurvana Air earphones, which look every bit like a premium set of lightweight pieces for the frequent traveller.

But wait a second, do they not look like Bang & Olufsen’s simply-named Earphones? The same rounded hook holding up the phones against the ear may not be that new now, but check out the stalk, where you see the Creative logo. Change it to B & O, and you might just appear like you got the more expensive version.

Just a month after Nokia launched its Comes with Music service here, music fans can now have another way to get music on their phones with Sony Ericsson (SE).

Turning the heat on Nokia, SE is getting in the act here too with its PlayNow Plus service, which lets users download thousands of songs onto their Walkman phones.

Announced this afternoon with much fanfare (even Wang Lee Hom was on stage), the service will be launched with the SE W705 Walkman phone from SingTel later this month.

What’s on offer:
>>1,000 songs included in the SingTel W705 phone from labels such as EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and Ocean Butterflies (local label).

>>takes less than one minute to download a full-track song on the 3.5G SE W705

>>free SE PlayNow Plus subscription for a year, offering unlimited downloads

>>200MB monthly data bundle for a year, to go with a regular SingTel voice plan

>>first-month free unlimited data usage, so you could get all the songs you want