Thanks to Bluetree Electronics, we are giving away four Kube2 MP3 players in our Chinese New Year lucky draw. The Kube2 is touted as the world’s smallest touch MP3 player and sports a unique one-inch cube aluminum body. The S$45.90 doodad also comes with a 4GB microSD card.

To enter the contest:

1. Follow us on Twitter.
2. Post a tweet on any Techgoondu article that you like.
3. The URL of that article (use a link shortener service) must be included in your tweet, along with this hashtag: #TGCNY12.

This contest runs from January 30 to February 7, and we’ll pick the winners at random from all Twitter posts entered for this contest.

Rules and details:

1. Only residents staying in Singapore are eligible to participate.
2. Each tweet is eligible for one entry, so feel free to post as many tweets as you want.
3. Anyone found using multiple Twitter accounts to enter will be disqualified.
4. After the contest closes, we’ll Twitter DM the lucky winners to coordinate with you how you can collect your prize.

Happy new year and good luck!

Every once in a while, a technology emerges that makes you wonder why you haven’t thought about it before. The Singapore-made Orastream app is one such example.

It enables music players to stream the songs at as high a quality as possible, depending on the network that is delivering the songs. This means you always enjoy the highest quality music, without worrying about the dreaded break in transmission – a boon to future music services on the go. …

Anyone who’s ever gone jogging or biking with their music will know how irritating it is to have wires dangling and getting in the way. You can have a short cable, say, with sports earphones that hook up to an iPod strapped to your arm, but there’s still that bit of wire that often gets in the way if you are sensitive to these things.

For such active folks, you’d be pleased to try out Jabra’s Sport earphones. These Bluetooth headphones receive music wirelessly, doing away with cables other than one between the earphones which you’d hardly feel on the go. I’ve tried a number of Bluetooth stereo headsets before this, but Jabra Sport ranks as one of the best yet. …

Gym rats and music lovers now have two new Sony Ericsson smartphones to choose from. Making its debut yesterday is Xperia Active, a ruggedized model that sports a dust proof and water resistant shell. While sweating it out, you can continue to swipe on the screen, which SE says works perfectly even when the screen, or your finger, is smeared with water and sweat. But before you take to the pool, be warned that the Xperia Active is only water-resistant, not water-proof, so the usual precautions apply. …

Jabra, that brand better known for its Bluetooth headsets, has come up with a rather solid pair of sports earphones that are both light on the ear and firm enough to stay in place when you run or cycle.

The Jabra Sport receives the music wirelessly via Bluetooth from your smartphone or a compatible MP3 player, doing away with the annoying cord that usually runs down to your MP3 player in your shorts pocket or an arm pouch.

At a launch in Singapore yesterday, reporters were shown how the earphones come with a number of useful features for those sweaty moments, starting with the specially-coated, flat cord linking the two headsets that are said to be less susceptible to stick to your sweaty back, or get tangled that easily. …

Bring up Bose to your audiophiles friends and they’d probably let you know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, while pointing out that there are better-sounding options that cost a fraction of what it asks for.

The United States company’s SoundDock systems, though, are hugely popular because they appeal to iPod and iPhone users who desire not just the Bose design but also a bit of oomph lacking in other plain vanilla iPod docks and speakers. The latest high-end SoundDock 10, costing a cool S$1,299, is no difference. …

SingTel cellphone users can now download songs from Madonna, Katy Perry and Jolin Tsai over SingTel’s AMPed music download service, after the telecom operator added songs from record firm Warner Music Group, which also represents EMI in Singapore, to its catalog last week.

With the new additions, the “red” telco now has all the major international music labels for its download service, which will feature two million tracks for users to download onto their phones and PCs. This comes about half a year after it added Sony to its list of record labels in July 2010.

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Nokia has stopped the music on its year-long unlimited song downloads that come bundled in phones in all but six countries, as the world’s largest cellphone maker readies for a tough 2011.

The service, launched to much fanfare as Comes With Music in Singapore in early 2009, enables users of selected phones to download as many songs as possible from the Nokia music store, for a year.

However, the phone maker has now said it will stop the bundling in 27 markets, including Singapore, and will keep it going in only China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa. …

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. …

Philips GoGear Opus

Philips may not be on many portable gear head’s shortlists of brands when it comes to buying a new portable music player, but its new model’s support for FLAC could swing a few votes its way.

The GoGear Opus is one of a slew of new releases by the Dutch electronics giant in Singapore today, and the only one in that bunch – as well as one of the few in the market – to supprt Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), an open source lossless compression standard that more than a few discerning listeners have told me is sonically a tad better than rival codecs like Apple Lossless and WMA lossless (although I can’t really discern those differences – all lossless codecs sound as good to me).

A rival to Apple’s Nano in terms of features and price, the decidedly chunkier Opus has a larger screen real estate compared to the Nano (2.8 diagonal inches vs 2.0-inch) but also costs slightly more ($339 vs $328 for the 16GB version; $299 vs $248 for an 8GB version).

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