Gadget Envy: Sony Rolly
 

What It Is: Were not entirely sure, but its Japanese creator, Sony, is calling it a “Sound Entertainment Player.” In fact, its a robotic, egg-shaped MP3-player with built-in speakers and moving audio reflectors.
Who It’s For: Early-adopters, hacker-types and only-in-Japan gadget hounds. But a word of warning: Youll need to speak Japanese and have a Windows machine equipped with a Japanese-language OS (Operating System), or your Rolly wont work.
Why It’s Worthy: Besides its pure and utter whimsicality, the Rolly is portable (not much bigger than a kid-sized football), provides decent sound and boasts graceful robotic movements — the audio reflectors move in different directions to tweak sound, and the entire device itself shoots, spins and stops itself around the room. Its no surprise, considering Sony created the smooth-operating and now defunct Aibo robotic dog. But the good points dont stop there: The Rolly also has a motion editor that lets you program different movements for different songs, and built-in Bluetooth means you can stream songs from a computer or your cell phone (something you might consider since the Rolly only has 1GB of built-in memory).

Our Only Complaint: Its pricey (though a bargain compared to the Aibo), and theres the big problem of it not working on your English-language computer.
Where to Get It: Its about $399-ish ($39,000 Yen), and you can pre-order it at gadget-import boutique Dyamism.com, which is working on an English language OS for this thing, so your purchase wont be in vain.


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