Zune has a new competitor and this time it’s from SanDisk called the Sansa Connect. The Connect accesses online music services without a PC, and users can both stream or download content. It has an internal speaker and the ability to expand the internal 4 Gbytes of memory.

Like the Zune you can send songs out to your friends and get this - If you are on the same music service as your pal and you want to send him/her the hottest new track, a Connect owner just needs to ping him/her with the player, and your pal will be humming the new tune immediately, said SanDisk.

So who won the holiday market iPod or Zune? Apple’s iPod and iTunes simply crushed Zune! It seems not many bothered to get a Zune for anyone this holidays they sticked to their iPods and iTunes this month!

Zune had its share of glory but that was when it launched in November but in December iPod maintained its lead and hold on the market. Christmas saw Apple’s download site for iTunes bomabarded with requests thereby sending their servers down.

Amazon.com has released its list of top-selling items on their site and Apple takes the top spot in three areas – MP3 players, Notebooks and Desktops! The mp3 player category was a foregone conclusion with iPod being so ever popular everywhere.

Two MacBooks dominate the notebook category, which isn’t that surprising either because they run Windows seamlessly or have the best price-to-performance ratio of any Macs ever built.

The hat trick came in the desktop category for Apple on Amazon where the iMac dominates the first and second spots. Let’s keep n mind that Amazon.com is just one of the retailers that sell Apple products and so the total sales everywhere will be at a different scale altogether.

MP3 players will have a boost in sales now as big music labels are slowly getting to see the consumer’s viewpoint and are warming up to letting users downloads music files into mp3 format!

While mp3 format was a pain in the side of major record labels for years now they are looking into cashing in on this.  EMusic, for example, offers 1.5 million songs that are all encoded in MP3 format that include no digital rights management (DRM) technology.

More record labels are beginning to test consumer interest in legal MP3 downloads. Yahoo Music ran several promotions that offered MP3-encoded songs from several artists, with approval from record labels.

Time to take stock and give the top honors for the top gadget of 2006. No surprises again for the Apple iPod which managed dual accolades. The iPod’s 30GB fifth generation video iPod was the most frequently purchased electronics gift in 2006, while the black-colored model was also awarded the title of the “most wished-for gift” — appearing most often on the Wish Lists of Amazon customers in 2006.

Apple also said traffic to the company’s iTunes website on Christmas Day was up 413 percent when compared to last Christmas, as surfers wielding new iPods flocked to the web to download iTunes. All that traffic brought the site to its knees early this week, tossing out error messages to some while others were able to download music without incident.

Logitec Japan has launched the LAT-FM200U a MP3 player with built in FM transmitter.This white colored model is available from October 25th with approximate price 7,980 Yen ($ 75). The MP3 player can be powered by from the cigar socket of the car. While charging the external audio player with the USB connector you can plays back music with the FM car stereo. The external input connector allows connecting external portable audio equipments and mobile phones with playback facility. The LAT-FM200U is compatible with iPod shuffle, iPod and the color matches with the iPod. As no flash memory built in, the unit can be connected via the built in USB terminal to 1 inch HDD or portable audio player. For personal listening you can connect ear phones via the built in stereo mini- plug. The built in FM transmitter allows to listen through car audio system.

Well it happened to very little surprise, but Apple has officially announced the iPod with Video. It’s the same height and width as the current 4th gen iPods, but just a tad bit thinner which makes sense considering the shrinking density of mini-harddrives. The screen has a 320×240 pixel resolution, 2.5-inches in size and 260k color display. The new iPod offers over 20 hours of battery life and supports playback of H.264 and MPEG4 formats at 30fps.

It will come out in two versions: 30GB and 60GB. Prices are $299 for the 30GB and $399 for the 60GB version which holds 150 hours of video. They are planning to ship both in one week (*cough*).

I have never heard of Elecom Japan, which isn’t that suprising seeing how in the US all you really hear about is the mp3 players from Apple, Creative and iRiver. However, I will make sure to pay them a little bit more attention since they seem to be taking Apple’s cue by releasing products with a bit of style, although awkward looking in their implementation.

The PLP-P01 supports PLEO (PC Less Easy Operation). Files can be transferred onto a SD card using the PLC-2 wire which rips tracks from audio CDs and stores them on the SD card. It offers a 128×64 pixel monochrome display and can do 16 hours of continuous playback on a single charge.

All too often am I asked by my friends which iPod they should get and it’s never an easy question to answer. Might as well ask me what laptop they should get…wait they do that as well. In any case I am glad I can now send them over to this Playlist article on finding the perfect iPod.

It’s good in that it gets straight to the point of what each iPod is useful for. I have a regular iPod (4th gen), an iPod mini and an iPod shuffle and I find uses for all of them, but definitely don’t expect everyone to take the same approaches that I have taken.

For the longest time I wondered why you never really saw anyone walking around with an iPod in Tampa. When I spoke in San Francisco it seemed like every other person had an iPod, but of course every other person was walking around the city. In Tampa you don’t walk, you drive to your destination no matter how close it is and this made me realize that people probably just used their iPods in their cars. I know I do.

PCMag has found 6 ways to connect your iPod to your car stereo and it amazes that there are even six options.