This is the Creative Nomad Jukebox from the year 2000. It may have been shaped like a CD player to mentally ease technophobes, but it actually had a 6GB hard drive on board. And boy did we love it. That’s not to say that this thing was great—because it wasn’t; not by today’s standards. It had only a USB 1.1 connection, so uploading all 6GB worth of music took hours and hours. Imagine filling up a 1TB hard drive over a USB 2 connection today, if that gives you any idea of how long the process was

Nine years ago, as a young tech reporter at Time Magazine, I co-wrote a buyer’s guide with the latest and greatest gear known to man. Today, it sounds ridiculous. • Creative’s $500 Nomad Jukebox (pictured above), was not only “sleek”—at least when compared to a CD Walkman—but “can hold as much music as 150 CDs.” • The Extiva was a $350 DVD player from Samsung with the Nuon chip, so “you can also play videogames.” Not sure which videogames we were referring to there. • Our pick for digital camera was Nikon’s twisty CoolPix 990, 3 million pixels for 1 thousand dollars. • Gateway laptop with 12.1-in. display, 550MHz chip and a year of free AOL was “a great deal” at $1300

Here’s an interesting one. Siliconera has dug up what it claims to be a Japanese trademark for the term ” Zii ,” and contrary to what you may expect, the application wasn’t filed by Creative . We double checked the database, and sure enough, the paperwork went through on October 30th — which almost certainly means that this was more than just some day-late attempt to fend off the next-generation of KIRF Wii consoles . There’s obviously no way to tell what the Big N has in mind here, nor if this will cause any kind of friction between it and Creative, but we’ll certainly be keeping an ear to the ground for more. Who knows — maybe the Zii is that HD Wii we’ve all been clamoring for since November of 2006

Creative’s Zii Trinity handset, which we profiled with a quick video just a few days ago , was spotted again this weekend playing Wall-E in glorious HD, using nothing but its diminutive, generic little frame. Short, but impressive. The playback is smooth, the sound apt. Iron out some of the interface quirks we spotted last week in that video and we’ll have a nice little platform for OEMs to work with once Creative options this thing out into the ether. [ Mobile990 via Engadget ]

It’s over far too quickly, but in the video after the break, what you get to see is how well the Zii Trinity mobile prototype handles outputting HD video — in this case, a very smooth playback of a snippet from Wall-E . Can we express more excitement for Creative’s little platform that could? Probably, but we’re already reaching pretty high. Now if only we could get some hands-on time of our own…

Some new video footage of Creative’s Zii Trinity reference hardware, giving us a closer look at the hardware-for-hire . It looks pretty diminutive, but also pretty unfinished. The phone looks tiny, especially compared to the iPhone-sized Creative Zii Egg, but it seems the kinks haven’t quite been worked out—some gestures, like swiping between homepages, result in opening the app tray by mistake. But the hardware looks nice, if a little generic (although it’s probably designed to be generic, since it’ll be optioned by different OEMs). I like the idea of the swappable microUSB/mini-HDMI port on the bottom, but time will tell if that feature stays in the final product

It’s an all too brief look, but it’s infinitely more than we’ve seen so far. CNET Asia has managed some hands-on time the Zii Trinity concept smartphone . Quite a looker, and here we also get a glimpse of it next to the good ol’ Zii Egg . As noted by the narrator, the bottom proprietary slot can be swapped for microUSB or mini-HDMI, there’s a notably-sized 5 megapixel camera on the back, as well as one on the front for video conferencing. Enough talk, take a gander for yourself after the break. [Thanks, kumar] Continue reading Zii Trinity smartphone concept handled on video Zii Trinity smartphone concept handled on video originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:41:00 EST.

Ready to start lusting after a new smartphone? If Creative has its way , you’ll soon be enjoying Full HD video on a 3.5 / 4G device, with built-in WiFi, 5 megapixel autofocus camera, accelerated 3D graphics , and mini-HDMI and Composite video outputs. The newly announced 3.1-inch, multitouch-capable Zii Trinity has been designed by Creative subsidiary Ziilabs, and will be licensed out to clients who’ll be able to customize a Zii-optimized Android install and Plaszma interface. As if we haven’t got enough smartphone ecosystems knocking about already, this also marks the introduction of ZiiLife, which aims to be both a content delivery and productivity suite. Powered by the ARM-based ZMS-05 or ZMS-08 , the new handset actually seems destined to perform plenty of KIRF and grey market duties, judging by Creative’s “strategic partnerships” with Chinese manufacturers, but that might be no bad thing as, according to Gartner , the grey market is booming right now. Zii Trinity mobile platform packs 1080p punch, looking for OEM love originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:14:00 EST

Remember the Creative/ZiiLabs StemCell system-on-a-chip from a while back? The one that spawned that Android PMP design ? Well, the Zii project is marching on, which means new hardware, including the dual OS Trinity phone, 360º HD webcam and more. Creative and ZiiLabs are showing off a pile of Zii reference hardware to potential hardware licensors in China today, in hopes that someone will manufacture it. The Zii phone reference design, pictured for the first time above, is the only one we can see right now, and promises full 1080p video playback over HDMI, OpenGL 2.0 accelerated gaming, and support for both Android OS and ZiiLabs’ Plaszma software

Creative sure seems to be taking the incremental approach to upgrades with its Vado HD pocket camcorders, but if you’ve found the previous two models just a tad lacking, you might want to consider the company’s newly announced 3rd gen model. From the looks of it, most of the core specs remain the same, but Creative is promising some improved low light video recording and manual exposure adjustment, along with a new motion detection mode, support for an external stereo mic, a headphone output, and even the ability to take some still photos. You’ll also now get out of the box Mac and PC compatibility, and five glossier than ever colors — though Creative has curiously dropped the 8GB model in favor of a single 4GB option, which will set you back $179.99. [Thanks, Kingone] Creative rolls out third gen Vado HD pocket camcorder originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds .