Sony Rolly does NiN
I love the Sony Rolly. It’s such a cute little, “Aibo meets mp3 player” kind of robot toy. When I first heard about it and saw videos demoing its functionality, it reminded me of the old Sony — the Sony that made really awesome gadgety stuff, whether or not it made sense as a mainstream product. They made tons of different electronic devices in strange form factors, and dominated the consumer electronics world. Unfortunately, that Sony has been replaced with “is it good for the shareholders?” Sony — a Sony that still makes some really lovely hardware, but has enough financial issues that they can no longer afford to make devices like the Clié (the absolute best line of Palm OS PDAs, closely followed by the Tapwave Zodiac) or the cute line of Aibos. When I saw the Rolly, I saw the old Sony taking a peek out from behind the stodgy, “bottom line is king”, new Sony. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of innovative (and expensive) products coming out of Sony, like that super-thin, OLED TV that they are selling now, their interesting take on digital SLRs, the Sony Reader, and their fun line of phones, several of which I’m enamored with. I just miss all the fun, “What am I going to do with this?” products they used to have.
Anyway, this rambling is just an introduction to a video I put together recently. I was surprised to see the Sony Rolly displayed at the Sony Style store in Woodfield, so I busted out my phone to take a video of it in action. Too bad I didn’t have the N95-3 with me; I could’ve Qik’ed it… Oh well! The original song it was bopping to was “Love Song” by Sara Bareille (IIRC), but I forgot that I turned off the audio recording. The audio probably wouldn’t have turned out so well anyway, since there was some other music blaring in another part of the store. Luckily I was able to find a good replacement song that still fits with the Rolly’s dance moves. Strangely it’s quite a different song from the original tune that played — “Discipline” by Nine Inch Nails. 
Thanks, Trent Reznor, for Creative Commons licensed songs! I converted the video from the original 3GP format and added the song as the backing track in iMovie, quite a painless process. I was all smiles while I was watching the Rolly dance in the Sony Style, and I was still all smiles when I watched it dance to NiN. Pretty funny contradiction between a cutesy, mp3-playing robot toy and an angsty (but dancey) NiN song. See it for yourself!
Scratching that neophiliac itch again…
Yay! I’m going to see the Sony Reader in person tonight after work. I read that even though the Sony Style web store said that shipment of the Readers were delayed until mid-November, there were some brick & mortar Sony Styles that are selling them right now. Unfortunately, when I called the SS near me, the salesperson I talked to said they just sold their last one today. 
But, I can still see the demo unit in person, which I’m eager to do.
I remembered that Borders is partnering with Sony to see the Readers and gift cards to the Sony Connect e-book store, so I also called my local Borders to see if they had any. Surprisingly, the guy I talked to knew about them, and gave me some decent info. Supposedly they were going to get some in stock today, but because of the bad weather last night, many of their orders were delayed. So the guy said he expects them to be in stock in the next couple days, and that I could check back on Friday. Sweet! Incidentally, I called another local Borders and the guy I talked to had no clue about the Reader. Why don’t employees of chain stores get the same information? So annoying to get conflicting info when calling multiple stores. 
In this day & age of near-instantaneous communication, this shouldn’t be a problem.
