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Paul Moller’s flying car, the M400, has appeared on our pages in the past, and now Neiman Marcus is offering up the original Skycar prototype for sale in its just-published Christmas Book catalog. Its priced at 3.5 million dollars and is billed as a collector’s item, a piece of “transportation history”. If you are willing to wait until 2008, you can probably get a production model for considerably less, at about one-half million dollars. Skycar Prototype - page 85 of the new Neiman Marcus catalog Moller International website

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The Mainichi Daily News reports that Sony may drop its Qualia product line in order to save money. These super-expensive but slow-selling gadgets are eroding the company’s bottom line. Sony’s profits for this year are expected to be down by almost 90% as compared with the previous forecast. We’ve made note of, and expressed our admiration for, Qualia products on several occasions in the past. However, with some products, such as the Qualia 016 camera, seemingly selling at a rate of only 1 per day worldwide, profitability must be elusive. Struggling Sony announcing turnaround strategy under new management GadgetManiac comment: The Sony Qualia product line is somewhat evocative of Browning’s words: “A man�s reach should exceed his grasp”. Despite Sony’s lofty aims, in our estimation only Qualias005, 010 and 017 actually deliver qualia.

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Apple has done away with the iPod mini, and replaced it with a new model, dubbed the nano. The new device has a maximum capacity of 4GB or 1000 songs. The hard disk in the mini was replaced with an equivalent amount of flash memory which in turn has brought down the unit’s weight and size. The nano weighs in at 1.5 ounces, and is sized at 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inches. [..thats 42gr and 90x40x6.9mm for you metroids..] It also has a nice 1.5 inch 176 x 132 pixel color screen. On the down side, the nano has only 14 hours of battery life, whereas the (now defunct) iPod mini held out for up to 18 hours. Charge times, however, have improved nicely, and are down to only 3 hours for a full charge. Although its a nice, compact, music player, we’re going to wait for the Apple iPod yocto, which should be smaller than a pin-point. Apple iPod nano homepage

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The much-anticipated, but oft-delayed, Apple iTunes Moto ROKR phone is finally here. The device is officially labelled the Motorola ROKR E1, and has a capacity of 100 songs of AAC compressed audio at 128 Kbps. Its a tri-band cell phone with a VGA camera and plays music for 6 hours over the stereo speakers, or for 15 hours on the headset. GadgetManic observation: the ROKR is somewhat of a yawner that would have been improved by including the iconic Apple Click Wheel . iTunes for your Mobile Phone - Apple announcement

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The Samsung Pro 815 is a new 8 megapixel digital camera with an uncommon 15x optical zoom, which allows the camera’s focal length to vary from 28 to 420mm. The company claims that the camera is the first with such a large optical zoom, a 3.5-inch LCD display and a 1900 mAh battery. No word on whether or not the camera has image stabilization, but that might be useful when shooting at 15x. Samsung Techwin releases camera with world’s longest optical zoom

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CNet has updated its list of got-to-get gadgets. The Sony PSP continues to dominate the list at top spot, and rightly so. The complete set reads as follows:

1. Sony PlayStation Portable
2. Nokia N90
3. Samsung HL-P5085W – 50 inch projection TV
4. Sling Media Slingbox
5. Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513 – $3K notebook
6. Sorell SF3000 MP3 Player
7. Archos Pocket Media Assistant PMA430
8. Motorola Razr V3
9. PalmOne Treo 650
10. Logitech Harmony 880 – remote control

Nice group of gadgets. We’re not entirely comfortable with numeros 6 and 10, though. Top 10 must-have gadgets - from CNet updated August 30, 2005

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