Indeed, I got to meet Hugo at the MP3 Summit and play with the new Mark 2 gizmo. The temptation to grab one and run for the door may or may not have crossed my mind at the time, but I can at least vouch for it being real. For more entertainment, the MP3 guys apparently appropriated the dashboard from a former Ford Ka and brought it along for, umm, display purposes.

Also, a new competitor to EMPEG appeared at the show: PhatNoise. Personally, I'd prefer an EMPEG, but the PhatNoise box is somewhat interesting. The general idea is that it sits in your trunk and pretends to be a CD changer to your pre-existing head unit. Your playlists appear as multiple disks mounted in the "changer". Or something like that. The hard disk is mounted in a plastic cartridge that might remind you of a Nintendo cartridge and they have a cradle gizmo for your home computer.