If you had any urge whatsoever to try to your hand at drug trafficking over water while these "weird" economic times sort themselves out, uh, you may want to reevaluate your options. The ever-so-stealthy Stiletto has come to life after tracking down a remarkably quick drug-running boat near Florida; the bad guys were cruising at 42 knots, but that comic book-esque thing you're undoubtedly peering at above can reach speeds of up to 60 knots. The double-M-shaped hull enables it to navigate in extraordinarily shallow waters without trouble, and a plethora of sensors and radars give it all the power it needs to track down goons. Oddly enough, it's having a somewhat difficult time finding a government agency to truly call home, but if it continues to keep the coke out of our seas, we'd say it'll win over some hearts soon enough.

[Thanks, Laz]

While most seem to have learned from past date-related issues, at least some folks at Sirius appear to have overlooked the fact that this year is a leap year, and the company's Stiletto 100 unit is now having trouble keeping up as a result. As numerous users have reported in the Sirius Backstage forums, the Stiletto has been dragging a day behind ever since the New Year kicked in, which, in addition to being an annoyance, has posed some serious problems for anyone doing scheduled recordings. Now, after a bit of silence on the matter, Sirius is reportedly telling customers that there is in fact a problem, and that it'll fix itself on March 1st. Unfortunately, Sirius's only "solution" in the meantime is to tell users to set up recordings for each day of the week.

[Thanks, Bill]

Alright, so it's really not all that much different than its predecessor in terms of functionality, but you gotta love the slightly sleeker design and bulked up WiFi of the new Sirius Stiletto 2 -- and the ability to add more tunes via microSD doesn't hurt, either. Not a lot to say about this one that we haven't covered with the original -- i.e. if you weren't happy with issues like reception or content restriction, you probably won't be into the sequel either -- so instead of rehashing the specs for the zillionth time, we'll let you get right to the gallery...

Now that the fiasco that surrounded the first Stiletto has died down, it's about time we focused on version two. During this week's earnings call, Sirius' President of Operations and Sales, Jim Meyer, reportedly stated that the company was "preparing for the launch of some new aftermarket products, including a new wearable product, Stiletto 2, and a new Sportser SP5." Furthermore, he added that "more details" would be doled out "next month," and suggested that the Stiletto 2 in particular may hit shelves sometime "this fall." Aside from that, no further details regarding size, capacity, or feature changes have been divulged, but according to Jim, the wait for more dirt shouldn't be too awfully long.

We know that the last thing you wanted to see on a peaceful Tuesday afternoon was another Stiletto post, but we thought we'd just let you know that Sirius has finally gone official on the "availability" of the Stiletto 100 this month. We're not even sure what they mean by that, since there's still no mention of the player on their main site or online store, but they printed it up in a nice fancy press release, so at least it means they're done with any of those rumored "delays" or whatnot. Sirius also has the prices on the vehicle kit ($70), home kit ($70) and executive system ($150) that we spotted yesterday, so that's pretty, um, exciting.

Update: Reader Scotty points out that Sirius' online store is now showing a ship date of October 4.

Sirius fans, we bring you good tidings -- after some hemming and hawing, the Stiletto has been approved by the Feds! It was only yesterday that we told you that our buds at the FCC seemed to be raining on the Stiletto parade, which sadly, did not lead to a rain of Stilettos on our parade, which would have been really freakin' sweet. So that means the Stiletto pre-orders are back up from your favorite online retailers like Crutchfield and TSS-Radio, who both still show the pre-order price of $350. Unfortunately, we remain without a word on what the exact release date will be, but if our earlier post about a September date still holds, it should be sometime within the next 10 days.

[Via Orbitcast]

Let's recap: Sirius gets us all in a tizzy by announcing its first "personal live satellite radio product," then opens up the floodgates to pre-orders, and suddenly pulls the rug out from under the whole deal by demanding that retailers stop taking orders of the Stiletto 100 under further notice. The cause behind such a curious sequence of events might not be manufacturing hangups, supplier shortages, or any of the most common issues related with postponed launches -- rather, the company may simply be waiting for an FCC ID number. Considering the agency hasn't exactly been an ally in Sirius' production process (nor XM's, to be fair), we aren't terribly surprised at the supposed culprit. A tiny, albeit powerful snippet of fine print within FCC guidelines prohibits the marketing of products that aren't in good standing with the commission, which gives strong suspicion that Sirius is just holding its horses until the Stiletto 100 is granted its oh-so-honorable identification tag -- whenever that may be.

[Via Orbitcast]

It looks like those folks jonesing to get their portable Sirius on are going to have to wait just a little bit longer, as the satellite radio giant has apparently asked all of its retail partners to suspend pre-orders on the Stiletto 100 until further notice. The TSS Radio e-tail site where the information first appeared claims that they "still expect the Stiletto near the end of September / early October," although another authorized retailer, Crutchfield, has taken down its pre-order page altogether. So far no one seems to know exactly why Sirius made this move at such a late date, but aside from supply problems (which are unlikely), the major contender for the delay would seem to be our old friends over at the RIAA. What's strange about this scenario is that unlike rival XM -- which is still battling the record labels over licensing fees for their portable players / recorders -- Sirius seems to have made nice with the recording industry following the little brouhaha over its dockable S50 player. Bottom line is that we don't like a mystery, so we're gonna poke around a little more and see if we can get to the bottom of this unexpected development -- meanwhile, it's SiriuCE or bust for live, pocketable (albeit crappy) Sirius content until further notice.

Believe it or not, there are times when you can't believe everything you read on the internets. We know, we're shocked too. One of the latest rumors catching wildfire is that Sirius' new portable radio, the Stiletto 100, will come with Bluetooth. We've done some digging and have found out that it appears that it won't -- or at least Sirius hasn't told anyone that it will. The unconfirmed reporting originated from a piece by Wired News reporter Eliot Van Buskirk, who just told us that his news organization would be soon running a correction. That drops the Stiletto's sex appeal by about a half a notch, no?

[Via Orbitcast]

Sirius's Stiletto, the do-it-all portable satellite radio, is available for pre-order from Crutchfield as of yesterday afternoon (9/1). Although there's no information on when the player will ship, the new higher-resolution shots of the device should keep Sirius fans' appetites for pics sated for now. The model over at Crutchfield appears to be the WiFi-enabled version -- It has a $349.99 pricetag, the non-WiFi version is $100 less -- so if you'd rather take the hundred bucks over the ability to listen to internet radio stations, keep that finger off the pre-order button.

[Via Orbitcast; thanks, zatz]

See that? No, not the big honkin' speaker dock, but the Stiletto 100 just casually hangin' out in the wild. The dock we already know as the Soloist from Directed Electronics but this is a first live-shot 'round these parts of the WiFi-enabled Stiletto 100 from Sirius. Besides playing live Sirius broadcasts, the $349 device is expected to offer 100 hours of storage and the ability to download and store MP3 and WMA files. If that September launch holds up then we can expect the unboxing rituals to commence any day now.

[Via Orbitcast]

So Sirius just held a little party for its upcoming crop of devices, and besides the anticipated Stiletto 100 portable receiver we already knew about, the company also introduced the WiFi-less $249 Stiletto 10 (whose name should indicate its recording capacity) along with four new universal plug-and-play radios in the vein of the Sportster. Speaking of the Sportster, the first new model happens to be a stripped-down version of the Sportster4, with the $120 Sportster3 (pictured after the break) "sporting" all the same features as its big brother minus that handy 44-minute Replay functionality. Replay can still be found, however, in the new Starmate4 (pictured above, also $120) -- though not in the "lower-end," $100 Starmate3 -- both of which feature extra-large displays and are obviously new iterations of the original Starmate. Finally we have the brand new Stratus (anyone else getting overloaded with "S"es here?), which at only $60 is the cheapest of the bunch, and seems to cut corners in the areas of both design and accessories (no remote or vehicle dock, for instance). All the plug-and-play radios are compatible with the new generation of home and car docks and boomboxes, and the entire family of new products will be released gradually throughout the months of September and October.

Read- Starmates, Sportster, and Stratus
Read- Stilettos [Via Orbitcast]

Between leaky catalogues and the FCC it's a wonder anyone's products are kept under wraps for long, but that obviously wasn't the case for Sirius's unfortunately named Stiletto 100, which went out with the usual Crutchfield catalogue before being officially announced. Besides having a you-know-what like clickwheel, the Stiletto appears to be their first live portable sat radio player, finally catching up to the tech XM introduced at CES earlier this year with the Inno and the Helix. It should have PlaysForSure support with 100 hours of storage for Sirius programming, and another 50 for the stuff you've downloaded; the device should also have WiFi, and apparently 4 hours live reception (and up to 22 hours recorded), and will go for $399 when Sirius officially acknowledges its existence. Psst, guys, cat's out of the bag, just go ahead and announce it, ok?

[Via OrbitCast, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Better late than never, Sirius is finally on the verge of releasing its first "personal live satellite radio product" to consumers, who will see the device ship by the end of the summer and possibly as early as this month. We first spotted the rather chunky-looking player about a month ago in the hands of CEO Mel Karamazin, who said in a recent conference call that the so-called Stiletto (it's not clear if that's the official product moniker or simply an internal codename) has now been in beta testing for a few weeks and seems ready for prime-time (Mel referred to it, probably not without some bias, as "great"). As you're probably aware, rival XM has already brought a number of XM2GO products to market -- most recently, the Samsung Helix and Pioneer Inno -- while Sirius is still stuck in the dark ages with its dockable S50. Personally, we couldn't be happier about this impending release; we can't wait to give up the crappy sound quality we're getting with SiriuCE on our Windows Mobile phones, and we're sure our wireless carriers will be just as pleased when we stop sucking down so many gigs of data.