It's clear what we all need is yet another proprietary wireless standard for streaming media around our house, so thank God Sony swooped in to launch S-AIR, their new system for configuration-free multi-room audio. Just provide power to your redundantly-named S-AIR Air Station receiver speaker and new S-AIR enabled Sony audio gear can stream to it up to 164 feet away. Thankfully, Sony will also start selling S-AIR EZW-T100 transmitters, WHAT-SA10 wireless speaker kits ($150 -- wait, "what"?), and independent S-AIR AIR-SA10 Air Stations ($120) -- all due in March.

The goods from Philips just keep on comin', but it's not like we're kvetching or anything. On deck is the WAC3500D, the firm's latest Streamium home stereo, which weds an 80GB internal hard drive, iPod connectivity, and a USB port to create a fairly well appointed audio center. Additionally, the device touts the ability to "receive, play, and store MP3 or WMA tracks saved on a PC," rip CDs to the HDD in a variety of bitrates, and view ID3 tags on the backlit LCD. All music kept on the system can be wirelessly streamed "to up to five WiFi stations located anywhere in the house," and the built-in Class D digital amplifier drives the dual two-ways speakers. Currently, the WAC3500D is available in Europe for around £260 ($522).

There's nothing we love more around here than a bit of surprising news, and next to HP's recent purchase of VoodooPC, Logitech's just-announced acquisition of Slim Devices caught us off guard like nothing has in awhile. According to Slim CEO Sean Adams, his company -- which makes such streaming audio products as the Squeezebox and Transporter -- will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Logitech -- maker of nearly every kind peripheral under the sun -- with the entire Slim team having already accepted employment offers from their new overlord. The newly-swallowed Slim will remain in its Mountain View offices and retain its executive structure for the "foreseeable future," while gaining the marketing power, retail partnerships, and economy of scale benefits enjoyed by larger corporations. As you're probably aware, Logitech has already dipped its toe into the streaming audio pool with such products as the Wireless DJ Music System, so snatching up Slim will give it a better foothold in this market along with the invaluable expertise offered by Slim's employees. For the consumer, this partnership will probably result in lower prices as well as attractive bundles featuring Slim gear and Logitech speakers / remotes, although you can never really predict how an acquisition will affect a company's innovation and product quality. Still, quite the interesting bit of news, and we're excited to see what kind of swag the Slim team will produce now that they have more muscle and capital behind them.