Popular Science is one of my favorite magazines, and I've been subscribing to it since 1968. They've given out their Best of What's New awards to the best innovative technologies of 2005. Here are their awards for gadgets.

Popular Science picked the Sony Play Station Portable as the grand prize winner, but I had to override them. First of all Sony is on a RAPID downhill decline and I don't think I will ever buy another Sony product again. Have no idea what happened, but they are one of the most arrogant and non-innovative companies I know of. The Korean companies, like Samsung and now Cowon, are kicking their butt now in innovation. About the only saving grace for Sony is their upcoming Play Station 3 with the new Cell processor coming out in early 2006.

I picked the Cowon as it is clearly the best new portable media player out there, FAR better than the new video iPod. It actually can serve as a digital video recorder and digitally record your TV shows. It can play back just about any format of video compression  (DivX, XviD, WMV, Mpeg4) and can also play MP3 files. It can also record important lectures with its built-in high-fidelity microphone. And its sound quality is widely recognized as the best out there, far better than the iPod.

It can serve as a USB host and transfer pictures from your digital camera without the use of a computer. You can store quite a bit of photos on its 30-gig hard drive. It has an 18-hour battery for audio and 10 hours for video, more than enough for two movies of your choice.

I bought a number of these puppies for Christmas presents. Interestingly, their MP3 player (the X5) is, in my opinion, the best MP3 player out there. I also bought quite a few of them for Christmas presents.

Popular Science's nominees included:

Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) Smaller than a paperback, it packs a 333-megahertz processor

Charge 2 Go
Juice your cell with a single AA battery

Dish Network PocketDish
A portable video recorder that syncs with its big brother

Nokia N91
Store 3,000 songs on your phone

Sony Walkman Bean NW-E300 Series
Charge in minutes, listen for hours

Nokia N90
Finally, print-worthy snaps from a phone

Sandisk Ultra II SD Plus
Transfer files sans cables

Delphi XM MyFi
Satellite radio in your pocket