I’ve long been interested in Mono, the open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET. It seems to be maturing; the latest sign is the appearance of an MP3 player using Linux and Mono. Engadget has an extensive review. Miguel de Icaza says on his blog:

The Sansa Connect is running Linux as its operating system, and the whole application stack is built on Mono, running on an ARM processor.

I had not previously considered Mono for embedded systems; yet here it is, and why not?

The device is interesting too. As Engadget says:

… you can get literally any music in Yahoo’s catalog whenever you have a data connection handy

This has to be the future of portable music. It’s nonsense loading up a device with thousands of songs when you can have near-instant access to whatever you like. That said, wi-fi hotspots are not yet sufficiently widespread or cheap for this to work for me; but this model is the one that makes sense, long-term.

I wonder if iPhone/iTunes will end up doing something like this?