The Zing prototype was shown at the D4 conference, and is rolling out a service that enables other companies to build their own complete music infrastructures – content to player – without the need for a PC.

Working with Zing’s partners, Sirius and Yahoo, the device will use WiFi to download music and to upload data about what you are listening to. If you have one of these players, you can do fancy things, like see what your friends are listening to, then play samples of those tracks, or buy songs and albums directly from the player. If you try buy items when you’re not in range of a Wi-Fi access point, the product will queue up your requests and batch-process them when you do eventually connect.

The player will stream Sirius radio content (via the Wi-Fi connection) and will enable you to flag and buy the songs as you’re listening to the radio stream. Sounds too good to be true!

The Zing player comes with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections built in, along with a speaker and a microphone. Combined with the Wi-Fi radio, means the Zing player has all the hardware a voice-communication platform needs. So as a bonus, the software enables you to talk with your friends, walkie-talkie style, over the Wi-Fi network!

cnet.com