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Together with the W995, Sony Ericsson announced that its latest Walkman phone will be accompanied by a new media manager software called “Media Go™”. In cooperation with se-community.com, we have exclusively tested a pre-release version of the software. In order to give you the possibility to get a live impression of the tool, we will provide you with interactive screenshots where you can navigate through the different screens. You will find the link to this unique way of exploring Media Go™ at the end of this article.

The introduction of Media Go™ shows the intention of Sony (Ericsson) to participate in the growing market of online music platforms. Apple’s combination of iTunes and iPhone made a point – if you are familiar with Apple’s solution, Media Go™ will be an easy transition for you. Here is an overview on Sony’s new software functionality:

• Media Management of Video, Audio, Photo and Podcast media on a Windows PC
• Hassle-free synchronisation of above media files between PC and several mobile devices
• Automatic conversion and optimization of media files to the destination device
• Easy CD ripping
• Integration of “PlayNow™” online music/game/ringtone store
• Creation of SensMe™ playlists on the computer

Following formats can be processed by Media Go™:

• Audio: AAC, FLAC, MP3, Wave, WMA
• Video: AVI (DivX, XviD, MJPEG with necessary codecs installed), MPEG-4 AAC & AVC, QuickTime Movie, WMV
• Photo: GIF, JPEG, PNG, Targa, TIFF, Windows Bitmap

All other formats will still be transferred to the mobile device, but without optimization (such as re-sizing, downsampling etc.)

When it comes to podcasts, the new tool offers the possibility to subscribe to a number of pre-defined podcast channels, or you can add your own list of podcasts. The synchronisation of all media files between your PC and your mobile phone(s) works just as in iTunes: for each device you can define which playlists, podcasts, photo albums and videos you want to sync. In addition, Media Go™ offers the possibility to automatically sync all the new files that are added to the PC’s library. Another nice feature: every media file in the library can be transfered from or to a mobile device via a right-click. Last but not least, if you are missing an album cover image, Media Go™ can get it for you from Gracenote.

By clicking on above picture, you are able to access some interactive screenshots of Sony’s MediaGo™. You can follow the  navigational entries on the left hand side (marked by red arrows in above image) in order to see how the different screens look like. There are also some other links to e.g. preference screens inside of the application’s main window. We hope this will provide you with a better insight to the upcoming Media Go™ software!