IBM sings along with Xing

IBM and Xing Incorporated, a subsidiary of Brother Industries, have together developed wireless karaoke portable controllers which will eliminate the need for paper song catalogues.

Each Kyoku-NAVI controller replaces the conventional thick karaoke song catalogue, and contains tens of thousands of songs listed by singer, song and category. In the past, karaoke customers would have to select the number of the song and type it in to a remote controller and call up a song. According to a press release, the controllers ease the burden of searching and entering songs with a touch screen panel and various search options.

Among the array of search functions offered are "history search" which displays a list of songs selected from the same controller in the past, "at-that-time search" which displays songs in a chronological order from a keyword, such as buzz word and news, "album-single search" which allows users to search by viewing CD jacket images, and "this-song-is-amazing search" which allows a partial video preview.