Category: Platforms

CeBIT: First Look at ExpressCard

PCMCIA, the expansion card format that was hard enough to spell, never mind configure, has a successor and it’s being shown at CeBIT.

PCMCIA was good for a while, but is showing its age – it’s pre USB, pre-Firewire and harks back to the days before even Windows 95. A replacement is on the way: the ExpressCard. It’s smaller, has a faster bus, uses less power and supports plug-and-play auto-configuration. Their bus is based on PCI Express and USB2.0 architecture – hence the hot-swap feature.

The new modules are half the size of their predecessors – they come in 34mm and 54mm formats and are a mere 5mm thick.

Look out for ExpressCards appearing towards the end of 2004 – compliant cards will feature an orange rabbit (obviously representing mobility and speed).The Express Card standard

Saturday CeBIT: Manufacturers Recognise Importance of Consumers’ Digital Lifestyles

Many big exhibitors are pushing devices, components and software designed to enhance consumer’s digital lifestyles, in answer to the rapidly growing demand for smart devices capable of sharing content. Traditionally a business conference, this year has seen a pronounced shift at CeBIT towards the needs of the consumer.

Many consumer mobile phones contain applications and features purely seen as business tools a few years ago, such as scheduling software, email and connectivity with PCs and other devices.

Many exhibitors, such as Sony and Microsoft are displaying devices intended to introduce home users to a world where they can download and share content easily anywhere in the house. Microsoft is promoting this vision through its Windows XP Media Centre PC and has now developed the Windows Media Centre Extender which will allow users to access their Media Centre PC from anywhere in the house. We reported on Microsoft’s “iPod killer”, the Portable Media Centre yesterday, and this new device will be fully compatible with home Media Centre PCs.

Sony’s answer to all this, the hotly-awaited PSX, is on display at CeBIT. The games playing aspect of the PSX is almost secondary to its other functions: PVR, music, electronic programme guide, photograph and home video album … and all compatible with other Sony devices such as cameras, PDAs and even the PSP when it appears. The feature list for the European PSX has yet to be finalised, so we’re afraid that the model on display at CeBIT today is the Japanese box. A shame really, because those people who would be most interested in the PSX will already either seen the Japanese edition, or even had one imported by now.

CeBIT 2004 has shown how important digital lifestyles are to both manufacturers and consumers – there is a huge range of devices available with more coming soon. Sadly, for true interoperability, manufacturers would like to lock their customers into one brand – which is likely to lead to frustration. The Sony music online shop will only work with Sony software on Sony devices, Microsoft won’t let you play Windows Media files on a Linux PVR.

We hope that consumers will campaign for open standards and better interoperability before companies lock down the entire chain, from software to hardware to media.

CeBIT News Site

Microsoft’s’ iPod Killer – Bigger, More Expensive

It had to happen – although Microsoft have had mixed fortunes in the hardware market, it was inevitable that they would release a competitor to the iPod and other personal media players out there.

This new gadget will have functionality not seen in iPods so far: video playback and picture display, and it will run MS’s Portable Media Centre (PMC) OS. “We think this is going to be one of the hot devices for Christmas 2004,” said James Bernard, product manager for PMC. The hardware itself is basically a Creative player with a 20 or 40 gb hard drive. Sizewise, it’s about three times the thickness of an iPod and twice as long.

The device will play MP3s, so won’t be completely tied to Microsoft’s own Windows Media Format. As previously reported, MS have content deals in place with Napster and EMI.

Pricing in the in relevant markets varies, but is estimated to be US$750, €550 (Denmark, Sweden) and UK£399.

The impeding release can only increase speculation that Apple will retort with a video iPod at some point next year.

Slashdot — “LOTS OF SHOUTING”

Reuters

CeBIT: The Future is in Integration, Not Technology

“There is not going to be one Next Big Thing – it’s going to be many things working together, combined to work seamlessly” said Motorola’s president and COO, Michael Zafirovski in his speech at CeBIT yesterday. This seems to be a common theme emerging from CeBIT, and is reflected in the nature of the mobile devices coming into the market.

It’s almost impossible to buy a mobile phone that is just a phone. Even the most basic phone available has a some sort of PDA functionality, games and a simple WAP browser. Many phones appearing now are in fact more sophisticated than the people you see chatting into them – and the phones at least will continue to get more sophisticated and useful.

Where the challenge for network providers and mobile phone manufacturers lies now is bringing several channels of communication together: many consumers have a fixed line at home (often more than one), a mobile for each person, a mobile in the car, a phone in the office, email on some devices not others … it goes on. Although solutions have been banded around for years (Wildfire, anyone?) the scale of the problem is now far greater than was anticipated before the rapid growth of mobile communications and internet usage began ten years ago.

The current situation does not allow for simplicity and will begin to turn users away unless investment into the seamless integration of devices and services begins to rival the effort put into getting the latest megapixel camera into the smallest form factor.

Opening remarks presented by Simon Perry at the Digital-Lifestyles theme day at IBC September 2003 (PDF).

CeBIT: Sendo Smart Phone Records 30 Minutes of Video

Weighing 129g and with a 176 x 220 pixel TFT display, the new Sendo X is yet another entry into the highly competitive smartphone market.

The phone features all the usual applications and gadgets that have come to define smartphones: digital camera, GPRS, PDA functionality – however, there are a couple of features that set it apart.

Video playback is enhanced though Sendo’s GraphiX engine – a coprocessor that ensures smoother playback of Real and MPEG4 video streams. With 32mb of RAM free to users, the phone can store 30 mins of video, or 1000 photographs from the 4 x zoom camera. Memory expansion is through SD cards.

Another new feature is it’s Voice Signal Technologies (VST) voice-activation function: Sendo claim that their VST advanced speech recognition allows users to access the phone’s functions and address book without having to train the phone to recognize their voice.

The phone runs Symbian’s OS and Nokia Series 60 applications, and is J2ME compatible.

Sendo on the X and its GraphiX engine

CeBIT: Nokia’s Mega Pixel Camera Phone and Image Album

The new Nokia phone announced today at CeBIT takes the camera part of “camera phone” very seriously. The 7610 contains a 4x zoom, 1152 x 864 resolution camera – and its Movie Director application lets users edit video and add music on the move.

The phone comes with Nokia’s new Lifeblog software allowing owners to record their every thought and detail about their life and then upload it to the internet. I know someone here who’ll be very excited about that.

Also unveiled today was the Image Album – a 20gb hard drive that will download images and video from compatible Nokia phones. To show them on a TV screen or other display, Nokia will be launching the Image Viewer SU-5, which handily has a remote control. Juha Putkiranta, president of Nokia’s Imaging Business Unit, said: “Mobile imaging is on an explosive growth path.” It’s obvious from these new devices that Nokia are taking imaging very seriously indeed and don’t just regard it as a gimic.
PC World has a bit more from Putkiranta

Slashdot gets excited

BBC on Lifeblog

CeBIT: PSX Will Make its European Debut at CEBIT 2004

The specifications are expected to have changed from the version launched in Japan a few months ago, but Sony are expected to unveil the European version of its exciting PSX media centre.

The Japanese PSX shipped with a few of the key features missing (namely MP3 playback and the ability to play some image formats), but they were later addressed in a firmware upgrade and it is hoped that the European PSX will hit the market with all of the proposed features enabled. We’ll have to wait and see if the box that Sony show at CeBIT is the proper European version, of if they will simply demo a Japanese unit – the later would be deeply disappointing.

The Register

BenQ Launch World’s First 12” High Definition Widescreen Laptop

BenQ are pitching their new Joybook 6000 as part of their “digital hub” – and is the World’s first high definition 12.1” laptop.

The high definition screen runs at a 1280 x 600 resolution (WXGA) – we haven’t seen it yet, but it is by all accounts beautiful. We’ve been looking around and it seems to retail at about US$2640.

The Centrino notebook has the usual WiFi/Bluetooth/IrDA capabilities, so will be able to connect users to data services easily and under a variety of conditions.

Joybook Home – Middle East

The Line between TVs and Displays Blurs Even Further

Is it a display with a TV tuner or is it a TV that you can use as a flat panel monitor? The viewing angle is possibly a bit narrow for living room use, but Iiyama’s new E430T-S display could easily be used as a television when you’re not using it to read DigitalLifestyles. Suspiciously similar to their existing E430T-S but with a PAL/SECAM/NTSC tuner in it, Iiyama are making the leap to multifunction displays as the market grows: flat panels have become enormously popular over the past 18 months, make ideal mid-size television displays, use less power and save space. Home users no longer see the point in having two near-identical pieces of equipment that do the same thing, and the benefits of integrating an tuner into an existing production model are enormous compared to the tiny cost.

The new display even has built-in speakers, but at 1.5w, you’ll definitely need to use something a bit more powerful for watching TV in living room.

Iiyama

Motorola’s Linux Music Phone

Motorola haven’t released a Linux-based phone outside the Far East before – but their new E680 looks like it will be distributed in the West.

The phone is intended to be a wireless entertainment portal, with plenty of features to support that claim: GPRS downloads of up to 115kbps; MP3, RealPlayer and MPEG4 playback; stereo speakers; FM radio. And, yes, it has a camera – VGA with an 8x digital zoom and MPEG4 video capture.

The phone incorporates a WAP browser and will run J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) applications. Further expansion is available through an SD slot, up to 1gb.

LinuxDevices on the new phone

Slashdot