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e.Digital Corporation--All current positions have been filled
13114 Evening Creek Drive South
San Diego, CA 92128
Attn : Beth Bell. No Phone calls please.
E-mail : jobs@edig.com
Fax : (858) 748-6894
Current Openings
All current positions have been filled. New openings will be posted on this page, so please check back soon.
arrio technology going into eastech's iRad-S
iRad-S is a hi-fidelity sound system tailored to give the user a full audio experience. The unit provides the ability to play streaming audio, store over 1000 MP3 songs, play standard and MP3 CDs and has access to local AM/FM stations.
In addition, MP3, WMA and real streaming formats are incorporated into the device allowing for high-quality audio delivery.
i answered my own ?- no pc req'd
Recordable CD/Digital Audio Systems - Oak Technology announced a strategic relationship with PortalPlayer to provide platform solutions for PC-Free recording and playback of digital media content to consumer electronics manufacturers. The companies intend to jointly develop a reference design for a next- generation digital media player/recorder, as well as future digital music products and technologies. Initial collaboration will focus on development of a reference design for recordable optical storage products that support direct encoding of digital audio content in MP3 file formats, without the need for a personal computer. The reference design will incorporate Oak's recently introduced OTI-8001 consumer CD recordable controller and PortalPlayer's Tango digital media platform, which is based on the industry's first single chip embedded controller capable of real-time MP3 recording and playback [-more-]
murgirl posted on RB reminding us about the connection between eatech and arrio communications; the most intriguing thing IMO about arrio and the possible connection to edig is this:
Internet Audio with no PC required
Arrio's approach to the design of Internet radio and audio is a platform which is completely independent of your personal computer. The stations are accessed using a simple control knob and the unique, patent pending Arrio Tuning™ system. The display technology of the Arrio Internet radio is compatible with a standard vacuum fluorescent display or LCD display. The number of radio stations and Internet audio sites supported by the Arrio technology is unlimited. Currently, Arrio has several thousand stations under development in its data base.
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i think the no pc required concept one of the keys to portabilty for edig. isn't portalplayer a no pc required concept as well?
Broadcaster wishes on star
William Glanz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 5/7/01
Hugh Panero's plan to reinvent radio falls into place tomorrow when a 200-foot rocket escorts a 10,289-pound satellite into space from a launch pad in the Pacific Ocean.
The device will drift into its orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth, allowing Washington-based XM Satellite Radio Inc. to usher in a new era in radio.
The new high-tech radio service that Mr. Panero, XM's president and chief executive, will help introduce to North American listeners later this summer should interest consumers both for what it is and what it is not. It is free of static and largely free of commercials.
But it is not free, and the nascent satellite radio industry will have to prove the service is worth the monthly subscription fees charged for the service.
The challenges have not deflated Mr. Panero. The 44-year-old former cable industry executive considers himself unflappable, though he does carry a string of "worry beads" in his pants pocket to grab hold of when panic strikes.
"This is a big deal," he says.
Satellite radio is considered a significant technological development in the history of radio, which has not changed since stations began transmitting FM signals in 1961.
Broad range
Most radio signals travel no more than 40 miles.
Satellite radio signals travel more than 22,000 miles, nearly equivalent to the Earth's circumference.
XM's programming will originate in its 82 studios on New York Avenue Northeast. The signals will be beamed to the company's two orbiting satellites, which will transmit them to specially manufactured radios built to receive the broadcasts. A network of about 1,200 ground antennas that cost $240 million to build will boost the signals in large cities so they aren't weakened by tall buildings that can cause interference.
The Federal Communications Commission gave XM and its only other direct competitor, Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. in New York, licenses to market the service.
Now, on the verge of transmitting its signal, XM is in a frenzy.
"It's busy. People are everywhere. I love busy," Mr. Panero says.
The company received more than 2,000 resumes for jobs after posting help wanted ads in trade magazines. The company has about 350 employees now and plans to grow to 400 workers by the time it flips the switch on its satellites.
Construction workers are completing a performance studio at XM's $65 million headquarters, a former printing plant the company moved into last year. Work on a futuristic broadcast operations center, where employees monitor the satellites and ensure each studio is broadcasting its signal, is nearly complete.
Disc jockeys are digitizing 1.2 million song titles and loading them into the corporate computer system. The music files can be accessed from any of the 82 studios.
"We're looking at it as a birth. We think we are going to be a big part of history," XM Vice President Chancellor Patterson says.
So far, analysts are in agreement.
From rural to urban
The number of people who commute to work is staggering, Mr. Panero says.
About 130 million people spend an estimated 16 billion hours a year driving to work. Mr. Panero is one of them, and he is not averse to flipping on the radio during his 30-minute commute.
He is one of the U.S. adults who spend an average of three hours a day listening to the radio while in their cars or at home, according to statistics from the Radio Advertising Bureau.
The overwhelming number of consumers listening to radio leads analysts to predict consumers —especially the motorists whom satellite radio companies are targeting — will embrace the service. An estimated 19 million people will subscribe to satellite radio by 2005, according to Webnoize Inc., a technology research firm in Cambridge, Mass.
Consumers are expected to subscribe to it even though satellite radio won't be free. Both XM and Sirius Satellite Radio will charge consumers $9.95 a month. Listeners also must buy a radio equipped to receive the signal, and XM's radios will cost up to $299.
Analysts don't view the additional costs associated with satellite radio as a significant hurdle between the companies and their audience. That's because both XM and Sirius will beam signals for up to 100 stations — all available on the same radio. More than 22 million Americans live in rural areas where they can tune in fewer than five FM stations, says William Kidd, satellite analyst at New York investment bank C.E. Unterberg Towbin.
"There are some audiences we will reach that local radio can't reach," Mr. Panero says.
XM will deliver a stream of 100 static-free stations, which will have no more than six minutes of commercials each hour. Mr. Panero says XM already has $2 million in advertising contracts with State Farm Insurance, Kmart and more than 20 other national advertisers.
Up to 20 of XM's stations won't broadcast any commercials. Sirius won't have commercials on its music stations, and its news stations will have no more than five minutes of commercials each hour.
Traditional radio stations broadcast as much as 24 minutes of commercials each hour, Mr. Patterson says.
"It's like HBO. People said consumers wouldn't pay a monthly fee for television, but now it's everywhere," Webnoize analyst Ric Dube says.
Mr. Panero predicts XM will have an estimated 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year. XM will need about 4 million subscribers to break even, he says, a threshold the company expects to reach in 2004.
The new car stereo
Through an agreement with General Motors Corp., radios built to receive the XM signal will be installed as optional equipment in 2002 model year Cadillacs and could be available by October.
GM is so optimistic about consumer acceptance, they plan to make satellite radios available in more models next year and in all models by the end of 2004.
"We will make it widely available because satellite radio appeals to a wide audience. We still see AM and FM radio being a requirement in our cars because people like traditional radio, but satellite radio has a broad demographic appeal," says Rick Lee, executive director of satellite radio services for Onstar, a subsidiary of GM that makes satellite-based security and navigation devices.
GM's interest in seeing XM succeed stems from its $50 million investment in the satellite radio company. It owns 5.6 percent of XM, which has raised a total of $1.5 billion from investors.
With 208 million cars on U.S. roads, XM is confident it can carve out a niche from the massive auto market. It also has agreements with Honda — which owns 3 percent of XM — and semi-truck manufacturer Paccar.
Sirius has made agreements with Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler and other automakers.
But there's a hitch. A consumer who buys a car made by GM that has an XM radio can't receive the digital signal sent by Sirius, and Sirius customers can't tap into the XM signal.
So the companies agreed they need a unified standard and will work together to develop a radio that can receive signals from both companies. Future agreements with automakers that haven't subscribed to one service or the other — including Toyota, Volkswagen and Nissan — would mean radios capable of tuning in both signals would be installed in their cars. No automakers have signed up for the unified-standard radios, but Mr. Panero predicts those could be available by 2003.
XM radios also will be available this summer in retail stores, and the company hopes to tap into the market for car stereos. Consumers buy about 11 million car stereos a year from retail outlets. They also can be plugged into home stereos.
High expectations
Despite analysts' favorable long-term outlook of satellite radio, XM and Sirius have been subjected to increased scrutiny as they move closer to transmitting their signals.
Last month, Sirius Chief Executive David Margolese said the company's first products will be available in the fourth quarter and quantities will be limited. Fewer than 20,000 radios will be available at retailers, Mr. Margolese says, and he doesn't expect Sirius to have significant sales to automakers that would install the radios in cars and trucks as original equipment until 2003.
Problems with the technology in its radios have caused the setback at Sirius, though officials say they are overcoming their technical glitches.
That's significant because Sirius was expected to be the first among the two to transmit its signal. With its satellites already in orbit, Sirius planned to begin service in January.
Now it may not begin broadcasting its signal until September. Mr. Panero won't pinpoint the day XM will begin broadcasting its own signal, but the company now appears likely to beat Sirius.
While Mr. Panero isn't making much of the Sirius versus XM debate, shares of stock in both companies fell after Mr. Margolese made his statement about his company's subscriber estimates, proving the companies are linked in the minds of investors.
Shares of Sirius fell 36 percent on the Nasdaq stock exchange from $11.75 a share to $7.56 April 3, the day Mr. Margolese made his statement. XM's shares fell 29 percent on the Nasdaq, from $6.96 a share to $4.93 that same day.
XM shares have rebounded, closing Friday at $9.05 a share. Sirius shares also have recovered, closing Friday at $12.14 a share.
"When one stumbles, they both stumble," says Ryan Jones, media and entertainment analyst for Boston-based Internet researcher the Yankee Group.
If XM does get its final satellite in place and begins transmitting its signal before Sirius, it will have an edge over its competitor, Mr. Kidd says.
They also will provide a boost to the industry.
"I think it does help to be first to market. But it's also important for both of them that one of them get to market and start acquiring some subscriptions," Mr. Kidd says.
That is what Mr. Panero has aimed for since he came to XM nearly three years ago. With this week's satellite launch, he and his colleagues will be another step closer.
And he can give the "worry" beads a rest.
IBM GIVES E-BUSINESS A VOICE
New products and strategic relationships provide first end-to-end voice solution for market predicted to reach $30 billion by 2006
San Jose, CA -- NEW YORK, June 22, 2000 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled seven new voice technology products, including IBM WebSphere Voice Server with ViaVoice Technology, creating the industry's first end-to-end platform that will help customers voice-enable e-business for the mobile Internet.
As part of today's announcement, IBM also unveiled strategic relationships with industry leaders Siebel (NASDAQ:SEBL), General Magic (NASDAQ: GMGC) and Luminant (NASDAQ:LUMT). Together with these companies, IBM will provide the infrastructure for the voice technology market, estimated to reach $30 billion in the US by 2006*.
"With this announcement, IBM offers a compelling software platform for voice enabling e-business using leading edge call center and Web technology," said W. S. (Ozzie) Osborne, general manager, IBM Voice Systems. "IBM's complete portfolio, from our ViaVoice dictation and embedded products, to our industry leading WebSphere middleware products such as WebSphere Voice Server, CallPath, DirectTalk, and MessageCenter, enables customers to offer voice access to information anywhere at any time."
This comprehensive voice platform includes new, open standards-based, scalable products for the mobile device, Web application server, call center and Linux marketplaces. These products enable solutions that combine the ease-of-use of natural speech with the convenience of the mobile Internet at the low transaction costs associated with the Web.
New products now available
IBM WebSphere Voice Server with ViaVoice Technology allows delivery of voice applications based on industry standard VoiceXML, helping businesses leverage their investments in Web and call center technologies to deliver e-business solutions. VoiceXML complements today's Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) to allow the delivery of voice applications for the mobile Internet. A free downloadable IBM WebSphere Voice Server Software Developers Kit (SDK) is available today from the IBM alphaWorks Web site (http://www.alphaworks.com). IBM will deliver its WebSphere Voice Server on multiple environments, starting with the IBM DirectTalk call center platform as well as the first pure voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) implementation for the Web. The Web Sphere Voice Server will ship in the US on Windows NT in the fall, with prices starting at $15,000.
IBM ViaVoice Dictation for Linux is the only commercially available voice recognition technology solution for the Linux platform. ViaVoice for Linux lets users dictate and read documents using natural human speech. The software will be available through Shop IBM (http://commerce.www.ibm.com) and is retail priced at $59.95.
IBM Embedded ViaVoice, Multiplatform Edition is a Java-standards compliant toolkit that provides developers with resources to create speech-enabled mobile solutions on any mobile device. Software Development (SDK) and RunTime Kits, with fees based on individual implementation scenarios, are available from the IBM voice Web site (www.ibm.com/software/voice).
IBM CallPath Enterprise Foundation, V6.3 now integrates with Siebel Systems e-business applications in both the telephony and Web arenas to improve productivity and customer service by helping contact center operators integrate incoming telephone calls and Internet transactions. Price varies depending on the number of seats and users.
IBM DirectTalk Speech Recognition for AIX, with ViaVoice Technology and IBM DirectTalk Speech Recognition for Windows with ViaVoice Technology now provide voice as a more natural user interface to the keypad interaction for voice processing platforms. Callers can speak requests to interact with an application: making business transactions over the phone natural, productive and easy. Supports U.S. and U.K. English, French and German languages. Price varies by vocabulary size and individual implementation.
IBM DirectTalk Text-to-Speech for AIX with ViaVoice Technology converts text into speech in the call center environment, eliminating the need for pre-recorded prompts. Currently available in U.S. and U.K. English, French and German. Pricing varies with individual implementations.
IBM DirectTalk Beans for Java enables call center applications to be constructed in the same open standards-based Java environment used for building Web applications, which can dramatically reduce development time. DirectTalk Beans for Java ships at no additional cost with DirectTalk.
Commenting on the market, Brian Strachman, voice and data communications analyst, Cahners-Instat, said, "In the last few years, voice technology has significantly advanced and is becoming increasingly accessible via the Internet and handheld devices. Today, the growth in the Internet and mobile computing have heightened the need for new ways to access information over the Web. Voice and multi-modal access are the natural interfaces and IBM is uniquely positioned to offer voice-enabled solutions from the desktop, telephone and mobile device to the enterprise and Internet."
e-business Customers & Strategic Relationships
IBM today also announced key relationships with industry leaders to help deliver on this new voice technology infrastructure.
As an extension of its strategic agreement with Siebel Systems, IBM today released a Siebel-validated integration of IBM's CallPath Connection for Enterprise with Siebel's eBusiness Applications. The new solution, IBM CallPath Enterprise Foundation, V6.3, will dramatically improve productivity and customer service by integrating incoming telephone calls and Internet transactions with Siebel's comprehensive customer databases and allow contact center operators to effectively and efficiently route transactions and customer information to the right agent at the right time.
"Our goal is to offer companies one comprehensive view of their customers, regardless of the channels through which customers choose to conduct business," said Dr. Steve Garnett, vice president, Channels and Alliances, Siebel Systems. "The joint IBM CallPath Siebel solution will allow our customers to realize lower costs and technical risks, shorten implementation time, and improve overall call center productivity and customer service."
IBM and General Magic, a recognized leader in developing voice user interfaces, plan to integrate General Magic's VoiceXML-based magicTalk communications platform with IBM's DirectTalk and WebSphere Voice Server to deliver and host voice solutions.
"Our premier magicTalk voice interface and communications platform, combined with IBM's broad portfolio for voice-enabling e-business, creates a unique opportunity for us to provide premier voice applications," said Steve Markman, president, chief executive officer and chairman of General Magic. "We believe magicTalk applications, such as GM Onstar's Virtual Advisor, are revolutionizing telecommunications, customer relationship management and e-commerce industries, enabling people to interact with information and integrate their communications, all by speaking in a natural voice."
General Magic (Sunnyvale, CA - 408-774-4200), known for years as provider of the Portico personal assistant service, was seen at Internet Telecom Expo promoting a Voice ASP service on their pure VoiceXML 1.0 MagicTalk platform. They were offering Nuance speech rec and Fonix TTS, but were planning to add IBM's ViaVoice or SpeechWorks for ASR per customer preference, and Lernout & Hauspie (Burlington, MA - 781-203-5000) for TTS.
They told me their platform was a speech- and VoiceXML-enabled IBM WebSphere Voice Server, built atop the IBM DirectTalk Voice system. They also told me that they were the platform behind GM's OnStar Virtual Advisor, the sports/news/e-mail, stock-quoting portal activated through the OnStar button built into GM cars.
OLD: Creative introduces NOMAD Jukebox C-series
CARIBBEAN BUSINESS
April 19, 2001
By JOSE MARTINEZ
Creative Technology has introduced the C-series of NOMAD products to its already No. 1 selling line of digital audio players. The NOMAD Jukebox C and NOMAD II C will offer consumers a more attractive price option when looking for digital audio players.
The NOMAD Jukebox C, boasting 6 Gigabytes of storage capacity, will ship with an estimated Internet price of $269. The new NOMAD II C digital audio player, bundled with 32 MB of onboard memory and a Smart Media memory expansion slot, will be priced at $129. Both digital audio players are available.
To complement the NOMAD C-series, Creative has also unveiled a wide range of NOMAD accessories to enhance the audio experience. The NOMAD Jukebox C accessory kit ($49.99) includes a Jukebox pouch, carrying case, four AA NiMH rechargeable batteries, car-cassette adapter and stereo backphones. The NOMAD II C-series accessory kit ($29.99) includes a carrying pouch, wired remote control, car-cassette adapter, and stereo backphones.
NOMAD Jukebox C
The NOMAD Jukebox C is a lightweight (14 ounces) digital audio player, which is the size of a portable CD player, featuring a line-in for analog recording from external sources and dual line-out connections. Unlike other hardware-based solutions, the NOMAD Jukebox C also includes an onboard real-time digital signal processor (DSP) for superior audio playback, EAX technology, and customization. A headphone-out jack supports headphone spatialization and equalizer effects. This firmware upgradeable portable digital audio player supports multiple formats including MP3, WMA, and WAV file formats. The NOMAD Jukebox C also supports downloadable features, including new effects algorithms, new compression standards, security features, and auto play list generators, and other personal storage capabilities.
NOMAD II C
The NOMAD II C with 32 MB of onboard flash memory is designed for the active consumer, containing features that emphasize quick setup and versatility, such as Universal Serial Bus (USB) support and a voice recorder. The stylish-looking NOMAD II C also includes an icon-based backlit LCD with scrolling text to view artist's names and song titles, and an open Smart Media slot for memory expansion. With all these features, the NOMAD II C is small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and weighs a svelte 3 ounces.
Website: www.nomadworld.
Handhelds to be Harvard medical students' first assist
By Ronald Rosenberg, Globe Staff, 5/7/2001
he doctors-in-training at Harvard Medical School will still depend on stethoscopes to listen to beating hearts. But they'll use Palm Pilots to tap out diagnoses, jot down notes, keep up with course work and rate a professor's performance.
Palms are the most popular brand of hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs) used for scheduling, e-mail, scribbling and storing addresses and phone numbers.
Now, Palms and other PDAs will be employed by Harvard Medical School in what is one of the first programs of its kind in an educational setting. Starting in August, 338 of the school's 734 students will have their class schedules, hospital case log notes, lecture notes with anatomy illustrations, course evaluations, exam calendars and last-minute announcements routinely sent and stored on their PDAs.
The program aims to end scrambling for paper notes on lectures, and cut back on last-minute phone calls to fellow students about hospital rounds or missed appointments.
Under the program, Harvard medical students will be able to tap their PDAs (any brand with eight megabytes of memory using the Palm or Pocket PC operating system) and know where they have to be, what they are responsible for, and what to expect.
Students will be able to update their information at computers in the school's medical education center. Data entered into their PDAs will also be synched over the Web to their home PCs.
Harvard Medical School says it will be the nation's first educational institution to adopt PDAs as the information standard, in effect entering the post-PC era.
''Medical students, especially those in their third and fourth years, have to be very mobile, moving from hospital to hospital to see patients,'' said Dr. John Halamka, associate dean for educational technology at Harvard Medical School. ''And the PDA can keep them on track (and) help reduce some of their anxieties so they can focus on learning.''
Halamka is also the chief information officer of the CareGroup Health System which runs Harvard-affiliated medical centers. He will formally unveil Harvard Medical's new PDA-based initiative next week to about 70 medical school deans at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Halamka said about 70 percent of Harvard medical students entering this fall own PDAs.
Next week's presentation follows an extensive training session with Harvard Medical School faculty members, who will use the same wireless PDA network. They will learn how to combine their medical lecture notes written in Microsoft Word with their Powerpoint graphics and Excel spreadsheets into a form that PDA-armed students can access and use.
Halamka's ideas for using PDAs in education led him to John Keane, who recently formed ArcStream Solutions. Based in Watertown, ArcStream specializes in wireless consulting and systems services to help mobile professionals work more effectively. Keane was looking to develop PDA systems when Halamka suggested looking at the education arena.
In working with Halamka and Harvard Medical, ArcStream designed the PDA network and created the prototype using custom content Web creation software from AvantGo Inc. of Hayward, Calif. The mobile Internet software provides a 10-to-1 data compression so text and images can fit on PDAs.
Keane said the system was designed so that several Harvard-developed databases, including MyCourses and an Oracle legacy system, are linked to both an AvantGo server and a production Web server. The servers will send and receive data from students' personal computers and PDAs.
Halamka said students won't have access to patient medical records on their PDAs, although they will be able to take notes on PDAs about patients. Harvard also won't post notices about late tuition payments or student grades on PDAs.
The program will be field-tested starting in July. Halamka expects students will spend a day or more learning to use the new system. He estimates the entire project, begun in late December, will cost Harvard about $350,000.
Ronald Rosenberg can be reached by e-mail at rosenberg@globe.com.
Sony's Handheld Gets Best of Breed
Greater resolution and a built-in MP3 player are two things that set CLIE apart
Sony Electronics (SNE ) has a well-earned reputation for persistence. The company's first entry into a new field often isn't very good. But, as it has shown with laptops, Sony will keep trying until it gets it right.
The latest evidence is the new Sony CLIE, a handheld based on Palm software. The first CLIEs, introduced last year, were so-so Palm clones. The color version featured a dim screen that was panned so loudly by reviewers that Sony never marketed it outside of Japan. But the newest version of the CLIE, which costs $500 and is just a bit narrower, longer, and thicker than a Palm V, is a breakthrough for Sony. Despite reservations about a Memory Stick expansion slot, I think it is the best color Palm device available, superior to both the Handspring Visor Prism and the new Palm m505.
One interesting feature of the CLIE is a built-in MP3 music player, a first for any Palm device. But the real reason for my enthusiasm is that Sony has transcended the single greatest weakness of the Palm design. Going back to the original 1996 PalmPilot, every display has featured 160x160 pixels. This produces coarse, grainy screens that do a mediocre job displaying text and are pretty much hopeless for graphics. Palm promises higher-resolution displays, but not until it releases version 5.0, at some unspecified date.
Sony decided not to wait. It did some tweaking to make the Palm software work with a 320x320 pixel color display. This has two benefits. First, there are four times as many pixels, quadrupling the amount of information you can fit on a screen. Second, each pixel is one-fourth the size, yielding a much sharper-looking screen.
Since most existing Palm applications assume a 160x160 screen, they look as bad as ever on the CLIE. But Sony rewrote the system software, as well as the Address Book and Date Book applications, for the new screen. The biggest difference is the appearance of text: Characters use thinner strokes and lack the jaggedness of the Palm fonts. The result is both nicer to look at and considerably more legible.
PHOTO FRIENDLY. Sony bundles some applications that show the new screen to good advantage. PictureGear Pocket displays quite creditable photos, while gMovie will show a short video at about five frames per second. One limitation actually made worse by the higher-resolution screen is that the CLIE is short on processing power, especially compared with handhelds using Microsoft's PocketPC software. Palm is moving to support faster processors, but this is many months away.
The CLIE introduces yet another expansion method into the Palm world. Handspring's Springboard slot is proprietary, but a lineup of cameras, music players, and other devices to use it make it powerful and flexible. The SD card slot in the newest Palms is more limited, but at least it's based on an industry standard. Sony's Memory Stick is the worst of both worlds--proprietary and limited. Only storage cards are currently available for it, about $60 for 32 MB or $110 for 64 MB. Things will get more interesting later this year when Sierra Wireless brings out a wireless modem based on CLIE's memory stick.
SCROLL WHEEL. Meanwhile, the most interesting use of the Memory Stick is to store music for the CLIE's built-in MP3 player. Sony has mercifully abandoned a plan, used in some of its music players, to require that music be stored on the Memory Stick only in a special format that prevents additional copies from being made. The new version should make things easier for consumers, but unfortunately, the software was not available in time for testing. One thing is certain: To use the music player, you'll need a lot more memory than the 8 megabyte Memory Stick that comes with the CLIE. That will only give you about 15 minutes of medium-quality music, although it should allow about an hour's worth of storage using the built-in voice recorder.
Overall, the CLIE is an attractive design and well thought out. The fact that it is slightly narrower than any Palm or even the new Handspring Visor Edge should endear it to anyone with smaller hands. And a scroll wheel and a back button that takes you to the last screen you viewed encourage one-handed operation. As much as I wish that all Palm device makers could standardize on an expansion feature, the CLIE is a welcome addition to the Palm OS family.
By Stephen H. Wildstrom
jql- i looked into fonx some time back and have had my doubts; i guess what i am saying is that we know edig has relationships/contracts with samsung and toshiba for example but this is not well known imo- assuming edig can get a well-known oem to pick up the JB - it would be nice to see one PR tying edig to several brand name global ce/pc companies
The MA V, due early next year, was co-designed with IBM and Texas Instruments Inc. It will include either the 400MHz or the 600MHz version of the Pentium III and will integrate a lithium-ion battery into the rest of the computer. The follow-up to that model, the MA VI, will come out the following year and is set to be smaller, faster and less expensive than its predecessors. The MA IV costs around $4,995.
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geez-- ibm, ti, and intel- i wish edig were involved with companies like that!
TI tries to secure the wireless future
By Richard Shim
Special to CNET News.com
May 7, 2001, 5:25 p.m. PT
A new wireless technology will allow consumers to make secure purchases on next-generation cell phones and wireless handhelds, Texas Instruments said Monday.
The new security technology is a software library for TI's blueprint for wireless devices that use its digital signal processors. The blueprint is known as OMAP, or the Open Multimedia Applications Protocol.
"At TI, security is a religion. And to keep themselves in the No. 1 spot in the DSP (digital signal processor) market, the company is already addressing new services for the next generation of wireless phones," said Will Strauss, president of market researcher Forward Concepts.
TI's efforts will allow consumers to perform activities over devices with high-speed Internet access, such as buying products, downloading and streaming content, performing bank transactions and interacting with corporate networks.
The software library consists of programs from securities companies such as SafeNet, NTRU, WhiteCell, SnapShield and AuthenTec. The applications provide capabilities such as memory protection, advanced public and private key encryption, virus screening, firewall protection and fingerprint identification.
Security has already been tagged as a key feature for wireless devices.
"In Europe and Asia where (next-generation) phones are already being used, customers are already complaining about being spammed and compromised," Strauss said. "TI is just getting ahead of the game."
Multimedia has also been identified as a key feature for future wireless devices. But TI Chief Executive Tom Engibous recently warned that manufacturers should remember to keep features simple.
Handset manufacturers such as Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Sendo and HTC have selected OMAP as the framework for their next-generation phones.
Sony empowers Aibo pet robot to read e-mail
By Paul Kallender
EE Times
(05/07/01, 2:18 p.m. EST)
TOKYO — Acknowledging that its prodigal robot pet did little more than talk back and eat batteries every couple of hours, Sony Corp. on Monday (May 7) unveiled software that will enable its Aibo robots to read e-mail messages and Web pages.
The company's Aibo Messenger applications software gives Sony's two-year-old robot the ability to inform owners that e-mail has arrived, to read the contents of a message, and to convey text-based information such as news and weather from home pages, Sony said.
The software is delivered on a CD-ROM and is uploaded onto the PC of an Aibo owner. The software converts e-mail or Web files into sound files, which can be played through the robot's audio speakers when activated by a key word spoken to the dog, a Sony spokeswoman said.
"Some people have commented that Aibo wasn't very useful and asked why it didn't do e-mail," the spokeswoman said. "Now we're sort of taking it another step; now it can do something."
Bilingual 'bot
The software, which will be available for order in Japan on May 11 and in the United States starting in July, will be able to read e-mail or preselected Web pages in Japanese or English in six different male or female voices. Users will be able to edit functions so that Aibo only recites messages from a particular sender or with a specific subject heading, for example, the spokeswoman said.
Aibo Messenger enables a robot to recognize up to 50 words, so an owner can program the pet to "fetch" or at least "go for it" — the expression used when Aibo doesn't understand something. Even so, Aibo may not listen to you when you talk to it, Sony said.
"There's no cognitive process," the company spokeswoman said. "Aibo does not understand your mail, but it's going to be able to read it."
The CD-ROM will only work with second-generation ERS-210 Aibo models, which have a LAN card slot. These models, on sale since October 2000, have previously depended on the programming skills of users to "learn" such chores, the spokeswoman said.
"The mom and pops, most of the people who bought it, weren't really interested in programming," she said.
While the CD-ROM is compatible with MAP 1 mail software for various Windows formats and Aibo can pick up mail from PCs located up to 20 meters away, the talkability feature will not, ironically, extend to Sony's vaunted Clie handheld personal digital assistants, the company said.
A limited first edition of 5,000 Aibo robots went on sale in June 1999 and sold out immediately, buoyed by orchestrated publicity and restricted sales. Customers must now wait about two weeks for a 'bot, and Sony claims to have sold 50,000 units of the second-generation ERS-210.
This time round, Sony has added other baubles as part of the robot's second anniversary, including a new "imitation leather carrying bag" and "second anniversary color models" in Everest White, Sapphire Violet and Mazeran Green. Sony will also release a "navigator" CD-ROM that will enable owners to manipulate the machine remotely, making it dance, kick a ball, or send a photo from its picture-capture function.
Looking ahead, Sony plans to work on making the dog more interactive, and is considering turning it into more of a game-centric device that will lever profits out of new generations of gaming software, similar to what Sony has done with its business model for the Playstation gaming console, the Sony spokeswoman said. Playstation connectivity is also in the cards.
Finally, Sony is also considering morphing Aibo into more than a walking, talking dog, the spokeswoman said.
"Aibo comes with a key and you can take off the head and the legs and the tail and all you are left with is the hardware body," she said. "We will be adding new things, the possibilities are open."
OT: Fonix: The Voice of the Future - Now Contracting with Industries' Mega-giants: Microsoft, Panasonic, Motorola, Siemens and RCA
This Is a Global News Network Special Report on the Fonix Corporation
LONDON, May 7 /PRNewswire/ -- This report directly involves contracts and partnerships with Fonix (OTC Bulletin Board: FONX - news) and the following companies: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news); Panasonic/Matsushita Electric Co. (NYSE: MC - news); Siemens (NYSE: SI - news); Motorola (NYSE: MOT - news); General Magic (Nasdaq: GMGC - news); Nuance (Nasdaq: NUAN - news); and Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT - news).
Global News Network is currently doing a series of reports on companies with emerging technologies, which have the potential of having an impact on global communication and the global economy. This report is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Hindi and Italian, for international distribution. The following is a Global News Network Special Report on the Fonix Corporation.
Fonix has now established contracts with Microsoft, Panasonic, Nortel, Motorola, Nuance, Envox, Conita, General Magic, Kunnsoft, Voci, PipeBeach, Siemens, Concierge, Odyssey and RCA. The Fonix Corporation has progressed at the speed of sound since their debut on the market in 1999 and, as the leading provider of human-user-interface technology, is on the ground floor of an industry that is set to explode across the global landscape of the world of commercial and consumer electronics.
The Fonix Corporation has created the quintessential voice recognition technology systems, protected by a series of worldwide patents, by mechanically recreating the human auditory system based on a complex series of neural networks, extracting the fundamental mathematical elements of the human language with human inflection, intonation and clarity. They have employed this technology in all natural interface technologies. If you can think of an application requiring a machine to interact with a human being -- you have thought of an area where voice recognition technology will soon become omnipresent.
In the very near future, voice recognition technology will be used in virtually all computers, telephones, camcorders, televisions, wireless handhelds, cell phones, automobiles, and e-commerce applications (each category being a colossal industry in and by itself and yet, individually, only a small percentage of voice recognition applications. E-commerce alone, only in its infancy, is projected to generate over 65 billion dollars in revenues by the end of 2001).
Voice recognition will also be used in virtually all forms of household appliances, computer video games, 3-D virtual reality programs, educational tools, security devices, universal translators for Internet and face to face communication, telephone and retail credit card systems as well as interactive programs and applications of every nature. The overall market potential is monumental. The use for this technology and the scope of Fonix applications is so immense that a series of reports would have to be written to list all its applications. As stated in Hoover's company capsule, ``when you hear phonics, Fonix Corporation hears the sound of cold, hard cash''. A recent Microsoft website review referred to one of these applications, the Fonix TimeTalk for Pocket PCs, as ``one of the most unique, advanced technological applications available''.
Voice recognition technology will clearly be in the future of all technologies that require human interaction with a machine -- as the most effective and efficient way for machines to serve man is for the machines to directly interface with their human-users; for computers and machines to talk and interact in a natural way with their controllers.
With the Fonix line of voice recognition technologies, Fonix has made science fiction -- science fact. As a charter member of Microsoft's Embedded Tools Partner since October of 1999, in a little over a year, Fonix has successfully created a global technology for the next generation of computer electronics.
Global News Network Company Statement: This report is an editorial statement of publicly available information. Global News Network is a news dissemination service and does not purchase or sell or own any stocks in any publicly traded companies as a matter of company policy. Global News Network does not accept compensation from nor is it affiliated with companies featured in Global News Network Reports. This report is not a solicitation to buy or sell stocks. Anyone or any company doing work for or associated with Global News Network in any way may or may not own stocks in any publicly traded companies including the company or companies featured in this article. Any statements looking into the future in this report would be subject to the risks and uncertainties of future events. Global News Network is currently preparing a website which will be dedicated to new and developing technologies and the companies who develop and create these technologies. Revenues will be generated by traditional advertisement, affiliate and membership fees. The website address will be www.GNNglobalnews.com . This is not currently a working website. The website is scheduled for a January 1, 2002, premiere.
SOURCE: Global News Network
hopefully- we will see a F-H PR on edig like this in the next few weeks w/ the announcements of other JB oems
Intel to Motorola: 'Move Over!'
This article first appeared in PBI Media's Global Positioning & Navigation News
Microprocessor giant Intel [INTC] has revved up competition in the telematics market. The chip company has put industry leader Motorola [MOT] on notice with a new telematics platform, selecting some of the same software partners. Telematics combines wireless, positioning and computer technology to drive new services to vehicles. High processing power is needed to run next-generation navigation and traffic displays and voice interfaces.
Intel chips have been in automotive electronics devices for years in areas such as engine control. Several years ago, Intel launched the Connected Car PC initiative - a Pentium-centric concept - but nothing much transpired.
Intel now touts a new system-level architecture aimed at telematics, handhelds and handsets. The preferred telematics processors - Intel's StrongARM and XScale architectures - are lower-power and lower-cost (compared to Pentiums) and are extremely scalable and high-performance, says Pat Kerrigan, Intel's director of in-car computing.
Intel recently announced software partners including Microsoft [MSFT], IBM [IBM], QNX, Wind River Systems [WIND], Fonix [FONX.OB] and Lernout & Hauspie [LHSPQ]. Motorola, meanwhile, has been working with L&H, IBM, Fonix and QNX. Motorola centers its chip-and-software Mobile GT "smart car" platform on a low-cost, low-power embedded version of the PowerPC processor.
"Motorola has a long history in microcontrollers [embedded processors]," says John Hansen, marketing director, driver information systems, for the Transportation Systems Group, part of the Semiconductor Products Sector. The company has more than twice the market share of the nearest competitor. The unit provides enabling component technologies to tier-one suppliers.
"Motorola is probably more pro-active" in the market, says Thilo Koslowski, automotive analyst for Gartner Group. "But it's always good if you have competition." Over the long term, the telematics sector may be the biggest opportunity for chip suppliers, he says.
The challenge is to avoid a fragmented market, says Frost & Sullivan automotive analyst Inge Matthey. "If Intel, Motorola and others have different platforms, it's not going to work for the auto makers." The ideal is standards-based plug-and-play, including handhelds.
Telematics: Next Chip Market?
"Motorola is probably more pro-active" in the market, says Thilo Koslowski, automotive analyst for Gartner Group. "But it's always good if you have competition." Over the long term, the telematics sector may be the biggest opportunity for chip suppliers, he says.
Motorola Releases iSKETCH(TM), Allowing Users To Send Handwritten Items Via Their Wireless Mobile Devices
Consumer software will be available for Internet downloads at Palmgear.com and Handango.com
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 8 /CNW/ -- Motorola (NYSE: MOT - news) announced today it has launched a version of its iSKETCH technology that can be downloaded from the Internet into their Palm OS-based mobile devices. iSKETCH is a digital ink compression and encryption technology that allows users to create and transmit small handwritten notes, sketches and signatures between mobile devices, or between a mobile device and a desktop via email. The software is available for immediate download at Palmgear.com and Handango.com.
With iSKETCH, users can send and receive handwritten messages as easily as text, store personal handwritten notes, and email sketches to multiple addresses simultaneously. An enhanced version of iSKETCH, which includes encryption, more shapes, colors, animation, and text encoding, is already available for license to software developers and system integrators.
"Sometimes a text message just doesn't fit the need," said Craig Peddie, General Manager of Motorola's Lexicus Division. "Imagine a commuter rushing through an airport, or sitting on a noisy train, who needs to send a quick note but cannot open his laptop to initiate an email. Or someone who wants to write and save a quick note to himself as a reminder that he will refer to later. This technology adds real value to wireless devices by expanding the ways they can be incorporated into the communication setting."
The iSKETCH software compressor/decompressor (CODEC) has been ported to many mobile devices, such as PDAs, smart phones, and the Palm handheld devices. The software uses lossless compression, which allows it to be used in conjunction with a signature verification server or a handwriting recognizer at a later time.
International Data Corporation estimates that nearly 15 million PDAs will be sold this year, a figure that will more than double by 2004. The Palm OS and Palm OS-based products are licensed to the majority of PDA makers, including Handspring, Sony, Kyocera, Samsung, Nokia, Symbol Technologies, and TRG.
About Lexicus
Founded in 1993, Motorola's Lexicus Division specializes in the innovative design and development of user interface software and cutting edge input technologies for smart devices. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., the division strives to be a world leader in supplying cutting-edge input technologies that allow information to be entered and retrieved from wireless devices without the use of a keyboard. Lexicus offers a complete range of alternative input technologies, including digital in pad messaging, intelligent keypad text entry, natural handwriting processing and noise robust speech recognition.
Motorola delivers these intelligent wireless solutions as well as systems integration as part of its professional services offerings. Through its Global Customer Solutions Operations, Motorola also provides wireless consulting, systems planning solutions definition, systems integration, training, maintenance and technical support to key customers.
Motorola's Applications Global NETwork (MAGNET) supports application developers who want to work with Motorola products. For more information about the MAGNET and its Regional Application Development Center offerings, please visit the web site at www.motorola.com/developers/wireless.
About Motorola
Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) is a global leader in providing integrated communication solutions and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2000 were $37.6 billion. MOTOROLA, the stylized Motorola logo and all other trademarks indicated as such herein, are trademarks of Motorola, Inc. (R) Reg. U.S. Pat. and T.M. Office. More company information is available at www.motorola.com.
Intel Transforms Handspring Visors Into Wireless Communication Tools
SpringPort Wireless Ethernet Module Enables 802.11b Connectivity for Handspring Visor Handhelds
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2001--Intel Corporation today introduced the Xircom® SpringPort(TM) Wireless Ethernet module, the first wireless local area network (WLAN) device for the Handspring(TM) Visor(TM) handheld computer.
The new module complements Intel's existing line of WLAN products and is the first product announced after the company's acquisition of Xircom.
Slightly smaller than a deck of cards, the module plugs into the Springboard(TM) expansion slot on the back of the Handspring Visor, providing secure, high-speed, wireless access to applications and data located on a network, including Internet browsers, email and files.
The SpringPort Wireless Ethernet module enables mobile professionals to increase productivity with access to real-time information and communications. The module is compliant with the IEEE 802.11b high-rate standard and interoperates with Wi-Fi(TM) certified products including the Xircom Wireless Ethernet Access Point and the Intel®PRO/Wireless 2011 LAN products.
``The Handspring Visor is a powerful device to help on-the-go individuals organize their lives. Now, with the addition of real-time access to information, they are further empowered to make critical decisions without sacrificing mobility within the office or corporate campus,'' said John Merrill, product marketing manager for Xircom, an Intel company. ``We are in the business of connecting mobile professionals to their data. The new SpringPort Wireless Ethernet module complements our existing line of wireless and wired network connections.''
``Intel is delivering a new level of mobile productivity to Handspring Visor customers,'' said Michael Rosenthal, developer relations manager for wireless at Handspring. ``Xircom's SpringPort Wireless Ethernet module enables individuals, including those at universities, healthcare institutions, and corporations, to access real-time, critical information on the web, email and their Intranets.''
The SpringPort Wireless Ethernet module offers up to 11 Mbps transfer rates within 300 feet (90m) of any installed access point, or hub, on a WLAN. This makes it an excellent solution for organizations of all sizes. The SpringPort Wireless Ethernet module will be demonstrated in the Intel booth (No.5343) and WECA pavilion (No.1014) at the Networld + Interop (N+I) conference in Las Vegas, May 8-10, 2001. For additional information on the SpringPort Wireless Ethernet, visit www.xircom.com/wireless.
Availability and Pricing
Xircom's SpringPort Wireless Ethernet module for the Visor handheld has a suggested retail price of $299 (US) and will be available in May. The module will be available through valued-added resellers (VARs), direct marketers, e-tailers and system integrators and online at the ShopXircom(SM) store.
About Xircom, an Intel company
Intel completed the acquisition of Xircom in March 2001. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel, Xircom Mobile Communications Division will continue to design and develop innovative solutions that connect mobile users worldwide to corporate networks, the Internet, Intranets and other online resources. For over a decade, mobile professionals around the world have relied on Xircom for access to their information anytime, anywhere. Please visit http://www.xircom.com for more information.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom.
This news release contains or may contain certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties may include without limitation conditions in the capital markets, the timing, market acceptance and success of Xircom, and the growth rate(s) of applicable product markets.
Note to Editors: Third party marks and brands are property of their respective holders. Intel is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
Xircom is a registered trademark of Xircom, Inc., an Intel company. Other company or product names have been used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
IBM Software Is PC Magazine's Editor's Choice For Scalability, Speed And Performance
WebSphere Application Server Receives A Perfect Score
INTERNET WIRE -- IBM's WebSphere software has won PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award in the magazine's Application Server Benchmark competition, appearing in the May 22 issue. WebSphere scored a possible five out of five points for its ability to be deployed swiftly and outperform the competition.
WebSphere beat Sybase, Borland, Microsoft, and iPlanet in the High-End Application Servers category. BEA and Oracle "declined, citing lack of resources to support our review process or an unwillingness to undergo performance testing," according to the review.
According to PC Magazine's editors, "IBM's WebSphere Application Server, Advanced Edition 3.5, was by far the fastest and most scalable server on the scenario test. At its peak, it maintained 4,000 virtual users at 177 pages per second. Because of its sophisticated dynamic page-caching algorithms, WebSphere was also the clear winner on the title search test. It also had the best A.R.T. (Average Response Time) at peak performance on nearly all of the tests. "
The review team cited WebSphere as the winner because:
*it provides the necessary features for implementing "bet-your-business" Web sites;
*its aggressive use of caching contributed to the fastest search results; and
*it was highly scalable, enterprise-class, and e-business-ready
In the short time since its introduction, WebSphere has:
*Garnered thousands of customers, including most of the world's top commercial banks, telecommunications, healthcare and Wall Street brokerage companies. These companies rely on WebSphere for their complete Internet infrastructure needs -- including integrating their key business processes and conducting high-volume Web transactions.
*Enjoyed eight consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, increasing 53 percent on Windows NT and Unix in 1Q 2001.
*Gained significant market share, according to Giga Information Group. Over the past ten months, WebSphere's market share has nearly doubled. That's more than ten times the growth rate of BEA's market share over the same time period.
In 2000, IBM established WebSphere as the leading Internet infrastructure software. Unlike piece-part software vendors such as BEA (Nasdaq: BEA - news), WebSphere is a complete set of integrated middleware products required for e-business. For example, WebSphere's integration software -- called MQSeries -- has 65% marketshare according to Aberdeen Group, and grew nearly 50% on Unix and Windows NT in 1Q 2001.
In addition, IBM offers a complete set of industry-leading and award-winning application development tools. The rapid adoption of WebSphere tools highlights how an increasing number of developers are adopting WebSphere as their development software of choice. Today, 9,000 business partners work with WebSphere products.
About IBM's (NYSE: IBM - news) WebSphere Software
WebSphere is Internet infrastructure software -- known as middleware -- that enables companies to develop, deploy and integrate next-generation e-business applications, such as those for business-to-business e-commerce. WebSphere supports business applications from simple Web publishing through enterprise-scale transaction processing. WebSphere transforms the way businesses manage customer, partner and employee relationships. More information about the WebSphere software platform is on the Web at www.ibm.com/websphere.
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Kodak and Texas Instruments Team Up Again to Deliver New EasyShare System
DALLAS, May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Utilizing the imaging industry's first programmable digital signal processing-based solution from Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN - news; TI) and Kodak's imaging science, Kodak recently introduced its new EasyShare system, featuring a camera dock and two new digital camera models that make digital still and video photography simple and affordable for consumers. The Kodak DX3500 Digital Camera and the Kodak DX3600 Zoom Digital Camera offer ease of use and an extensive range of features. With the announcement of the new EasyShare system, Kodak extends its commitment to TI's digital signal processor (DSP) platform, which began with the announcement of the Kodak mc3 portable multimedia device earlier this year. (See www.ti.com/sc/digitalcamera.)
``As with our recently announced mc3 multimedia device, TI's DSP technology has helped Kodak break new ground with our DX3500 and DX3600 Zoom digital cameras,'' said Willy Shih, president of Kodak's Digital and Applied Imaging Division. ``The flexibility and processing power of TI's programmable DSP solution supported Kodak's goal on delivering user-friendly, feature-rich, high quality cameras at a competitive price.''
The EasyShare system sets a new standard for ease of use in the digital photography market. The DX3500 digital camera features 2.2 megapixel resolution, 3X digital zoom and a convenient close-up mode to ensure great looking pictures every time. The DX3600 Zoom digital camera captures digital pictures and video with audio, offering 2.2 megapixel resolution and a 6X zoom. Both cameras offer 8MB of internal memory so your camera can capture up to 48 pictures without a CompactFlash memory card. For more pictures, there is an expansion slot for removable CompactFlash memory cards. The cameras utilize TI's DSC21 programmable DSP technology for flexible implementation of their image capture and processing functions.
TI's DSP Solution Provides Features and Flexibility
TI's TMS320DSC21 is the industry's first fully programmable DSP-based processor designed exclusively for the unique challenges of digital imaging applications. The new Kodak DX cameras are designed to take advantage of the DSC21's high level of integration, imaging-specific design and unparalleled performance. The device integrates two processing cores -- a TMS320C5000(TM) DSP and an ARM7TDMI® RISC microcontroller -- enabling the cameras to process still images, as well as video in the DX3600, in real-time while simultaneously controlling system functions such as continuous automatic exposure control. The DSP's programmability and performance also provide variable imaging resolutions and a digital zoom for greater flexibility in memory storage and display.
The DSP performs real-time video and audio compression on chip, so the DX3600 can record video with audio continuously, enabling movie-length video to be streamed directly to a memory card without extensive and costly discrete memory buffers in the camera. This integrated feature of the DSC21 can result in an overall system design that is much less expensive than previous solutions. In addition, the programmability of the DSC21, coupled with its support of multiple interface and storage mediums, offers a configurable platform that can directly communicate with the camera's internal memory, allowing consumers to take pictures without a CompactFlash memory card. A CompactFlash card can be added, however, for additional storage capacity. The DSC21 also integrates a Universal Serial Bus (USB) controller on-chip that is utilized by Kodak's EasyShare system camera dock, offering battery recharging and communication with a PC. This embedded functionality eliminates the cost of additional components while providing the most widely used interface to PCs. The processor also supplies NTSC/PAL-encoded outputs, making possible a direct television feed from the camera.
``TI is proud of its successful relationship with Kodak, as well as the innovative consumer products that have resulted from the collaboration between the two companies,'' said Dr. Raj Talluri, business manager of the Imaging Business Unit at TI. ``TI continues to develop leading-edge DSP-based solutions that will enable future imaging products to offer consumers more features with higher-quality output at affordable prices.''
An Ongoing Collaboration Creates a Line of Innovative Products
Kodak's mc3, announced earlier this year, delivers unlimited digital video, pictures and music in one inexpensive, pocket-sized unit. The programmability of TI's DSP enables Kodak to offer software upgrades for its products to customers as standards and encoding algorithms mature and shortens the company's time to market.
TI's line of DSP-based digital imaging solutions also includes the recently announced TMS320DSC24, a low-power solution that is targeted at imaging Internet appliances. TI also provides high-performance, programmable DSP- and analog-based solutions to various digital imaging and video streaming manufacturers. TI's broad range of imaging products provides the performance headroom and flexibility demanded in designs ranging from digital still cameras and portable imaging Internet appliances to high-resolution medical imaging and multi-channel video streaming applications.
The Kodak DX3500 digital camera is expected to be available worldwide in early May for a suggested retail price of $299.95. The Kodak DX3600 Zoom digital camera is expected to be available in early July with a suggested retail price of $399.95.
Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. The company's businesses also include sensors and controls, and educational and productivity solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ti.com
Trademarks:
TMS320C5000 is a trademark of Texas Instruments Incorporated.
ARM7TDMI is a registered trademark of ARM Ltd. Company.
"The Logjam Has Broken"...for digital music downloads.
Tuesday May 8 3:19 AM ET
MusicMatch Lays Plans for Web Music Service
By Scott Hillis
SEATTLE (Reuters) - MusicMatch, a maker of popular jukebox software for storing and playing music on a computer, on Monday said it is starting a subscription radio service that will eventually let it sell digital songs over the Internet.
Privately held MusicMatch is the latest company to join the recent rush of Internet music initiatives, joining companies like Internet media pioneer RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq:RNKW - news) and software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news).
The new service, called Radio MX, will build on MusicMatch's existing radio feature that lets users create custom stations featuring music similar to their favorite artists, Chief Executive Dennis Mudd said in an interview.
Boasting crisper sound, better customization, and no advertising, Radio MX will launch in a beta, or test form, on Monday and will cost $5 a month, or $50 a year, Mudd said.
``We think we can give people music that's pretty close to what they would pick themselves. We believe it's going to be the first truly successful pay music service in the world,'' Mudd said.
The jukebox will also be updated with better CD-burning, a new look and faster encoding of music files on computers using Pentium 4 chips from Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news).
The plan is to make songs available for download through the service by late summer. It will likely be set up so users pay for a number of downloads each month. One way songs will be delivered is through the radio playlist, so if a user likes a song, they can add it to their collection with a click.
The next task is to strike deals with record labels to actually start selling the songs, Mudd said.
``The next generation is on-demand. Our strategy is to take Radio MX and then add additional features as we add licenses,'' Mudd said. ``We've got the architecture, we've got the infrastructure, we've got the technology ... so what we need are the licenses.''
Logjam Has Broken
Citing a new eagerness by record labels to embrace Internet music, Mudd was optimistic that he could launch the service with 20,000 to 30,000 songs by late summer and double that selection by the end of the year.
``The attitude by the major labels has changed markedly over the last several months, and the logjam has definitely broken for obtaining licenses,'' Mudd said.
For example, last month, MusicMatch rival RealNetworks and three of the five major labels -- AOL Time Warner's (NYSE:AOL - news) Warner Music, Bertelsmann AG's (BTGGga.D) BMG, and EMI Group Plc (EMI.L) -- formed a new company called MusicNet that will license music subscription technology to other companies.
Close on the heels of that announcement, Microsoft rolled out a music broadcasting service that will lay a foundation for selling downloads.
Though smaller than its publicly traded rivals, MusicMatch has nonetheless built a loyal user base.
San Diego-based MusicMatch says its software has 18 million registered users, and 9 million active users, defined as people who use the application at least once a month. Some 750,000 people use its radio feature each month.
MusicMatch gives away its basic jukebox for free, but the company had revenues of $10.1 million last year, 90 percent of which came from people upgrading to a better version. Revenues are expected to climb to $25 million this year, Mudd said.
Even if just 2.5 percent of users shell out for the new radio service, that translated into an additional $20 million to $25 million in revenue, Mudd said.
IBM Corp. snagged the $1.3 billion Customs Service modernization contract to build the Automated Commercial Environment System to streamline the processing of goods across U.S. borders.
The modernization effort, which stretches over 15 years, includes re-engineering the way the Customs Service processes the import and export of goods.
The contract also covers the development of a new information technology infrastructure, computer systems and software to support the re-engineered processes. The new system also will enhance Customs’ ability to intercept contraband.
The win is the largest government contract IBM has captured since the company sold its Federal Systems Division in 1993.
IBM is leading a team that includes Lockheed Martin Corp., KPMG Consulting Inc., Computer Sciences Corp., Sandler & Travis Trade Advisory Services Inc., Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc., ITS Services Inc., and more than 40 small businesses.
Bidding against IBM were teams led by Accenture Ltd. and Electronic Data Systems Corp., according to a Customs Service spokesman.
Apple needs chip czar for Son of Newton
By: Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 5/8/01 at 08:17 GMT
An intriguing vacancy at Apple Computer suggests the company is looking to regain control of its long-term technical destiny.
The position paves the way for Apple's re-entry into the handheld business, which will gladden the hearts of Newton devotees.
The job description calls for an industry chieftain with 10 years experience to manage ''the development of new high-performance microprocessors for future Apple computer products''.
In other words, Apple is dipping its toe into the chip design business, an ambitious advance on its position today, which sees the company heavily dependent on key component suppliers. Or at least, one big component supplier - Motorola.
But the following qualification specified in the ad suggests that Apple is more interested in striking out into new markets than in reshuffling its PC component supply chain.
The applicant ''will manage processor co-development and production start-up across processor vendors (our emphasis), Apple VLSI chipset design, and Apple computer system design teams''.
Which of course is how today's handheld and cellular phone manufacturers work. Phone and PDA makers typically license intellectual property rights to a core - ARM, MIPS and Parthus are your specialists here - then embroider it with the parts such as I/O, or DSP, or integrated communication stacks that can produce a working piece of kit. The emphasis on multiple processor vendors here is a dead giveaway.
So herald, the Son of Newton?
Naturally Apple doesn't say, but we can reasonably infer that it is taking baby steps to regain a foothold in a category it entered with the Newton. It also crashed out of this category in spectacular fashion with the Newton. The Newton's lasting legacy was the acronym 'PDA', although the bulk and (initially, at least) lack of utility of the Newton made the handheld market a no-go area for investors and developers for a good two years.
But times have changed, and basic economics suggest that standalone PDAs (without some kind of in-built communications to the Internet or to pervasive access networks such as GPRS or 3G) will soon be extinct. Or if not extinct, will have become commoditised to the extent that they're sold for what they're reallyworth, which is the same as today's databank handhelds - just a few bucks.
In fact the Apple vacancy is a template for a technical lead on a communicator (as these kinds of devices are called) project. Only it doesn't say so.
So why exactly why would Apple need to appoint a chip czar to design its own communicator? Diligent Register readers will note that there's no shortage of intermediaries happy to carry out such work on its behalf.
For example, Symbian licensee Sanyo last fall demoed a palm-size communicator within two months of inking the software deal, thanks to integration work from Texas Instruments.
And out of Folsom, Chipzilla is preparing the very same 'building' blocks for communicator OEMs based on XScale (nee StrongARM) cores. So if Apple really wanted to get into the smartphone/communicator business, it could do so very quickly, with very little R&D expense.
The answer is probably that Apple wants to tune its communicator to target its core businesses (education), and leverage long-nurtured investments such as Firewire and MPEG-4/QuickTime. No-one has yet developed an entirely appropriate platform - Apple thinks that there is a breach to be filled, and that it should be doing the filling.
This is a reasonable assumption, and Psion has followed a similar path with successive devices including the Series 5 (where it partnered with ARM and Cirrus Logic) and the Quartz project (where it's partnered with Parthus). ®
Bootnote
We were going to dwell on the multiple ironies here. Should Apple plump for an ARM core - that's the basic CPU in the majority of cellular phones in use today - it would be returning to the company it helped found.
Apple's investment in ARM has significantly bolstered its results in recent years, although as we note here the pot is nearly dry. And we could mention that Apple in the 80s poured millions into its own from-scratch chip, Aquarius, which was supposed to produce a rival to Sun's SPARC, but really gave engineers the chance to play with a genuine Cray. Any Aquarius veterans out there? Tell us what we've missed.
January 2001
Stream lines
DSP houses unveil application-tailored chips to delight designers. We detail their efforts.
Paul G Schreier, Contributing Editor
Almost every convergence application involves audio or video. Thus the underlying computational engine must be able to handle these signals—a requirement that implies digital signal processing. But with the consumer market's stringent demands for price, power consumption, and time to market, the general-purpose DSP chips of old won't do. So take a moment and dream: if you could architect the perfect computing engine for convergence appliances, what would it look like?
With that wish list in hand, you're likely thinking that it'll be a long, long time before chip vendors can come close to meeting those requirements. However, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the latest, highly tailored, offerings coming not only from established DSP houses but also from other established chip vendors and some imaginative startups.
Indeed, the selections available to you even today are so large as to be confusing. So let's start by defining our dream chip.
A convergence chip should help the product team meet two main goals: minimizing both design risk and time to market. It also must help the team meet cost goals. A Pentium III or IV has more than enough horsepower to handle digital audio and video, but at several hundred dollars, you couldn't put one in an MP3 player that has to sell for $200 or less.
Next, you'd probably want your ideal chip to handle as many tasks as possible, reducing part count and thus system size and cost. It should have some general-purpose digital I/O for tasks such as scanning a keypad for user input. It should incorporate a display controller. It should provide circuitry that interfaces to all sorts of memory including RAM, flash, and even mass-storage devices such as hard disks and CD/DVD drives.
As for memory, this ideal chip contains enough onboard RAM, ROM, and flash so that it can perform its tasks without external memory. Even so, convergence devices don't operate in a vacuum; they need some way to move data in and out. Thus, the ideal chip augments standard serial and parallel ports with a built-in USB, Firewire, or Ethernet port.
Returning to the theme of minimal design risk, this highly integrated convergence chip should be flexible enough so that when standards change—and we all know they will, it's just a matter of how quickly—the system designer can quickly adapt the system to work with them. In digital audio, for instance, a system must be able to accommodate several audio codec schemes, but researchers are preparing yet others. MP3 may rule today, but will we have to shift over to MP2001 next month?
On the same theme, the ideal device should also be scalable. End users want lots of features, and convergence devices are taking on more tasks. Today's design shouldn't hinder you from keeping up with user demands and market trends in a future revision.
Let's pile on even more demands. The convergence chip should draw as little power as possible, making it suitable for battery-powered portable applications. You need power consumption on the order of tens of milliwatts if you want to extend battery life to a level that doesn't have consumers replacing batteries too often (or replacing your system in favor of one that doesn't eat up so many batteries).
Seemingly overnight, a new branch of the DSP industry has cropped up to fill the sockets in millions of convergence devices.
Beyond these hardware features, don't forget software aspects. Obviously, the chip vendor should offer a complete toolchain including compilers, debuggers, and emulators, all at a reasonable price. However, because time to market is so crucial in the convergence arena, you want as much software as possible delivered in prewritten form. Thus the vendor should offer libraries of algorithms for audio codecs and any other application-specific tasks. The vendor should also have licensing agreements in place with firms that provide DRM (digital rights management) schemes.
If you think we're asking for the impossible with this combination of features, you haven't been keeping up with actual product offerings. Seemingly overnight, a new branch of the DSP industry has cropped up to fill the sockets in the millions of convergence devices headed for store shelves.
On the one hand, you've got established DSP houses polishing their devices to make them more attractive for convergence tasks. Then you've got microcontroller houses adding DSP functionality so they can get in on the action. The most recent example is Microchip, which recently announced a Digital Signal Controller division, which will sell devices that combine features of its PIC microcontrollers with DSP functionality. Yet other familiar companies are combining controller and DSP cores on the same chip in various configurations.
What's more, you're starting to see a new group of startups with chips targeted at specific convergence niches. For instance, you can now buy chips designed specifically for digital audio, digital cameras, and home A/V receivers, just to name a few.
Zoom in
To get a better idea of these chip options, let's examine one market in detail, one that represents a microcosm of all major convergence trends. Portable digital audio is perhaps the most advanced market in terms of the number of devices shipped and the speed of market penetration. (For a look at another niche where carefully formulated DSPs are making an impact, see the sidebar, "Picture this.")
Roughly a year ago the market for digital audio was nascent, acknowledged by only a few cognoscenti. Today, thanks to the publicity of a college dropout and his company, Napster, every kid on the street and every executive in the boardroom know about MP3s and digital audio. "Napster has been an incredible boom to this industry," emphasizes Mike Maia, vice president of marketing at PortalPlayer, a startup just about to launch its first chip. "This business would have never mushroomed this fast without Napster, which has raised industry visibility and spurred demand."
In fact, Texas Instruments estimates the market for Internet audio playback devices at 2 million units in 1999, rising to 10 million units this year. Similarly, Cahners In-Stat predicts that MP3 player sales will soar from $126 million in 1999 to $998 million this year and then level off somewhat to $1.25 billion by the end of 2002.
TALK’N’ROLL: Samsung’s SPH-M100 typifies a trend—the absorption of digital audio into other products. Because the DSPs driving cell phones generally have horsepower to spare, adding such functions increases design value without exacting a high price.
Further, digital audio is becoming an almost-expected add-in for other convergence devices. Early examples include Casio's WMP-1V, a wristwatch that doubles as an MP3 player. Samsung's SPH-M100 is a combination cell phone, Web browser, and MP3 player that stores two hours of music.
With most cell phones, says Alex Bedarida, vice president of DSP cores and modules with Infineon, the MIPS (millions of instructions per second—a measure of processor horsepower), are sitting idle in your pocket, already paid for. So why not use them for other purposes? Further, we're becoming addicted to our cell phones and always have them next to us, so it makes sense that other digital functions will merge with that device.
Clearly digital audio is exploding, and you'll hear conflicting claims concerning who's initially leading the horserace to become the dominant chip supplier in this market. Statistics and lists of design wins change almost daily with the introduction of new companies and new devices. Nonetheless, few people dispute the current leader board: Texas Instruments, Cirrus Logic, and Micronas.
TI says it shipped its one-millionth digital-audio DSP last June, with expectations that the total for 2000 would exceed 2 million chips. More than 60 manufacturers have selected TI chips, including eight of the 10 top consumer-electronics manufacturers. As for the portable market, the firm claims that the TMS320C54xx powers more Internet audio players than any other chip. Systems using the device include RCA's Lyra, Sony's Music Clip, and players from Sanyo, e.Digital, Kobelco, and IJAM.
Based on designer feedback, TI has borrowed the basic core and architecture from the 54xx family, added some market-specific software in both ROM and RAM, and given it a new family designation: the TMS320DAxxx. The "DA" in the name hints that the family is targeted specifically at digital audio. The most recent addition is the DA250. One of this chip's highlights is power management. The dime-sized device can shut down portions not in use, and it should run MP3 decoding at 17 milliwatts, enabling 70 hours—nearly three continuous days—of playing time from a pair of AA batteries.
Not satisfied with that level, says Chris Schairbaum, TI's new business development manager for Internet audio, TI expects to hit the 2-AA/200-hour mark in the 2002 timeframe, making battery life a "don't care" issue for end users. Further, you get this miserly performance without giving up features such as embedded USB support, a real-time clock (such as to verify how many days a user has been listening to time-limited music), and a watchdog timer (which helps the player recover from system errors). Evaluation samples are scheduled for the first part of this year, and large-quantity pricing is expected to fall near $10.
TI touts its xPressDSP development platform as a crucial element that should attract developers. In the past year, the firm has purchased a number of tool suppliers to round out its program. Now TI is working internally and with third parties to develop audio codecs and other algorithms.
“Creating the silicon wafer is the easy part. The software and support are the key elements.”
Mike Maia, PortalPlayer
Also with high brand recognition in digital audio, Cirrus Logic now refers to its Maverick series of devices as MSPs (market-specific processors). The first in the family, the EP7209, is based on an ARM720TDMI logic core and runs at 74 MHz, fast enough to equal the performance of a 100-MHz Pentium-based PC. Power consumption comes in at less than 170 milliwatts at 2.5 volts.
Mike Maia
Internet audio requires only half the chip's processing capability, leaving as much as 25 MIPS for manufacturers to use in market-differentiating functions. After only six months of production, the firm has shipped more than 1 million Maverick processors. The firm claims some major design wins including two of the top three MP3 players, SONICBlue's Diamond Rio 600 and Creative Labs' Nomad II family.
Rounding out the top triad, Micronas says that more than 100 companies worldwide use its chips in MP3 appliances. Its latest device, the MAS 3587F, is based on a RISC processor along with a DSP, and also integrates analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. The company designed the processor core especially for playing psychacoustically compressed data, such as MP3 and AAC files.
This latest entry not only allows playback but can also encode analog audio directly into MP3s, meaning a user no longer has to perform that step with a PC or obtain compressed digital files elsewhere, such as via a download. In the encode mode, the chip runs on 5 volts at 50 MHz; in decode mode it drops down to 2 volts at 24 MHz and consumes 65 milliwatts.
Marketing manager Hubertus von Janecek believes the encoding capability will give the overall market an extra push. "The consumer market is more interested in products that can both record and play music," he says. "Market analysts predict that the market for MP3 decoders alone will triple this year to 5 or 6 million units, so just think what that number will be when we add a recording feature."
Not idle
Although they might not have as many design wins in their pockets as the firms just mentioned, other established chip vendors have no intention of letting this opportunity pass them by.
Having previously emphasized high-end audio, Motorola is modifying its Symphony family of audio DSPs to reduce power. One spec separates Motorola from virtually all its competitors: DSP word size. The firm believes that 24 bits provides the optimum balance between price and precision and maintains that even a 20-bit width is too narrow for the numbers generated in today's complex audio algorithms.
Proof of the quality at this level comes from the fact that Motorola DSPs power professional theater-system products for Dolby Digital, Lucasfilm THX, and DTS Digital Surround. Whether an MP3 player requires this same level of performance is a question the market will have to address, but MP3 does appear ready to penetrate the home audio market. Flip Lockhoof, Motorola's marketing manager for audio solutions, comments that 16 bits is quite adequate for voice audio, and that's why Motorola chose that level of precision for its StarCore-based chips used in the cell-phone market.
The latest Symphony device, the DSP56367, achieves 150 MIPS at 1.8 volts or 100 MIPS at 1.5 volts. Motorola expects future parts to come in with levels down to 1.0 volts. MP3 decoding requires roughly 22 MIPS, translating into 13.2 milliwatts at the higher core voltage. AC3 in turn requires 50 MIPS, and future algorithms might need even more power. At the same time, you can design systems that clock the DSP at higher rates for other compute-intensive tasks such as MP3 encoding. The remaining MIPS are more than sufficient for simple I/O in a portable device; indeed, they can handle sophisticated processing requirements not normally found on portable devices, such as equalization, soundfield effects, or 3D virtual surrounds.
Not to be left out, Analog Devices touts its Melody chip as a digital audio solution, but one for now optimized for shelf-based units such as home AV receivers. You won't hear lists of major design wins in the portable market quite yet, but the firm's low-power ADSST-2100 family includes a wide variety of features that are suited for this market. The firm recently set up an MP3-decoder reference design based on a chip in the family. The 2185M is a 16-bit fixed-point device with plenty of horsepower—75 MIPS—that serves as an MP3 audio decoder, and it does so without the need for external RAM.
Other vendors believe they offer devices whose architectures are suited to convergence applications, but with a slant. Hitachi, for instance, agrees that an ideal device contains aspects of both a microcontroller and a DSP. Rather than put both cores on the same chip, the SH-DSP architecture uses a common register set and memory for both processing units, and programmers write code in a single instruction stream that can toggle between the two processors. Further, this scheme allows quick servicing of interrupts without disturbing the internal registers. Various models in the SH-DSP family come with peripherals, and Yashvant Jani, director of applications engineering at Hitachi Semiconductor, points to the 7727 as an especially interesting choice for portable audio. The chip features a USB interface and an LCD controller, as well as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters.
On many chips, the DSP core might take up an eighth of the area, and the rest is memory, argues Kalyan Chakravarthy, product marketing manager for LSI Logic's Broadband Products Group. If you can reduce memory requirements, you can then cut system cost. He claims that LSI's code density is the highest among all next-generation DSPs, which becomes especially important in consumer devices.
Building off the trend noted earlier about MP3 moving into other devices, STMicroelectronics offers the STA015, a dual codec designed for mobile phones. It combines an MP3 decoder and ADPCM (adaptive differential pulse code modulation) voice recording/playback, with typical power consumption of 85 milliwatts at 2.4 volts.
New contenders
This market space has not only attracted established suppliers of DSPs and microcontrollers but also spurred the emergence of startups with products dedicated to digital audio. You might check into such names as Rosun or Parthus Technologies or Silicon Motion, and a Web search will undoubtedly uncover this week's newest entries.
“The consumer market is more interested in products that can both record and play music.”
Hubertus von Janecek, Micronas
Let's take a look at one such company, PortalPlayer, and its upcoming chip. For its PP5001 SuperIntegration SoC controller, the firm chose a RISC engine based on the ARM7 to allow for scalability and ease of programming, Maia explains. The chip also includes a coprocessor for hardware-accelerated encoding and external interfaces to peripherals and storage. The device will include both an MP3 decoder and an encoder. He also claims that his company's device is the only one to date with a direct interface to Sony's Memory Stick flash-memory cards; all other units need an external device for that interface.
Hubertus von Janecek
Among the knocks such startups take from established suppliers is the criticism that the newbies don't have their own silicon fabs. What's more, established vendors point out, the upstarts lack the extensive software support that you'll find with the majors. PortalPlayer's chips are now going into production with volume deliveries targeted for this month or next, and the firm is using a fab line at Oki Semiconductor. As for criticisms about supply shortages, Maia responds that very few semi houses these days own their own fabs, yet they manage to service their customers adequately.
And as for the comment that startups such as his don't have enough software support, Maia notes that his company has roughly 100 programmers dedicated to creating digital audio code, from the firmware stack to host-PC applications and eventually getting into services (MP3.com is a major investor in the company). This cadre of programmers dedicated specifically to digital audio, Maia argues, is larger than you'd find even at the well-established DSP houses. "Creating the silicon wafer is the easy part," he says. "The software and support are the key elements."
Picture this
The bulk of this article focuses heavily on digital audio as an example of a market niche in which DSP vendors are actively aiming to please product-development teams. But DSPs are starting to play dominant roles in other emerging convergence markets as well—most prominently, digital cameras.
SOUND AND VISION: The Texas Instruments programmable DSP that drives Hewlett-Packard's PhotoSmart 315 can allow cameras to play MP3 music and even record video, in addition to capturing 2-megapixel still images.
Again, a standard DSP doesn't have nearly all the features needed specifically to implement a digital still camera. Problems start with the fact that a CCD (charge coupled device) sensor doesn't generate RGB (red green blue) data at every pixel; it instead generates a raw image known as a CFA (color filtered array). CFA data must undergo significant processing before the image arrives in a format suitable for compression or viewing. Just a few examples include lens-distortion compensation (because camera lenses introduce nonlinearities in image brightness), fault-pixel interpolation (because large-pixel CCD arrays may have defective pixels), and CFA interpolation (to reconstruct colors by interpolating neighboring pixels).
Clearly, what seems from the end user's viewpoint to be a simple act—clicking a button and viewing an image—involves some demanding DSP tasks. But besides controlling a CCD array, a DSP optimized for digital cameras should also be able to control an LCD for image display, work fast with various types of memory, and support various I/O ports (with serial, USB, and IrDA infrared being the prime candidates).
Your plain-vanilla catalog DSP isn't up to all these tasks. That's why Texas Instruments combines a C5000 DSP core for imaging tasks with an ARM7TDMI processor for system control functions. The result is the TMS320DSC21, a chip priced at $15 in OEM quantities. The 500-MIPS DSP subsystem works with an 80-MHz, 32-bit-wide SDRAM interface. The chip's programmable CCD controller supports arrays with as many as 4 megapixels, while an integrated preview engine performs 30-frame/second NTSC and PAL previewing. The device supports CompactFlash and SmartMedia storage, as well as USB, RS-232, and IrDA ports. Even though it provides sub-1-second shot-to-shot delay for 2-megapixel CCDs, the chip consumes only 260 milliwatts in preview mode, 365 milliwatts in capture mode, and 105 milliwatts when you use the chip to play MP3 files—a function not yet found on every camera.
The first manufacturer to take advantage of this chip is Hewlett-Packard, in its PhotoSmart 315. The camera sells today for $300, an aggressive price for a 2.1-megapixel model. It features a 1.8-inch color LCD, a 2.5-times digital zoom, a USB port, and an HP JetSend infrared interface, which allows quick wireless printing (to HP printers, natch
PortalPlayer Announces Strategic Manufacturing and Technology Development Partnership With Oki Semiconductor
Global Leader in LSI Production Provides Capacity to Support First Single-Chip Portable Digital Audio Playback and Recording Solution
Santa Clara, Calif., June 5, 2000 -- PortalPlayer Inc., a supplier of end-to-end solutions for delivering open and secure digital media via the Internet, today announced a broad ranging manufacturing and technology development agreement with Oki Semiconductor. Oki, a leading provider of custom integrated circuits, will handle all aspects of production for PortalPlayer-designed ICs, including the PP5001 single-chip solution for portable digital audio playback and recording devices, which was introduced today. The two companies also will collaborate in development of intellectual property to further enhance PortalPlayer's technology position.
The manufacturing partnership assures availability of PortalPlayer IC products in the quantities required by consumer electronics companies, the principal market for the company's digital media platforms. As PortalPlayer broadens its product line its collaboration with Oki will provide access to a wide range of high-value Intellectual Property (IP) and proven core technologies for integration. "With one of the world's leading IC firms as our manufacturing partner, we are well-positioned to meet production requirements of leading consumer electronics OEMs," said John Mallard, president and CEO of PortalPlayer, Inc. "Oki is known for its innovation, quality and service, which are values we share here at PortalPlayer. It's our plan to bring to market innovative platform technologies well ahead of our competition, and Oki's commitment to PortalPlayer and our customers is a major step toward delivering on this goal." "The management team at PortalPlayer understands that OEM companies look for a full solution, and that innovative chip design is just the first step in creating market leadership," said Shusaku Sumida, president and COO of the Silicon Solutions Division, Oki Semiconductor. "We are committed to supporting the company's ramp-up to volume manufacturing of its first products, and to helping PortalPlayer leverage the strengths within Oki to address the needs for its next generation products."
About the PP5001
The PP5001 is a high-integration, system-on-a-chip IC, designed for playback and recording of digital audio content in compact, battery-powered systems supporting a variety of decoding, encoding and encryption technologies, and multiple types of storage media and displays. It is the hardware portion of a fully integrated platform solution that includes on-chip firmware and a complete Windows Media Management application.
Oki Semiconductor's expertise in large-scale integration (LSI), low-power design and quality manufacturing of high-volume products provides significant benefits to PortalPlayer. In particular, support for the ARM™ processor core architectures used in the PP5001, extensive experience in peripheral integration and long-term relationships with leading OEMs strengthens the ability of PortalPlayer to secure and maintain market leadership.
About Oki Semiconductor
Founded in 1977, Oki Semiconductor manufactures a broad line of advanced integrated circuits for use in computers, EDP, automotive, telecommunications and consumer products. A leader in CMOS memories, gate arrays and ASICs, Oki's product lines also include speech synthesis, microcontrollers and advanced communications devices for wired, wireless and fiber optic applications. As a certified vendor of Universal Serial Bus (USB), the company's ASIC technology offers PCs a plug-and-play connection to a fast-growing list of new peripherals. The company is also a leader in packaging technology, providing sophisticated options to its customers. With U.S headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., Oki Semiconductor has manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. All manufacturing facilities are ISO 9001-certified. Oki Semiconductor is a division of OKI America Inc., a subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. For more information, the company's home page on the World Wide Web is located at http://www.okisemi.com.
PortalPlayer, Inc.
PortalPlayer, Inc. supplies consumer electronics manufacturers with complete platform solutions for open and secure delivery and management of digital media via the Internet. The company develops and markets advanced systems for digital audio recording and playback, using MP3 and other popular digital compression technologies, tightly integrated with e-commerce and digital rights management.
Founded in June 1999, PortalPlayer is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with major operations in Seattle, Washington, and Hyderabad, India. The company has received two rounds of venture funding from Chase Capital, Techfund Capital, FlatIron Partners, MP3.com, and individual investors. More information on PortalPlayer, Inc., and its products is available on the company's Web site, www.portalplayer.com.
CADILLAC IMAJ
GENEVA, Switz: A considerable look at the future of Cadillac design suggests that it's the most exciting styling vision we're likely to see over the next decade.
This opinion is based on artistic renderings or actual pre-production versions of four vehicles that will definitely go on sale in the next three years, and on exposure to two concept vehicles -- the Evoq roadster last year and the Imaj luxury sedan at the recent auto show here.
Some roadster that looks considerably like the Evoq will definitely arrive in the next couple of years.
As for the Imaj, well, in fairly specific terms it describes what the shape of GM's luxury division's sedans will be for the coming decade. Indeed, I would not be surprised if the next Seville looked surprisingly like this concept vehicle when it debuts in a few years.
Imaj is also likely to be a harbinger of Cadillac technologies to come, since John Smith, Cadillac's general manager, says it "extends the division's core technical values of precise all-weather-control, active safety and infotainment to an ultra-luxury sedan."
In the view of Wayne Cherry, a GM vice-president and director of its Design and Portfolio centers, "Imaj would be very exclusive and limited, much like the fashion industry's 'signature label' products. It's designed to be a high-end flagship for both Cadillac and General Motors, pushing the limits of performance, comfort and communications technology."
But more on the technology in a minute. First a few words on that styling, which will indeed take some getting used to.
The crisp lines, sharp angles, V-shaped grille and stark vertical taillights of Imaj are also visibile in the Evoq and those real world vehicles I can't say too much about. Smith claims Imaj's "faceted, sheer forms exude a diamond-like quality underscored by knife-edge coachwork, from its louvered roof panels to its integrated front and rear aero panels."
Like it or lump it, that's what the style is going to be, and Cadillac fully expects lots of people to lump it but more than enough of them to love it and make it a marque sold and coveted around the world. It's GM's vision thing for Cadillac in general. In other words, no more boring cars that are designed to offend as few people as possible.
As for Imaj in particular, Smith says it "changes the traditional ultra-luxury formula of heavy, long and consumptive to agile, useful and approachable. It has the flexibility, features, and power to transform from being a chauffeur's car during the week to a driver's car on weekends."For power, Imaj uses an updated version of the supercharged Northstar V8 engine that debuted on the Evoq. Featuring a liquid-to-air intercooler and continuously variable valve timing, the enhanced Northstar delivers 425 horsepower, which is fed to all four wheels through an all-new 5-speed automatic transmission.
The Night Vision system that is currently exclusive to Cadillac's Deville model can also be found on Imaj, but at both ends of the vehicle to enhance the driver's field of vision behind the car. Obstacle alert sensors and rear vision cameras, which replace the mirrors, also enhance rearward mobility.
Aluminum space frame construction is meant to provide a low mass and a rigid chassis, and the Goodyear EMT run-flat tires, 20-inch magnesium wheels, Delco ABS and traction control, and Brembo brakes are actiely managed by an advanced, next-generation StabiliTrak chassis control system.
"Every detail of Imaj was designed to enhance its role of being the perfect vehicle to drive and to be driven in," Smith explains. "Inside its 5.1-meter length, Imaj expands the concept of luxury to include the artful integration of advanced technology. The executive on the go can climb in the plush rear seat of Imaj, with first-class airline-like accommodations, and immediately get to work. This includes reaching business contacts on a hands-free cell phone, retrieving e-mail, or working on documents."
Give the chauffeur the night off and Imaj quickly changes to suit you, since it has adjustable pedals, seating, steering and head-up display. "Combine this with steering wheel-mounted controls and shift-by-wire gear selection," Smith says, "and you create the quintessential driver-in-control environment. Adaptive cruise control manages following distances at highway speeds, while front- and rear-facing radar ease parking in close quarters."
A fingertip-based security system called e-lock provides entry to Imaj, which is equipped with airbags fore, aft and sideways that are smart enough to adjust to the occupants' size and other variables. Every seat is fully reconfigurable, featuring in-seat heating and ventilation," Smith points out, and "rear seats recline and offer footrests for comfortable support." As well as its own environment controls, Smith notes, each seat has e-mail access and an individual LCD screen with DVD capabilities, navigation and entertainment, developed by IBM and Delphi.
The Bose audio system incorporates headrest speakers, and GM's OnStar is on board, as are four individual cellular phones. All information is routed through Delphi's Communiport central server.
Hooking back to that "signature label" connection, Cherry points out that Cadillac has teamed with Italian jeweler Bvlgari, "which will provide accompanying modular aluminum luggage, an exclusive fine clock and distinctive instrumentation for the concept vehicle -- acknowledging the tastes of potential owners.
Undeniably modern, the Imaj also bows in the general direction of Cadillacs past, says Simon Cox, concept vehicle design director of the GM Concept Design studio in Birmingham, England. "Obviously Cadillac has a great deal of heritage," Cox points out. "With Imaj, the point was to create a car that was unmistakably a Cadillac but not retro. We wanted to recreate the drama of older Cadillacs, echo their technological advancements, and create a piece of modern art, rather than a cold, technological form."
Like it, lump it, love it or leave it, you better get used to it, since this is the type of vehicle we'll be seeing from Cadillac for the next decade.
Buick's Regal Cielo Concept Car
By Scott Memmer
Last updated: 2001-01-24 11:53:44.0
Buick has taken the plunge into deep "e-motion" with the unveiling of its all-new Regal Cielo concept vehicle with Personal Vehicle Assistance (PVA).
Stealing a page -- or would that be a screen? -- from aftermarket vendors who have recently come to market offering every device imaginable for the interior of a car, Buick has answered the bell by delivering a fully "e-ready" sedan that does everything but butter your toast.
A decision is still pending about whether the vehicle will be put into production. Nevertheless, it provides a glimpse into the future of in-car electronics.
Part of a push by the Detroit-based automaker to stay abreast of current technology, the Buick Regal Cielo is a brainchild of e-GM, a new wing within the company dedicated to bringing state-of-the-art on-board information and communication products to its customers.
The Buick Regal Cielo concept with PVA also boasts a retractable convertible roof, which originally appeared a year earlier on a previous Regal Cielo concept car. The Regal Cielo is powered by a supercharged 3800 Series II V6 generating 240 horsepower and 280 foot pounds of torque.
"The 'e' capabilities of Personal Vehicle Assistance take Regal Cielo to a new level of functionality," said Roger W. Adams, Buick general manager, in a recent interview. "From open-air motoring to on-demand information and entertainment, this car changes the definition of 'family sedan.'"
Changes, indeed. Who could've foreseen this while riding around in dad's old '63 Skylark?
The Regal Cielo concept offers a number of cutting-edge technologies, some geared toward entertainment, others more toward business and communications. Among these features are:
OnStar, GM's in-car communications and information service; OnStar Technology
Voice-activated controls for the retractable roof, entertainment systems and cell phone;
A Sony Memory Stick system for data transfer;
A laptop computer integrated into the passenger seat back;
A rear-seat-mounted DVD-based audio-video system.
The PVA system is controlled by an Intelligent Data Bus (IDB) digital processing unit, which provides a centralized brain for all the various on-board functions. The IDB network is reconfigurable, allowing the driver to easily customize settings. Buick also claims the system is set up to add new technologies as they arise as well as accommodate existing aftermarket products, such as anti-theft devices and navigation systems.
The intent is to offer an upscale sedan that is fully wired for work or play.
"Products being developed by e-GM," the company stated in a recent press release, "address the growing customer need to stay connected to the office, home and the world while on the road."
All functions in the PVA package are controlled by a centralized touch screen monitor.
One of the unique features in the system is something called personal digital assistant (PDA), which contains a calendar, contact data, to-do lists and memos. To avoid distraction and improve driving safety, the PDA function on the touch screen is not visible when the car is in motion. Instead contact data, such as name and phone number, is fed to the driver through the cellular phone readout.
Another unusual feature is the "backpack" audio-video system -- a DVD-based entertainment package that attaches to the top of the seat back. The system plays DVD movies and also has a port to plug in a video game platform. No longer will the kids be asking, "Are we there yet?" or "How much longer, Dad?" Instead, they'll be anesthetized by a blue screen, just like they are at home.
The real advantage is the system's portability. The entire package can be closed up and moved to another vehicle, or even to a hotel room. For ease of use, it also comes with a wireless remote control.
The audio-video setup is designed and manufactured by Delphi Automotive Systems. Delphi plans on marketing the setup, called the Communiport Seat-top Rear-Seat Audio/Video entertainment system, through OEMs as well as retail auto dealers. Pricing and availability are pending.
Delphi claims to be seeing a huge upsurge in its in-car audio-video entertainment systems business in the past two years.
We must say something here.
We think it's great that all these technologies are making their way into the automobile. Some of them may even be useful. We remind drivers, however, that their number one job remains keeping their cars on the road and away from the ditch, or, better yet, out of the lanes of oncoming traffic.
To date, we've been disappointed by the lack of responsibility on the part of audio-video manufacturers, both OEM and aftermarket, in addressing safety issues surrounding the use of these devices. It all seems to be about sell, sell, sell. This leaves you, the driver, to use your discretion while utilizing these technologies in your cars. We urge caution.
Still, it's interesting to see what's coming down the pike. The car of the future holds some intriguing surprises.
We've included some links below to relevant Edmunds.com articles.
The Personal Vehicle Assistant Arrives
September 22, 2000
An emerging category of wireless Internet client devices is designed to make the in-vehicle wireless Internet experience feature-rich and easy to use. It is called the personal vehicle assistant. Similar to its hand-held PDA counterpart, the personal vehicle assistant is a Web-enabled wireless Internet consumer electronic device with the power to make a wide range of Internet services available anywhere, at any time.
For personal vehicle assistant users, these services can include two-way voice communications, e-mail, personalized news, navigation, traffic data and roadside assistance services, in addition to a wide spectrum of personal productivity and entertainment applications. For ergonomics, the personal vehicle assistant will enable hands-free operation with a basic user interface as simple as a car radio.
The personal vehicle assistant makes drive-time more productive:
Navigation applications will take the guesswork out of reaching new destinations, while real-time traffic notification systems will help drivers arrive at their destination sooner.
Personalized information services will keep drivers and passengers up to the minute with the latest news, financial and business data.
A new set of "m-Commerce" applications may be used to reserve hotel rooms, purchase event tickets, make restaurant reservations, or even automatically pay highway and bridge tolls.
Emergency services will be available, such as roadside assistance and automatic collision notification systems. In addition, voice-activated communications will keep drivers in touch, all while the driver keeps his or her eyes on the road.
Entertainment opportunities will enhance the drive-time experience, with MP3 digital audio for drivers and DVD movies for rear seat passengers.
Intel's Role
Intel has made a major commitment to the expansion of the wireless Internet, including technologies and industry investments that support innovative personal vehicle assistant product development. Intel's Wireless Communications and Computing Group is working to develop and enhance the wireless Internet experience for end users.
One way to enhance personal vehicle assistant capabilities is through higher integration and lower total system cost. To meet these goals, Intel has made technology investments in the areas of signal processing, baseband, control and application processing, as well as power and memory management.
Intel is also working to support the industry with investments in leading-edge companies. Many of Intel's industry alliances stem from the establishment of Intel Wireless Competence Centers, which focus on developing partnerships with world leaders in wireless communications. These centers underscore Intel's efforts to help fuel the worldwide cellular and wireless Internet explosion.
This combination of Intel technology, industry investment, and product innovation is providing wireless Internet device manufacturers, content providers and operators with the solutions they need to deliver the next generation of wireless Internet devices, from office to home, and on the road in-between.
Watch this Space — Very soon Intel will announce dramatic advances in telematics, including highly integrated personal vehicle assistant platform solutions. Check back often for the latest announcements.
Intel Announces Industry-Leading Software Platform Support for Telematics
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2001--Intel Corporation today announced that leading in-car computing software platform vendors are delivering support for the Intel® StrongARM/a processor and future processors based on the Intel® XScale(TM) microarchitecture.
Microsoft Corp., IBM, QNX Software Systems Ltd., Wind River Systems, Inc., Fonix Corporation and Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. are supporting the Intel StrongARM and Intel XScale microarchitectures to enable developers and original equipment manufacturers to reduce ``time-to-market'' and create sophisticated in-car, voice-enabled wireless applications.
The core software platform recipe for devices in the in-car computing, or telematics, market segment consists of open, scalable software platforms, extensible and comprehensive development tools and such key complementary technologies as speech recognition. These combined elements are necessary to deliver adaptable, scalable telematics devices that will enable and enhance applications and services for the automotive industry.
``Our customers asked for each of these solutions by name,'' said Pat Kerrigan, director for Intel's In-Car Computing Operation. ``We feel we have secured industry-wide support from key players to maximize the benefits of the Intel® Personal Internet Client Architecture and to provide our mutual customers with the best telematics development platforms available.''
Microsoft will support Intel with its Windows CE for Automotive software platform. This agreement represents one of the first measures in distributed computing from Microsoft's Car .NET framework. Windows CE for Automotive is an integral component of a growing portfolio of products and services which Microsoft provides to the telematics industry. The Windows CE for Automotive platform is being enabled for personalized web services development as part of the Microsoft .NET initiative. The new Hailstorm services benefit from the .NET technologies and architecture that make it possible for applications, devices and services to work together. The Microsoft Windows CE for Automotive adaptation for the Intel StrongARM processor is available today, and later this year for the Intel XScale microachitecture.
IBM embedded middleware manages communications, enables content and service creation and provides secure reliable transactions between devices and a back-end server. IBM's VisualAge® Micro Edition Java application development tools and deployment technologies for the Intel StrongARM SA-1110 processor and Intel XScale-based products allow developers to quickly and easily leverage existing applications for e-Business. IBM's implementation of Java technology for use with Intel StrongARM embedded processors is now available. IBM is integrating its Embedded ViaVoice(TM) products with the Intel StrongARM and Intel XScale microarchitectures to deliver high-quality noise robust voice recognition and text-to-speech solutions to the telematics industry.
QNX Software Systems will support Intel with the QNX RTOS, an operating system for building fault-resilient, dynamically upgradeable in-car applications. QNX offers telematics manufacturers a variety of off-the-shelf Internet and multimedia modules, POSIX APIs for leveraging a large base of developers and source code, an MMU-protected architecture that dramatically reduces debugging time, plus an optimized version of the IBM VisualAge Micro Edition J9 virtual machine. QNX support for the StrongARM SA-1110 development platform is scheduled for June 2001, to be followed by support for the Intel XScale microarchitecture.
Wind River has a strategic Center of Excellence relationship with Intel to provide leading development tool support across the Intel XScale and the Intel StrongARM architectures. Wind River supports these powerful processor families with the Tornado® integrated development environment (IDE) and VxWorks® real-time operating system (RTOS), as well as its VisionICE tools and Personal Jworks(TM) java solution.
Fonix Corporation is optimizing a version of its Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), that will be available by mid-year for Intel StrongARM and Intel XScale microarchitectures. This version of Fonix(TM) ASR will deliver top-quality speech recognition capabilities to mobile wireless devices including PDAs, smart phones and automobiles.
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products is integrating its noise robust speech recognition technologies (ASR 200 and ASR 1600 engines) and text-to-speech technology (TTS3000) in different languages on the Intel StrongARM and Intel XScale microarchitectures. These products can be used to develop applications for the mobile and automotive market. The company plans to release them by mid-year.
These companies also plan to utilize the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives software library to offer wireless device manufacturers new and compelling capabilities. Useful in a broad range of applications, the library includes functions for vector manipulation, matrix math and general signal, image, speech and audio processing, as well as sophisticated primitives for construction of standardized audio, video and speech codecs such as MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio, Layer 3), MPEG-4 and H.263.
To further aid fast time-to-market development, the Intel StrongARM SA-1110/SA-1111 Development Platform provides a comprehensive and feature-rich development environment for the design of applications based on the SA-1110 microprocessor. Refer to: http://developer.intel.com/design/strong/quicklist/Eval-Plat/992652. htm. For more information on Intel's telematics offerings, please visit www.intel.com/go/telematics.
About Intel
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
Supporting Quotes
Fonix Corporation -- ``The Fonix(TM) Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Engine and the Intel® XScale(TM) microarchitecture combine some of the strongest technologies to address quality speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities to the mobile industry,'' said Lynn Shepherd, Fonix vice president of technology.
IBM -- ``Telematics is a natural extension of mobile and wireless e-Business, which must integrate easily with peoples' lifestyles and personal interests,'' says Raj Desai, director, Telematics Solutions, IBM Industrial Sector. ``This requires platforms based on open standards to ensure common interfaces, applications and services. Intel is working to ensure customers have both a hardware and software solution for fast deployment of telematics projects. IBM's approach to embedded Java technology gives engineers unprecedented choice, including efficient integration of native programs, Java compatible platforms and custom tailored application support.''
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products -- ``The Intel StrongARM and Intel XScale microarchitectures are key platforms in L&H's strategy for the mobile and automotive market,'' said Patrick De Schrijver, president Automotive Solutions, Lernout & Hauspie.
Microsoft Corp. -- ``The Windows CE for Automotive software platform will enable new levels of scalability for the Intel® StrongARM/a processor and the Intel XScale microarchitecture,'' said Gonzalo Bustillos, director, business development and marketing for the Automotive Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. ``This alliance will provide customers the opportunity to use a reliable and scalable platform so they can market great products with short development cycles. Microsoft's Car .NET framework and its Automotive Mobile Services promote device interoperability, integration, and application extensibility to create an end user experience that is simple, yet compelling. In an increasingly competitive mobility market, business alliances are crucial for being able to successfully create and offer differentiating products and services.''
QNX Software Systems -- ``The QNX RTOS brings a unique time-to-market advantage to telematics manufacturers by offering a proven suite of ready-to-customize applications, an industry-standard POSIX environment for leveraging an enormous pool of source code and developers, and a fault-resilient architecture that lets manufacturers safely integrate applications from a variety of independent software vendors,'' said Linda Campbell, vice president of strategic alliances at QNX.
Wind River Systems, Inc. -- ``Wind River continues to work with Intel and other leading partners to develop more advanced solutions in the Automotive Infotainment/Telematics market,'' said Scot Morrison, vice president and general manager of the Wind River's Automotive & Industrial business unit. ``We believe that the combination of the Intel XScale microarchitecture and Intel StrongARM architecture with Wind River's leading embedded development software are well suited to the high demands of the next-generation, multi-media automotive applications.''
/a Third party marks and brands are property of their respective holders.
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!!One of the ways interactive automotive companies say new content will get into the car will be via a removable device that syncs up with the driver's home PC.!! [DOES ANYTHING COME TO MIND?]
October 15, 2000 Internet-Enabled Autos
Web Business Driver
Automotive Clients Are Stuck in Traffic Today, But There Are Huge Opportunities Just Around the Bend
By Karen J. Bannan
There are more than 200 million cars registered in the united States today, and another 15 to 15.5 million new cars roll off dealers' lots each year. Even if you just count the drivers, that's a lot of eyeballs, which is one of the main reasons why wired cars will be coming soon to a dealer near you.
But while analysts and car manufacturers say consumers are eager to get behind the wheel of these technologically enhanced vehicles, like other emerging industries the lack of standards and the use of proprietary technology could thwart the entry of smaller application developers, says Bryan Ma, an analyst with International Data Corp. "The standards aren't there, and the infrastructure isn't there either. We're not looking at a technology that even uses a screen - it's all voice-driven, and the work isn't really there yet either," says Ma.
There is, however, standards work going on. The Society of Automotive Engineers, the Electronic Industries Alliance, and the IDB Forum (an industry group that promotes the use of automotive and consumer electronics standards) are working on a common data bus - the Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) Data Bus (IDB) - that will be used to connect telematic and Internet-enabled devices to a vehicle's internal systems.
The ITS standards work was started back in 1995, before car manufacturers knew the Internet would be a factor. In addition to the IDB, the ITS group is working on standards for message formats, message header codes, node IDs, application services and service codes, data definitions, and diagnostic services. Unfortunately, many key points are still being worked out. For example, the ITS is still hammering out whether or not the IDB will support data rates of 1.6 Mbps and 10 Mbps, the data rates required for digital audio and video. Without this standard, automotive companies will be forced to use a proprietary technology, which will most likely add cost and complexity to the installation.
And that's not the only ongoing standards work. Recently, IBM was called upon to help the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration, a consortium of 13 automobile manufacturers, select which standards the group needed to define. "We had to walk them through what they should be thinking about, and what technologies they should be looking at," says Raj Desai, the director of IBM's automotive development group. Most notably, auto-makers need to develop an open network standard that lets all of a Net-ready car's more than 60 microprocessors and disparate networks communicate with each other. And because most of the content will reside offline and outside of the car, standards have to begin at the application level, says IBM's Desai.
In addition to these standards, in the end we may see widespread adoption of Java, too. This September, UBS Warburg LLC, a global financial services organization, released a study that endorsed Belgian telematics developer SmartMove's Open Telematics Framework system, which is Java-based. That's an interesting move, considering most of the current telematics systems are based on Windows CE. Some application developers are already taking the Java plunge. Motorola's iRadio, for example, is being developed using current Internet technologies, including Java that runs on Linux.
But don't count Microsoft out too soon. Microsoft recently inked a deal with five major Japanese components makers to develop applications for cars based on Windows CE for Automotive. Clarion, one of the main players, was part of the agreement. The next iteration of Clarion's AutoPC will feature an Intel Pentium 166 processor and Windows CE. Content for the interactive services is being coded in HTML or WAP-compliant HDML and XML.
Until standards confusion is ironed out, content providers can forge their own alliances, says Tom Ross, vice president of corporate development for InfoMove, a software applications and content developer. "It's going to take partnerships between hardware and software manufacturers, service providers, and car manufacturers to get this to where it needs to be," says Ross. "We're in a good position right now, because traditional automobile manufacturers are very open to working with companies, including startups. It's like we're back to the days when the Internet was being developed."
Five years out, application developers can expect to be supporting location-based services that combine ads with onboard GPS services. These services will make it possible for a supermarket to push local specials to drivers in the vicinity or to let restaurants send menu choices to the car, and may eventually make in-car connectivity free to end users. Streaming audio and video have also been promised. For example, Visteon is expected to launch a $9.99 per month satellite radio service that will feature more than 100 channels of music. And there will be portals.
One of the ways interactive automotive companies say new content will get into the car will be via a removable device that syncs up with the driver's home PC. Consumers will have their own personalized portal, where they can select the types of content they want to bring into the car and set them up for download. "We're not talking about real-time browsing in the car or even heavy computing," says Brian Gratch, Motorola's marketing director for its Telematic Communication Group.
In the meantime, application and content developers looking to get into the businesses need to get their feet wet, since PC and Internet industry titans such as IBM, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft are already making inroads into the category. So what's a developer to do? Focus on supporting the applications that have already been announced, while keeping an eye on future functionality, says Jack DeBiasio, director of engineering and technology for Clarion. "Developing applications that rely on cellular service is going to be disappointing, because right now there are big holes in the coverage. The best bet is to focus on applications that you can use for entertainment and information within the car space," he says. And Clarion, along with other developers, is doing just that.
We'll see services in a few years that include engine monitoring and maintenance capabilities and downloadable engine tune-ups. "We'll be able to notify owners about service visits and inform them about non-safety or maintenance issues," says Mark Horvath, a multimedia brand manager with Visteon, an offshoot of Ford Motor Co.
Despite the Batmobile-like promises, in the beginning applications will be less snazzy than people might expect and far less Internet-centric. Most will fall under the telematics category - navigation, driver warning, and communications systems. Rudimentary read-only e-mail will also make it into cars this year, as will simple news, weather, and traffic information services.
IBM ramps up WebSphere suite
By Ephraim Schwartz
IN SEPTEMBER IBM will the announce the next layer in its pervasive computing strategy, which involves the company's WebSphere Everyplace suite, its Web application development environment.
In a press conference this week, John Prial, director of marketing and strategy at Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM's pervasive computing division, said that next month the company would announce general availability dates for the suite as well as major partners in the device space. IBM is already on the record as having partnerships with Nokia, Ericsson, and Palm to deploy IBM's WebSphere e-commerce solution.
"The strategy is focused on creating middleware components such as MQSeries Everyplace to enable an assured transaction across the Internet no matter what the network connection might be," Prial said.
The suite will include an embedded client component for use on everything from set top boxes to game players, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and cell phones.
Next month the company also will announce partnerships with leading telecommunications companies, ISPs, and Web integrators. Prial named Agency.com, Razorfish, and USI as three of the 18 integrators signed up.
"The aim is ubiquitous access on any range of devices," Prial said. "Our software stack is the same on all of these devices. It becomes an isolation layer running on different OSes and processors with a Java-based engine to run applications on top."
To give users access to their information anywhere, the WebSphere middleware lets users create a digital persona. The user decides what information is public so that data can follow him or her to any device, thus giving users continuous access to information as if they never left their own desktop.
Raj Desai, one of the chief architects in IBM's pervasive computing division, is working closely with the auto industry to deploy WebSphere EveryPlace in cars.
WebSphere is mostly a thin-client architecture that focuses on keeping as much of the computing power as an application will allow on the server side. For example, Desai called a car a 5,000-pound thin client.
Prial recognizes, however, that thin clients are not all alike: Some are browser-based, some may need more intelligence, and some may have a thicker stack of software. But all of these different sources come from the same WebSphere Everyplace-embedded edition.
The benefits of thin-client computing, according to both Prial and Desai, are lower maintenance and support, and in a wireless environment, the technology gives users better access to more current real-time information.
There is also less chance for what Desai calls a lifecycle mismatch because as applications change, only the server needs to be upgraded.
The big challenge that faces pervasive computing as it gets deployed across so many new devices is managing millions of systems rather than thousands of desktops.
InfoWorld Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz is based in San Francisco.
freddie/sentinel--6/5/00
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/06052000.jsp
October 1, 2000 Talk to Me
By Joshua Dean
jdean@govexec.com
ne day soon, while driving your car, you may instruct it to check your e-mail and read back the most urgent messages. About this time, you’ll stop dialing numbers on your cell phone. You’ll just speak the name of whomever you want to call. And forget the pen you now use to navigate between menus and applications on your handheld computer. In the future, you’ll control it with your voice.
Speech recognition technology has gone beyond dictation. As the wireless Web begins to take off, companies are banking on speech recognition as the command and control technology—the user interface—of the future.
Yet it’s only recently that speech recognition technology has become viable for general use. In days past, voice recognition software was clunky and took forever to train. Even then, the software was only marginally accurate.
But the software has matured. Now, it takes about five minutes to train the software as opposed to 60 to 70 minutes in the past, says Klaus Schleicher, director of product management for Lernout & Hauspie’s Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software. And because voice recognition is a computing intensive application, the dramatic rise of processing speed has increased the software’s accuracy. Schleicher says the percentage of accuracy is now in “the high 90s.” This means executives can dictate with more assurance that what they are saying is exactly what the computer is transcribing.
The advances in the core technology have also led to new uses. These days, speech recognition is being used to control computers. Users can open menus, navigate through documents or various applications, even surf the Web by giving a computer voice commands.
Plus, in the case of e-mail and the Internet, just to mention a couple examples, the software can read text in a human-sounding voice. Gone are the days of strange, robotic sounding voices, Schleicher says. “It is human sounding technology.”
Industry leaders expect voice recognition technology to play a key role in appliances meant to access the wireless Web. This means handheld computers, cars, even cell phones will use the technology in both command and control and information reading capacities.
“The wireless Web is more of a highway than a destination,” says Patty McHugh, director of new business development for IBM voice systems. “Voice recognition technology is an extension of a real, natural user interface.”
And data from L&H supports this, calling speech the “easiest means of communication.” People who write by hand average 10 to 20 words per minute; a fast typist typically taps out 60 to 100 words per minute; talkers belt out 80 to 160 words per minute.
Plus, with voice technology a user isn’t restricted by what he or she sees on an appliance’s screen, McHugh says. “You’re going to see a lot of different kinds of devices meant to access the Internet wirelessly. Voice will be the thing that ties them all together,” McHugh says.
But McHugh points out a drawback to the technology. “People who use it have watched too many science fiction movies and [they expect] to be able to talk to an appliance like it is a human being. But we’re still a ways away from Star Trek.”
Even so, drivers will soon instruct their cars to monitor traffic congestion. The cars will do this by accessing real-time traffic data from the Internet. The cars will then be able to suggest alternate routes to avoid tie-ups. “You will use speech technology to help keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” says Raj Desai, IBM director of worldwide automotive solutions. “You will interact with the car just as if you were talking to someone sitting next to you. You will give commands and it will respond.”
Sentinel $$$$
Reply To: None Monday, 7 May 2001 at 5:51 PM EDT
Post # of 673743
Guest Opinion May 2001
Sounds good
End-to-end digital-audio systems will bring
greater flexibility, new features, and enhanced
sound fidelity to the consumer listening
experience.
Niels Anderskouv, Texas Instruments
Audio recording and playback have
been digital for a long time, but until now
listeners have had to settle for
compromises in sound output that result
from analog amplifiers, converters, and
speakers. Today, digital designs are
appearing that will revolutionize audio.
Digital audio systems will bring greater
flexibility, new features, and enhanced
sound fidelity to the consumer listening experience.
Digital implementations drive speakers twice as efficiently as
conventional analog components, consuming less power and
dissipating a fraction of the heat. At the same time, DSPs and
other digital circuitry increase signal quality and integrity.
Advanced digital technology not only relays audio information
with greater clarity from the source to the speaker, but also
enhances the sound output through techniques such as
environmental frequency response and dimensional effects.
Using digital technology, even small, inexpensive speakers can
now produce sound quality once reserved for larger speakers
costing hundreds of dollars.
These capabilities translate into new types of audio applications
and new features for existing applications. Soon,
consumer-entertainment systems, such as those packaged as
“home theater in a box,” will combine the functionality of DVD,
CD, digital and Internet radio, digital-TV reception, gaming, and
home AV networking. Consumers will realize the benefits of
digital AV technology and reduced system components with the
convergence of these products into one system. Multispeaker
audio systems, supporting the latest digital standards while
automatically calibrating themselves to the room’s acoustics,
complete the consumer’s digital sound experience.
Home networking is bringing greater convenience to phones,
mobile computers, and other data appliances. Rather than
sacrificing traditional sound quality as consumers demand
smaller form factors, lighter-weight digital audio schemes help
conserve battery power and extend usage time while delivering
enhanced sound. Handheld entertainment systems with
combined functionality, such as DVD/MP3 players or digital still
camera/audio recorders, will similarly benefit.
In PC applications, advanced digital audio enhances
presentations, live/recorded news media, videoconferencing
and, of course, gaming. When automotive systems adopt
end-to-end digital audio, they will provide outstanding sound at a
lower cost with reduced wiring. Currently, lengthy design cycles
prevent car manufacturers from installing the newest
technologies. However, dealers will begin connecting
aftermarket digital-audio systems to the factory-installed digital
network bus (IEEE 1394), providing consumers with the latest
audio equipment. Other features will include directional audio,
self-calibrating multi-channel systems, and digital noise
canceling.
Once digital technology extends all the way to digital speakers,
there’s no telling where the audio experience will go. Speakers
will appear that can be directly connected to LANs, or function
as Internet appliances. Single-chip implementations that will be
available in the next couple of years will make possible even
greater speaker miniaturization, enabling portable audio
systems to become wearable. The flexibility, features, and
quality of end-to-end digital audio are truly revolutionary, and the
revolution has only started.
Author information
Niels Anderskouv is Worldwide Digital Audio Marketing Manager for Texas
Instruments
http://www.commvergemag.com/commverge/issues/2001/200105/05guest1.asp
Session 12: Digital Interior Panel
Technology's Impact on the Interior: The Internet Car and Beyond
Raj Desai, Director of IBM Automotive Solutions, IBM, Corp.; Gonzalo Bustillos, Director Business Development, Automotive Business Unit, Microsoft Corp.; Mark Moody, Senior Java Architect, Computer Systems, Sun Microsystems; John Hansen, Director of Marketing, Driver Information Systems, Motorola Inc.
How does the electronics industry view the future of the automobile? To gain insight into the interior's digital future, join our panel discussion for a glimpse of what new technologies and applications might lie ahead.
The Detroit Auto Interiors Show Features Latest Innovations From More Than 250 Companies
DETROIT, May 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Since its inception in 1994, The Detroit Auto Interiors Show has earned a reputation as the premier gathering place for the automotive interiors industry to see the latest in design, materials and manufacturing technologies. Early announcements indicate that this year will be more exciting than ever as innovations in automotive interior electronics, such as telematics and voice technology, take center stage at The Detroit Auto Interiors Show -- Where Interiors, Electronics and Technology Fuse, May 15-17, 2001 at Detroit's Cobo Center.
``The show reflects the evolving nature of the automotive interior business,'' said Richard Lebovitz, Auto Interiors' editorial director. ``Attendees will see new families of materials, such as thermoplastic olefins (TPOs) and soft-touch coatings, and new processes, such as design-to-delivery CAD/CAM solutions for mass customization. There is also a group of totally new interior technologies and services, ranging from voice technology to telematics services, that are still in their infancy.''
Auto interiors professionals at The Detroit Auto Interiors Show will also find exhibiting companies focusing on interior technologies and services. Several exhibitors will showcase acoustical materials being applied in sophisticated new ways to deal with present and future interior environment issues, such as driver distraction. Electronics suppliers such as Altia, Bourns, Philips Speech Processing and many others will demonstrate their respective expertise and innovation in embedded software, semiconductors and voice technology.
To highlight advancements in automotive interior technology, The Detroit Auto Interiors Show will feature the Electronics Pavilion. The Electronic Pavilion is a unique exhibit that highlights cutting edge in-vehicle electronics and intelligent transportation system technologies. Top companies in voice technology fields, such as Lernout & Hauspie and Clarity, will be exhibiting. Some of the other emerging technology companies exhibiting are IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and telematics providers Webraska and WirelessCar.
Auto interiors professionals will discover an array of innovative automotive interior design, engineering and manufacturing solutions, plus an array of exhibitors representing the fast-growing in-vehicle electronics market and global nature of the interiors industry at The Detroit Auto Interiors Show.
Atlanta-based Auto Interiors is a publication of Bill Communications, Inc., the nation's fastest-growing publisher of influential business magazines, a producer of major conferences and expositions, and owner of numerous Web information delivery sites on the Internet. The company publishes more than 45 business publications and produces 31 leading business conferences, exhibitions and events from its headquarters in New York and its division offices in Atlanta, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
Bill Communications is a subsidiary of VNU-USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Netherlands-based VNU, an international publishing and information company that employs approximately 15,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of more than $2.8 billion.
For additional information on The Detroit Auto Interiors Show, visit www.autointeriorshow.com
European Telematics Market Expected to Reach 7.6 Billion in 2007, Says Frost & Sullivan
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2001--Wireless interactive technology is driving the European automotive market to new heights as key automakers battle for position.
The weapon being used to gain a competitive advantage is telematics -- sophisticated technology that connects the consumer and enhances the driving experience.
According to new analysis by Frost & Sullivan (www.transportation.frost.com), ``European Automotive Telematics for Hardware and Services,'' this market earned $922.9 million in 2000 and is projected to reach $7.6 billion by 2007.
``The market potential is unlimited,'' says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Tif Awan. ``Significant growth in the market will create valuable opportunities for all the companies in the telematics chain. However, there are also numerous challenges for market participants, principally unlocking the value of telematics for end-users in terms of desirable applications and services.''
Telematics is the convergence of the automotive, IT and telecom industries to forge an interactive exchange of data over a wireless communication network. The wireless providers deliver telecommunications connectivity, the IT industry contributes the network software and applications expertise and the automotive Tier 1 suppliers provide the necessary integration and in-vehicle systems.
This study examines the main areas of the emerging automotive telematics market, hardware systems, applications and services. Hardware systems hold the biggest share of the market at this stage, generating 82 percent of revenues in 2000. However, Frost & Sullivan predicts this will drop to 42 percent in 2007 as the services sector begins to dominate the market.
Awan believes automotive manufacturers could increase awareness of the telematics market as a whole by making on-board CD-based navigation systems more attractive to end-users. Frost & Sullivan predicts the current systems used to deliver safety and security applications and these navigation systems will converge into a single modular multifunction unit, called infotainment, with multimedia capabilities by 2004.
``In order to release end-user value, companies have to unleash the commercial potential of the available and emerging technology,'' says Awan. ``Any technology that does not create superior value for users has a limited future, a lesson that was learned from the development of the Internet. It is vital for automakers to begin generating greater awareness among their drivers. For the European automotive telematics market to yield its potential, the industry must move from a technology push to a market pull strategy.''
Frost & Sullivan, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., is a global leader in international strategic market consulting and training. Frost & Sullivan's industry experts monitor the global automotive telematics industry for market trends, market measurements and strategies. This ongoing research is part of the North American Automotive Telematics Market. Executive summaries and interviews are available to the press.
Along with offering in-depth strategic market consulting research, Frost & Sullivan also provides custom consulting needs to a variety of national and international companies.
European Automotive Telematics Market for Hardware and Services
Report: 4246-18
Constellation 3D, Inc. (NasdaqNMS: CDDD)
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805 3rd Avenue
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Phone (212) 308-3572
Corporate Web site: www.c-3d.net
Constellation 3D (C3D) has developed breakthrough ‘Fluorescent Multilayer Disc and Card’ (FMD/C) technology that management believes will vastly increase the capacity of affordable removable data storage devices. The Company believes its FMD disc has the potential to be a standard storage media used in consumer entertainment, computing and data storage. FMD/C technology will address immediate and growing market demand for inexpensive storage in mass-market applications including digital cameras, digital video recorders and High Definition Television (HDTV).
**News Alert ** News Alert ** News Alert ** News Alert ** News Alert
Monday May 7, 8:54 am Eastern Time
Constellation 3D Announces Appointment of Dr. Jesse Fussell
-Former ARDA Director to Join Newly Created Scientific Advisory Board-
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2001--Constellation 3D, Inc. (``C3D'') (Nasdaq/NMS: CDDD - news), developer of Fluorescent Multilayer Discs (FMD) and Cards (FMC), today announced the appointment of Dr. Jesse Fussell and the formation of a Scientific Advisory Board which will supervise the FMD/C standardization program.
Dr. Fussell was the founder and first Director of ARDA (Advance Research and Development Activity), an information technology agency of the US government. He was responsible for the funding and incubation of many innovative technology companies under ARDA's operating mandate. Further, Dr. Fussell directed the communications science research division of the NSA (National Security Agency) and has been involved in furthering relationships between the high technology industry and US government for over 20 years.
``C3D's revolutionary Fluorescent Multilayer technology has tremendous potential and I look forward to helping ensure that its value is realized in commercial and government applications,'' said Dr. Fussell.
``Dr. Fussell is a respected industry leader and we are very excited to have him join us,'' said C3D President and CEO Dr. Eugene Levich. ``In addition, the establishment of a Scientific Advisory Board gives us a vehicle to draw from a vast knowledge base of industry experts from outside of the Company. The Board's first task will be to supervise the implementation of a comprehensive FMD standardization program.''
Constellation 3D, Inc.
The Company is the worldwide leader in the development of high capacity Fluorescent Multilayer Disc and Card (FMD/C) technology. Constellation 3D holds or has made applications for over 80 worldwide patents in the field of optical data storage, and is supported by 65 scientists. Headquartered in New York City, the Company has additional offices and laboratories in Massachusetts, Israel and Russia. More information is available at www.c-3d.net.
Safe Harbor Statement
Handhelds boot up to new role as owners' primary computers
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Saint Paul Pioneer Press
Michael Ducker of St. Paul says his parents needed convincing when he asked them for a Handspring Visor handheld computer late last year.
Adults commonly use the compact Visors and other such portable gizmos to keep track of their schedules and, increasingly, to go online and do full-bore ``productivity'' work such as word processing.
But Ducker, 14, is in junior high school. What would a kid do with such a grown-up device?
Quite a bit, as it turned out. Once Ducker finally got his hands on a high-end Visor Platinum last Christmas, he became a trailblazer -- one of a growing number of tech-savvy youths and adults who are using their handhelds to stretch the boundaries of mobile computing.
Handheld devices such as the pioneering PalmPilot -- the ancestor of today's Visors, Palms and Sony Clies -- were originally envisioned as little more than pocket organizers to keep appointments, to-do lists and address-book entries. For more sophisticated computer work, people were supposed to boot up their Windows PCs or Macintosh machines.
Not Ducker, who has elevated his Visor to primary computing status while relegating his desktop PC to an ancillary role.
At Ramsey Junior High School, he uses the Visor with Blue Nomad WordSmith word-processing software and a Think Outside Stowaway keyboard to take notes in class. At home, he whips out the Visor and folding keyboard to type up all his school papers. He has become a part-time journalist, writing Visor-related product reviews -- on his Visor, of course -- for the VisorCentral Web site. ``My Visor is now part of me,'' he says. ``I use it everywhere and for everything. It's like my second brain.''
Ducker is far from alone. An Illinois school district has attracted nationwide attention for what it calls the ``the largest educational deployment of handheld computers in the United States.''
Some 1,700 students and 65 teachers at Consolidated High School District 230 of Orland Park, Ill., use Palm handhelds from Palm Inc. Along with word-processing tasks, Orland Park students use the devices to collect and analyze data for fitness, nutrition and science classes (www.d230.org/handheld).
The University of South Dakota says it will provide Palm devices to 1,300 students beginning with the 2001-2002 school year. ``(Our) students live in a mobile society,'' says USD President Jim Abbott.
In a similar initiative at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., about 100 students already use Visors in a half-dozen classes (www.ecu.edu/handheld).
As with Ducker in St. Paul, the ECU students are told to regard their handhelds as primary computing devices for word processing, Internet access and archiving of critical information such as class assignments and syllabi.
Students are outfitted with dialup-modem modules that slip into a Visor slot, plus Palm MultiMail Pro e-mail software, ProxiNet ProxiWeb browsers, copies of WordSmith and other tools to encourage full-time Visor use.
``We're trying to force real use of the devices,'' says Dave Watkins, an ECU administrator in charge of information technology and distributed-education projects. ``It's a tool that will become more prevalent.''
Indeed, ECU is on the verge of deploying Xircom SpringPort wireless-communication modules that Watkins says will link Visors to the campus' high-speed Ethernet network. This will allow students to more easily access the school's online resources and to communicate with each other via e-mail or instant messaging -- all without wires, almost anywhere on campus.
Watkins recently tested the SpringPort module in an administrative meeting, exchanging instant messages with a colleague who was using an Ethernet-equipped Pocket PC handheld of the sort that runs Microsoft's Windows CE operating system.
``We were like two kids, sending messages back and forth about how much B.S.'' was endured in the meeting, Watkins says.
Experts see the Stowaway keyboard with its acclaimed folding-accordion design as another landmark add-on device for handhelds. The Stowaway, available for Palms and Visors as well as Pocket PCs, turns the handhelds into full-blown ``information-creation devices'' instead of mere scheduling aids or contact managers, says Kevin Burden, an International Data Corp. analyst.
``The keyboard gives people a use for these (handheld) devices beyond what they were intended for,'' Burden says. ``The fact that you can bang away on these things is pretty big. And at $99, (the Stowaway) is almost a no-brainer for people who need to input a lot of information into a device.''
Other products are spurring increasing use of handhelds, often as affordable alternatives to pricey laptop computers. WordSmith has won acclaim for mimicking Microsoft Word on the small screens of Palms and Visors (Pocket PCs all include Microsoft's Pocket Word). Wireless-communication add-on modules are proliferating. And data-storage modules such as IBM's Microdrives, with capacities up to 1 gigabyte, give compatible handhelds dramatically expanded information-archiving capabilities.
Obstacles to ubiquitous handheld use do remain. Handhelds are anemic compared to regular PCs. Most Visor and Palm screens are dim and difficult to read. The various handheld-product makers aren't always in sync, creating user headaches.
Think Outside recently had to redesign its Stowaway for the Compaq iPaq Pocket PC when it realized the keyboard was too flimsy to properly support the handheld along with add-on hardware such as a PC Card adapter and a wireless modem. A beefed-up keyboard is coming, but it won't accommodate still-bulkier iPaq add-ons Compaq has just unveiled. Sigh, says Think Outside.
Such problems notwithstanding, a handheld revolution seems to be well under way thanks to products such as the Stowaway, which recently hit the 1-million sales mark and has a won a devoted following among adult users.
``I'm a huge fan of my Palm Vx/Stowaway combination,'' says Michael O'Connor Clarke, a vice president at the international Cohn & Wolfe marketing firm.
``I no longer travel anywhere with a laptop -- just don't need the weight and battery-life troubles.''
Kevin Dando, a Public Broadcasting Service publicist and Stowaway user, does one better on O'Connor because his Palm VIIx has integrated wireless-Internet capabilities. ``I can store a document or a file on a Web site, which (I can download) using my Palm VIIx'' and then read or edit using the handheld and keyboard.
Dando also stores Office-style documents right on his Palm using DataViz Documents to Go software that transfers copies of his Word documents or Excel spreadsheets from his PC to his handheld. His only complaint: ``It can be pretty tricky trying to read an Excel document on the small surface of a Palm.''
Ducker of St. Paul, meanwhile, has become something of a Stowaway and Visor authority. He recently traded up to a Visor Prism, the model with a color screen, on which he has installed some five dozen applications along with electronic books by the likes of George Orwell and J.K. Rowling.
He is well known to top executives at Think Outside and Handspring, even exchanging e-mails with ``Donna'' -- legendary Handspring co-founder Donna Dubinsky.
At Ramsey Junior High, a number of Ducker's classmates have also purchased Visors and, in a few cases, Stowaways.
Even so, the youth doesn't anticipate that such handhelds will become standard issue for the bulk of K-12 students in the United States anytime soon. ``For my kids,'' maybe, he speculates.
MusicMatch grooves to paid tunes
By Gwendolyn Mariano
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
May 7, 2001, 12:45 p.m. PT
MusicMatch, which makes programs for creating and organizing digital music, on Monday launched a beta version of a music subscription service as it expands distribution of digital content.
The San Diego-based company said the streaming-music service, dubbed MusicMatch Radio MX, will let listeners customize playlists using popular songs from their favorite artists. The service also eliminates advertising, interruptions or buffering, according to MusicMatch.
Subscription services are growing popular with online-music companies as the record industry pushes them to pay artists for downloads; free services, too, find themselves coming up short when they rely solely on advertising revenues. Record labels are building their own services, and companies that once offered free music online are tacking on fees. Last month, for example, MTVi Group and infrastructure company RioPort said they would offer paid song downloads through MTVi's Web sites.
MusicMatch "has an interesting opportunity because of its established user base and...no banner ads," said P.J. McNealy, an analyst at research firm Gartner. "Still, it remains to be seen if consumers will pay for something that they traditionally had for free."
The subscription service costs $4.95 per month, $12.95 per quarter or $49.99 annually.
The online-music company said it has 100,000 tracks available from major and independent record labels through a license negotiated by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Digital Media Association. It added that it is in negotiations with the Big Five record labels--BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group--for a license that would let people choose individual tracks for streaming. Until such an agreement is reached, MusicMatch only streams a limited number of songs from certain artists or years.
MusicMatch CEO Dennis Mudd said he expects other online-music companies to begin charging for streaming and downloading in the near future.
"Eventually downloadable music is going to have to represent a viable business model where artists get their fair share and consumers pay a fair amount for the music that they're listening to--or else there's not going to be enough money to create the art in the first place," Mudd said. "Now and for some time longer, digital music is primarily a way to promote CD sales. But (that) can't last forever."
Founded in 1997, MusicMatch developed a digital music jukebox that's used by more than 18 million people. In February, the company released the final version of its Jukebox Basic and Plus software for Linux.