INTEL'S PAUL OTELLINI gave a CES keynote that had one new codeword, some tech that is much farther off than he hopes and a lot of older process technology news. We will skip the older stuff.

The technology is based on the idea of a Star Trekish communicator, a little PDA that will translate voice on the fly. This may not surprise you, the tech is close to real, and probably will be available in the not hugely distant future. It may even be in PDA form before we all die of old age and ennuis.

The part less likely to happen before the sun dies a heat death is the camera on the back translating everything that you take a picture of. The Chinese writing on the store menu might be possible, but tossing in contextual info based on pictures? Overlay it intelligently on video in realtime? Ummm, call me a skeptic......

The device is also meant to show not only mapping/GPS, but pictures of the route so you can navigate virtually at eye level as if you were walking it. Think Google Maps on foot. Possible? Sure. Possible now? Probably. Will they ever get Aunt Zeldas Cafe in Rancid Armpit, Montana into the system? Yeah, right.

The biggest problem with these grand visions is that the tech might be possible, but the work involved in acquiring and intelligently sorting the images is not a practical thing. Not at all. Until they can come up with a way to map the planet at eye level in a commercially viable way, all the compute power in the world is not going to make this vision possible. Intel might do the silicon, they won't shrink the wetware requirements.

The new code name is Canmore, it is a Menlow based SoC for digital video based devices. Think a cut down x86 core with audio and video decode hardware, 7.1 sound, and 3D graphics. It is meant for appliances, and theoretically can do 1080p video at a fairly low power budget. µ