Philips and Rhapsody make music

PHILIPS TECHNOLOGY announced a partnership with Rhapsody, a Real Networks product that will allow streaming of Rhapsody music via the internet to Philips portable devices including any Philips goGear enabled device.

Another notable announcement made at the press conference was the introduction of the Design Collection. The collection is intended to appeal to both men and women as women purchase directly or influence buying decisions in over 61 per cent of the purchases in North America. The Design Collection is rather “Apple-esque” with rounded corners and softer styling. The 7000 series LCD in the design collection incorporates speakers in the rear which radiates the sound around the bezel.

Besides that Philips added some colours to its ‘Active Crystal’ lines. Can you say bling? The collection includes pink and black crystal earbuds and USB keys.

CASIO meanwhile introduced the Exilim EX-F1, a digital camera capable of an astounding 60 frames per second burst mode for still images. In addition, the same camera is capable of 1,200 frames per second in video recording mode. The camera includes 12x optical zoom. One of the most unique features is that the sensor is continuously capturing, so that even if your finger hits the button a fraction of a second too late it still can capture the moment.

Casio also introduced four other new Exilim cameras which range from thin and light 10 Mpixel models to cameras with wide angle lenses and optical zoom. All the cameras have built in h.264 encoding to provide the latest in video codec technology.

VIABLE, a company founded by a hearing impaired family, has created a device specifically designed for video conferencing on the move. The device measures approximately eight inches by six and consists of a display with an integrated camera. It is battery powered and the beta version runs on 802.11g or alternately can be hardwired.

The device is compatible with most video conferencing standards but is a dedicated device. It provides 30 fps of video conferencing but scales compression to fit within the available bandwidth. Pricing is not yet set.

YOGGIE, a maker hardware security products has an interesting line up of products on show at CES, including the Yoggie Pico. The Pico is a USB dongle which has a on-board processor which runs on a Linux OS and offloads computer security from the computer processor, leaving it to do more important things like coping with Vista.

The main benefits of the device (after a brief install) is that it conceals your computer's IP from the wibbly web, along with routing all incoming and outgoing traffic through the dongle. Unlike software based products which can severely bork your computer, the device consumes minimal resources and does not stomp all over your settings. µ