Dick Tracey fans who dream of carrying round personal information in their watch may not have too long to wait. US company Fossil has unveiled a watch that doubles as a personal organiser by using the PDA maker Palm's operating system. Due to be introduced in the middle of next year, the Wrist PDA (Palm) made its debut at the Comdex technology exhibition in Las Vegas this week.
Palm users will recognise the familiar application icons on the watch's square touch screen. These can be accessed via a tiny stylus in the band, or by using a rocker switch on the side of the watch. Owners input information via Palm's virtual handwriting system, Graffiti, or by using the Palm software on their PC or Mac and synching with the Wrist PDA via its USB connection.
The watch's infrared can be used to beam business cards or addresses to owners of other Palm-powered devices. The Wrist PDA comes with Palm's 4.1 operating system and its applications list includes address book, date book, calculator, memo pad and to do list. Palm expects a host of third-party applications to be available for download via the internet, the scope of which is limited by the storage on the watch - 2MB. Fossil is claiming that the Wrist PDA will run for around four days before batteries need recharging.
It remains tight-lipped about price, though its less sophisticated watch PDAs have sold for around £100. See www.fossil.com
· Fuji claims to have bridged the gap between a digital still camera and a camcorder with the FinePix M603 which reaches stores later this month. The M603 captures digital video at 640 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second, footage that Fuji claims is good enough to view on a standard television. While the supplied 512MB IBM Micro Drive storage cartridge will only store seven minutes of footage, the camera features a slot for an xD-card.
Such cards, developed jointly by Olympus and Fuji will eventually offer significantly more storage. An 8GB version capable of storing two hours of video is in the pipeline. Other facilities sported by the M603 include a 3.1mega pixel CCD, a 4.4 x digital zoom, voice memo and a very large 2.5inch TFT LCD screen. It will be on sale later this month priced at £700.
