Focus with your phone
Coming this month to a shop near you in Tokyo... what is claimed to be the first mobile phone with a built-in colour camera making it possible to dispatch freshly taken photos by email. Released by J-Phone Communications, the J-SH04, pictured here, can also be used to produce instant prints through a Sharp colour mobile printer. It promises high-quality printing with 65,536 colours and 203 dpi resolution.
The phone also plays back voice and sounds from musical instruments and is compatible with FM sound sources and 16-harmony sampling sound. The company hasn't announced a price yet or whether it will be released in the UK. (VK)
Goodmans spins MP3
British budget hi-fi company Goodmans is set to become the unlikely hero of MP3 fans who feel frustrated by the tiny storage capacity of most personal players.
It is the first manufacturer to offer a personal CD player, the £80 CDMP350, that also plays MP3s stored on a CD-rom. Users can save around 10 hours worth of MP3 formatted music on one CD-rom - enough to archive the entire Beatles back catalogue.
The model also plays back conventional CDs and boasts random play, a 1-bit digital/ analogue converter and a bass boost option.
A slightly more upmarket take on the personal MP3 compatible CD player will soon be offered by Pine Technologies. Its £179.99 SM200C features a graphic equaliser and rechargeable batteries and is available with an optional car-kit.
It is available from the end of the month via PC dealers and www.pineuk.com.
Sharp PC talks back
In Japan, Sharp has unveiled what it is billing as the simplest PC to use ever. The PC-DJ10M/S combines a basic spec PC 566MHz Intel Celeron processor, 64MB RAM, 10 gigabyte hard disk) with a 13.3inch TFT LCD screen.
However, its secret weapon is Liquiy, a voice-activated on-screen navigation system that uses IBM's ViaVoice engine and Sharp's Associative Retrieval Technology. Users can ask Liquiy how to operate the PC's basic functions and it will respond with a mixture of voice commands and on-screen prompts. They can also ask questions about where to find pages on the internet and Liquiy then displays answers provided by search engines.
Lonely Japanese tele-workers should also note that Liquiy occasionally initiates conversations. However, they shouldn't expect anything more complex than being asked what they did at the weekend.
There's no news yet on a UK launch.
Turning Handsprings
Handspring is taking its range of PDAs upmarket with a pair of highly specified new models.
Available from Handspring's website now ( www.handspring. com/uk ) and due in the stores in November are the company's first colour PDA, the £399.99 Handspring Visor Prism, and its fastest model, the £249.99 Handspring Visor Platinum.
The products are the first PDAs to use Motorola's more powerful VZ 33MHz Dragonball processor.
The Visor Prism boasts 16-bit colour and can display more than 65,000 colours. Its makers claim the colour processing will significantly enhance applications such as games, web browsing and digital cameras.
Unlike previous Visor models, which use standard AAA batteries, the Prism comes with rechargeable batteries.
Handspring is billing the Visor Platinum as the fastest Palm OS compatible handheld computer on the market, claiming it is twice as quick as the Handspring Visor Deluxe and most other Palm OS products.
The Visor Platinum also features the latest enhancements of Palm's 3.5 OS including wireless infrared synchronisation and enhanced security.
Both new editions of Visor come with 8MB of RAM, USB support, Mac OS compatibility and the innovative Springboard expansion slot.
Coming soon are a host of upgrades and gadgets for the Visor range including a GPS module from GeoDiscovery, an MP3 player from Good Technology, and a colour game pack from Pocket Express. (AN)
