This year's CeBIT, to be held in Hanover on 12-19 March,
is going to be filled with huge, high-resolution, colour screens
and packed with wireless LAN base stations - and that's before the
exhibitors even get there.
The screens, some of them up to 25 metres across, made their
first appearance in high-traffic areas at last year's show, and
will provide visitors with news of product announcements at the
event, and of political and sporting events elsewhere. This year
the organisers have added an extra attraction in the shape of
Helen, a 3D "avatar," or animated character, created by Tevox. An
actress will read the news in English and German, while the Helen
software synchronizes the avatar's lip movements to her voice.
The other technological development lurks behind the scenes: A
network of 200 WLAN (wireless LAN) access points scattered across
the fairground will allow anyone with an IEEE802.11b WLAN card --
and €7.50 (£5) an hour -- to surf the Net as they stroll around the
show.
All those visitors surfing the Net in the unlicensed 2.4GHz
radio band should provide tough competition for the many wireless
products on display.
Wireless networking
Among the novelties are some power-boosted Bluetooth products,
including a cordless V.92 modem from Air2U that allows laptops and
PDAs to make dial-up data connections while 70 metres away from a
telephone jack, with no trailing cables. Bluetooth devices
typically have a range of 10 metres or less.
Inventel Systèmes combines Bluetooth and 802.11b WLAN
connectivity in its wireless base stations to bring mobile Internet
access to cafés and railway stations. Its DBW-250 contains a DSL
modem, while the EBW-250 has an Ethernet port, allowing several
units to be linked together to cover larger public areas. Both run
the Linux operating system for compatibility with administrative
and billing software, according to Inventel.
Panasonic will be showing a label printer with a built-in
Bluetooth connection. The 300-gram JT-H200PR can print 1,500 labels
before its battery needs recharging, and will go on sale in
May,.
Pitching to win the prize for most buzzwords in one box, Elmeg
will show its D@VOS-44.dsl. This device can provide Internet access
for up to seven devices over either a DSL modem or an ISDN line,
sharing access over Ethernet, home powerline networking (HomePN),
USB - or, released just last month, an optional Bluetooth module
boosted to work at up to 100 meters.
Trade shows can seem something of a madhouse, given the number
of people who appear to be talking out loud to themselves, but
Samsung staff demonstrating a new Bluetooth hands-free telephone
earpiece really are hearing voices in their heads. Samsung's earbud
headset does away with awkward booms or dangling cables, embedding
the microphone in the earpiece itself. There, it picks up the
resonance of the user's voice inside the person's head, a technique
that filters out most of the background noise, according to
Samsung.
Usually, radio transmitters and medical equipment don't mix, but
in Blue Space, IBM's idea of the "office of the future," attendees
will find a Bluetooth heart rate monitor designed to send a message
to the doctor if the wearer's heart rate rises too high.
Displays
Blue Space also contains IBM's Everywhere Display, which can
project a screen’s content undistorted on to any surface in the
room, whether wall, furniture, or floor. Other technologies allow
the projected image to be used like a touchscreen, according to
IBM. No news yet of whether Helen will be putting in an appearance
at this display ...
CTX's 46-inch plasma display, the CPM46WV1, doesn't move around
the room in quite the same way as IBM's Everywhere Display, but it
does move around. Plasma displays suffer from a problem with
"burn-in" which can be solved by moving the image slowly and
imperceptibly around the surface of the display, according to CTX.
At last, a screensaver that does its job while you do yours. The
CPM46WV1 goes on sale across Europe from April at €6,000
(£4,120).
While a 46-inch screen might be fine for home cinema, it isn't
big enough for the real thing. Projecting cinema-scale digital
images is fraught with difficulty, and is usually achieved either
by reducing image resolution or stacking together several smaller
digital screens, leaving ugly joints between the images. In the
Future Parc area at CeBIT, Germany's Fraunhofer Institute (better
known as co-inventor of the MP3 audio format) will demonstrate a
panoramic projection technique that it says can synchronise
multiple images from parallel seamlessly.
Another Fraunhofer Institute demonstration uses 3D projection to
fool video-conference participants into thinking they are all in
the same room by extending the projected image into their
surroundings while maintaining the sense of perspective. Video
cameras watching them perform the same visual trick for other
conference participants.
Cameras
Nikon will be using ambient light to offer all-round views of a
different kind with its Coolpix SQ, a digital camera with a
3-megapixel image captor and a 3X zoom. The screen and lens rotate
so pictures can be taken from different angles while looking at the
monitor display, which uses ambient light and backlighting to
maintain clarity even in bright sunlight, according to Nikon. The
camera will go on sale in the first half of this year.
There are any number of mobile phones around that can transmit
pictures from built-in cameras, but they still need human help to
aim them and push their buttons. FMN Communications has given its
remote-controlled camera a little more autonomy: it can capture up
to 900 hours of video on its built-in server and if an intruder is
spotted, for example, can transmit images over a GSM link for
examination by a human being.
Security
Intrusion detection isn't just about images: it's also about
network security.
Kaspersky Labs will demonstrate its personal firewall software,
Kaspersky Anti-Hacker, and its spam blocker for corporate networks,
Kaspersky Anti-Spam. It will also show an alpha version of
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 5.0, due for release later this year.
Softwin has upgraded its BitDefender antivirus software to
include MIDAS (Malware intrusion Detection Advanced System), which
analyses the behaviour of malicious programs in real time and
automatically creates an antidote, according to the company.
Fortinet is taking the hardware route to virus protection,
adding the FortiGate 3600 to the high end of its antivirus firewall
range. The new model, on show at CeBIT, will process traffic 25%
faster than the previous best, and have twice as many Gigabit
Ethernet interfaces, according to Fortinet.
As well as keeping the wrong traffic out, security is about
letting the right traffic in. Vasco Data Security International
aims to do that with its Digipass Authentication Server, which will
go on sale during CeBIT. The Digipass server software can be
integrated with a standard password challenge system to secure user
access to company networks or Web-based services. When a user
enters a user name and password in the usual way, an additional
one-time password is transmitted to the person's mobile phone,
which must then be keyed in to gain access to the network. If
either the phone is stolen, or the password cracked, but not both,
then the account remains protected.
Philips Electronics plans to secure physical assets of a
different kind: your clothes. It plans to embed RFID (radio
frequency identification) labels in designer clothing, allowing
boutiques to cut costs by tracking inventory better and reducing
theft.
Software
From softwear to software: BEA Systems will be showing the
latest version of its Web services development platform, BEA
WebLogic Platform 8.1, for the first time in Europe.
Baan too plans to improve business efficiency with the Measure
Up program it will be announcing at CeBIT. The program will help
businesses monitor core performance measures such as demand
forecast accuracy and lead-time reduction to aid them in
decision-making.
FLS Fuzzy Logic Systeme will reveal a different kind of
decision-support system, Qualicision, at the show. The system can
automatically make decisions based on a range of ill-defined
factors in the same way that a human would, running assembly lines
or quality control systems, according to the company.
Microsoft will be demonstrating the productivity suite
code-named Office 11 to anyone who hasn't already played with the
beta versions, alongside soon-to-be-released operating system
Windows Server 2003 and a range of products already on the
market.
Sharing
It's said that the next version of Microsoft Office is all about
information sharing. That's also what Hitachi Data Systems is all
about. It will be demonstrating a number of networked storage
systems, including a Microsoft Windows 2000 cluster attached to a
Hitachi Freedom Storage Thunder 9570V system. Its Hitachi Dynamic
Link Manager and Truecopy software ensures high availability and
aids disaster recovery, according to the company.
On a much smaller scale, Dynatron Electronics will show its
X-Drive, a 100G-byte, 288-gram portable hard disk drive that
connects to a PC via a USB 1.1 interface. It can also read Compact
Flash cards, Smart Media cards, Memory Sticks, Secure Digital cards
and MultiMedia Cards, copying data directly from the card to disk
without the need for a PC. X-Drive's rechargeable battery will run
for 2.5 hours, according to Dynatron.
But if you no longer need your old PC to copy your digital
photos onto an X-Drive, what are you going to do with it? The
Technical University of Berlin has an idea. Its ReUse Computer
project, sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Research and
Education, aims to reduce the vast quantity of electronic junk we
throw away - 250,000 tons a year in Germany alone. ReUse sets out
to clarify the technical, legal and organisational questions which
hamper the recycling of computers, making it easier for social and
educational institutions to gain access to technology -something to
think about next time you upgrade.