Other manufacturers are instead taking smaller devices that already do that kind of thing, like iPods, and making the content easier to enjoy.
NEW YORK -- "Mobile" in the world of technology means taking it with you, whatever it happens to be -- music, pictures, movies, anything.
Some manufacturers are constantly churning out new devices for toting your content all over the globe, like Samsung's RTA 1100.
“Basically it's a complete home media center. It's got a built-in hard drive, lets you store videos, photos, mp3 directly the player download them right from your PC and what you're going to do is move that anywhere you want to, store it there and be mobile from there,” said Jermain Anderson of Samsung.
Other manufacturers are instead taking smaller devices that already do that kind of thing, like iPods, and making the content easier to enjoy. Get set to start seeing these types of devices from a few developers. One is from a company called Microvision and they are offering the Show Pocket Projector.
“It projects a high definition image onto any surface from the signal received from an iPod, cell phone or any other mobile device. The beauty of this device you can generate an image as small as a computer screen or as big as a 60-inch plasma television,” said Alex Tokman of Microvision.
Scary thing is, we're almost to the point where any device that fits in your pocket that doesn’t do all those things is kind of thought of as low tech.
The ultimate goal for developers of these projectors is to eventually get manufacturers to just build them right into the iPods, cell phones and other mobile devices. And the third strategy in trying to quench our collective thirst to be more mobile -- make the devices we already have just do more.
Sling Media, for one, is working on software for blackberries so that soon they'll be able to access Slingboxes, to watch, from anywhere in the world. The cable box or DVD player that sits under your TV at home.
And at a time when your cell phone can play video games, your digital music player and GPS unit can make phone calls, Sony decided it was time for its PSP, Playstation portable, to do a little bit more.
“We just released firmware update 3.8 which allows you to do streaming internet radio no charge other than your wireless service whatever that might be. We've also just announced Skype which will be available for the PSP 2000 model and that'll be in a future update and you'll be able to use the Skype service to friends on PCs on Skype, on other PSPs on Skype, or even call phone lines and other lines,” said Cristian Cardona of Sony.
“And a GPS unit itself is a dongle that sits on top of your PSP. It's got 2D and 3D maps, text to speech. It's a pretty robust system when you're on the go with your Playstation portable.”
Scary thing is, we're almost to the point where any device that fits in your pocket that doesn’t do all those things is kind of thought of as low tech.