Toughbooks just get tougher

Panasonic has added the CF-28 to its Toughbook range, sporting a 600Mhz mobile PIII Speedstep chip. As the toughest in the Toughbook range, its redesigned chassis adds extra resistance to heat, water and dust with a newly developed damper and stainless steel case for the 20Gb hard drive, sealed ports and seamless silicon rubber round the cabinet edge. The unit can be dropped from a height of three feet without damage, even when dropped on its corner, and complies to the IP45 water and dust-proofing standards. ...more

Sony Ericsson launches photo-blogging phones

They have a 3.2megapixel sensor and a Xenon flash. And they're not digital cameras. ...more

Sony buys a slice of Real

Sony has announced it is to purchase a one per cent stake in RealNetworks and further a strategic alliance. The deal will see further integration of Sony's proprietary codecs and DRM technologies into RealNetworks' suite of media players and other software, and then the implementation of these onto hardware and portable players, including the likes of the PlayStation2. The two companies first announced a relationship at the Winter CES show of 2000, since when they have been working on integrating Sony's ATRAC3 technology (its audio compression codec based on the ATRAC format used in Minidisc) and OpenMG tools (a copyright protection technology that encrypts data ensuring that it cannot then be distributed at will) into RealNetwork's products. ...more

CES: Conan O'Brien takes the limelight in Gates' keynote

'Gadgets are no longer just for geeks... ...more

Bluetooth data security threat revealed

'Serious flaws' have been discovered in some Bluetooth mobile phones that could enable data stored on them to be obtained without knowledge or consent. According to a report by UK-based security company A L Digital it is possible to gain access to the entire address book and calendar contents and, in an extreme case, 'the complete memory contents of some mobile phones can be accessed by a previously trusted (paired) device that has since been removed from the trusted list.' The report identifies two kinds of attack made possible by the vulnerability. ...more