Asp split function

Product: The Aibo Latte, Macaron, and ERS-220; Aibo Master Studio Company: Sony Electronics URL: www.aibo.com

The latest incarnations of the Sony entertainment robot look substantially different than their predecessors. The Latte and the Macaron ($850 each, direct) are rounded and toy-like; almost resembling Pokémon characters. The ERS-220 looks more robotic than its predecessors. It responds to voice commands and it can guard your room by snapping pictures of anything that moves. With the proper add-in, you can control the critter through a wireless LAN connection—or you can just your mechanical mascot explore and exercise its own "curiosity".

Aibo Master Studio, available in early 2002, will let you use your PC to program new Aibo actions onto a Memory Stick. Want your mechanical mascot to walk onstage, turn around three times, and say "ta-da!" Sony says it'll be a cinch.

Product: Browse3D Company: Browse3D Corp. URL: www.browse3D.com

This 3-D browser won a Best of Comdex award. When you bring up a Web page, the browser starts preloading the links from that page into a "wall" of 4, 9, or 16 smaller browser windows. You can optionally pick and choose which links to preload. Visually, it's as if the main browser is at the back of a room, and the others are on the right-hand wall. Click on that wall to rotate it into view, and click on one of the pre-loaded pages to move it into the main browser window. The left-hand wall provides a similar view of your browser history. You can save a "roomful" of web pages and restore them all as needed. The browser will be available in January for $29 (direct). It relies on the Internet Explorer ActiveX control, so for the most part it should function like Internet Explorer.

Product: The Cstation Company: 2C Computing Inc. URL: www.2Ccomputing.com

Plug a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, USB devices, and even a PCI card into this little box, and you can connect them to a PC up to 100 meters away using Category 5 cable or up to 800 meters away using fiber. The 2C Computing Cstation is totally solid-state, so there's little heat and—because a fan is rarely required—less noise.

The device uses what the company calls Digital Extension Technology to extend the PCI bus. Connect each of your PCs to its own Cstation, and you can allow free access to the systems, but keep them in a separate, secure location to prevent unauthorized physical access. This also lets you consolidate the systems in racks and enables technicians to perform necessary work in a central location. And although unplugging a computer to swap it out causes the connected Cstation to freeze, the device resumes operation as soon as a new PC is swapped in and booted.

2C Computing refers to its system as a split client rather than a thin client, to indicate that although the user interface appears in a location that may not be near the machine, processing still occurs on a standalone system. This setup is most reasonable for a totally new installation that can take advantage of the centralized PC-room feature. The cost at present is high, starting at $895 (list) per box, but volume purchases should translate to lower prices.

Product: The Camera on a chip Company: OmniVision Technologies Inc. URL: www.ovt.com

These are very tiny digital cameras with a wide variety of resolutions and color depths. These single-chip CMOS image sensors are not consumer products. They are found in products that have medical applications, in biometrics, and even in toys.

Product: CardStore.com Company: Touchpoint Inc. URL: www.cardstore.com

I just used this service to print my Christmas cards. I uploaded my existing address database, selected an image for the front of the cards, and added my own inside text. My cards came preprinted with a personal salutation and in individually stamped and addressed envelopes. I can just open each card, write a little note, seal the envelope, and it's ready to go. The expense, which varies according to the options you choose, was a little more than if I had just put personal photos on cards, but the service sure saved time! Product: CPR for XP and ER for XP Company: myEZfix URL: www.myezfix.com

The parent company of myEZfix, imagine LAN, specializes in protecting configuration and other essential data. Windows XP has a fairly robust System Restore feature that handles some of these tasks. The myEZfix approach is "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"—the company's products work with and enhance the System Restore feature.

Most notably, CPR for XP (Home version, $20 direct; Professional, $30) can restore the system even when XP won't boot (they use a Linux boot disk). If no system restore data is available, it can still help with offloading data from the non-bootable machine. It can also make XP store addition information such as CMOS data.

ER for XP (Home, $20; Professional $30) gives you more power over System Restore checkpoints. It will capture checkpoints for all application installations, not just those based on Windows Installer. You can delete unwanted checkpoints or protect some from deletion. And ER will compare two checkpoints and report exactly what changed between them. Both products should be available by mid-December. Product: CyberExtruder Company: CyberExtruder.com URL: www.cyberextruder.com

You send a single full-face image and CyberExtruder.com uses its technology to produce a 3-D rendering. The process overlays a polygon mesh, correctly aligning it with the features. The 3-D face is a bit blocky from the side; not quite like the real person, but recognizable.

Once the face is generated, CyberExtruder will create a Microsoft Agent character that uses your own face, if you like. Or you can put your face onto characters in a number of games, such as Max Payne, CounterStrike, Unreal Tournament, and The Sims. The company also plans to integrate the product with instant messaging. When you send an instant message, your own face will appear on your friend's screen and speak the message. Pricing varies according to the number of faces processed and how many games the images will be used for. Product: Diskeeper 7.0 Company: Executive Software International URL: www.executive.com/diskeeper/diskeeper.asp

Diskeeper 7 (Download, $44.95 direct; CD, $49.95) is the first (and so far only) defragmenter certified for Windows XP. This version is reputed to be the fastest ever. New features include push install for easy deployment and support for boot-time defragging of system files. Product: DVD PhotoPlay Company: V Communications Inc. URL: www.v-com.com

Amazing! I really wanted a utility just like this. I even started to write it myself, but got bogged down in supporting writeable CDs. Here's how you use the software. You identify a collection of digital photos on your hard disk, and add optional information like titles and sound. The program creates a photo album on a dual-mode CD burner. The software burns the CD directly, without requiring any other utility. You stick the CD in a DVD player that supports this type of disc and you can view the images on your television. Put the disc in your CD-ROM drive and you can view higher-resolution images on the computer. Alas, the software is not quite available yet. The company hopes to have the product out by the end of December (at $49.95 direct). Too bad—I would have liked to make some CDs to send with my Christmas cards.

Product: The E-Pen Company: E-Pen InMotion URL: www.deviceinmotion.com

Much like mimio's virtual whiteboard, this wireless gadget records the motion of a pen on paper and converts it to digital ink. Handwriting dynamics are maintained, so the pattern can be used to verify signatures. You can also strap the device to the side of a laptop for a virtual touchscreen. It uses both infrared and ultrasound to track the pen. ($180 street.) Product: The Ericsson ChatPen Company: Anoto URL: www.anoto.com

Many of us saw the Anoto "Bluetooth pen" at last year's Comdex. The pen writes on paper printed with a special pattern that's barely visible, but that lets the pen locate itself precisely. The paper will be available in many forms: pads, sticky notes, even business cards. Unlike with other solutions, you can write on the same page again, adding the new digital ink to what was already written, because the paper's pattern allows for precise determination of the pen's position on the page. Marking a printed action box with the pen can trigger various actions. For example, it can cause the pen to connect with your Bluetooth-enabled phone or PC and e-mail the current page. Another special type of box provides limited character recognition.