I always come across interesting products that don't really fit into the subject area of the site, but, what the heck, I liked 'em, so why not give them a plug anyway?

After I checked out Possio's 802.11b/Bluetooth bridge (see the Decuma part of the stand. I spent the next half hour being wowed by the three Decuma folks who were demonstating their Latin, Chinese, and Japanese handwriting recognition products. Why does the world need yet another handwriting recognition product? The only thing I can say is that the Decuma product seemed more natural to use and provided quick, constant feedback to the user. The product is also fast, and has a small program footprint... a few hundred KB... important for use in portable devices. Decuma scored a win in being integrated into Casio's new BE-300 Pocket Manager, and they're hard at work on getting other design wins. It's always nice to see people who really believe in their product and are excited about it, and these folks had passion to spare!

Celestix's Aries server appliance has gotten rave reviews and I hope to get one of these in to put through its paces soon. Celestix was busy introducing their new Taurus which is basically a "super-sized" Aries for use with workgroups up to 250 people (vs. the Aries' recommended 25), and which was named a finalist in the Best of Comdex Networking Hardware category. The Taurus has a SmartCard slot, which would allow easy remote configuration of the applicance, by having all the required settings stored in it.

Celestix has also been busy forging partnerships with CheckPoint, Virtualtek, and IBM/Lotus, resulting in dedicated Aries-based appliances that implement Checkpoint's VPN-1/FireWall-1 SmallOffice, Virtualtek's Joydesk, and IBM Lotus's Domino Server.