3. Howdy partner!

I like poking around in the Taiwan / China / Korea / Hong Kong vendor booths, because there's always something interesting to see and this time was no exception. Most of the vendors here are looking to sell to "name brand" consumer electronics companies who will brand the product and get it into retail distribution. Some though, also sell products directly under their own names, usually via "Mom and Pop" computer stores, or the folks who sell at computer flea-market shows.

I found a few companies showing USB-based memory card readers with built-in JPEG decoders. Wing-Span's MU-601, Glory Mark's GMP-810, and Action Star's CR-216-C all handle Compact Flash, Smart Media, SD, MMC and Memory stick modules, have NTSC / PAL composite video outputs and play JPEG and AVI formats. Some even come with miniature remotes, but none handle MP3 files. Retail pricing should be somewhere around $100 if and when they manage to get picked up by name-brand comsumer electronics companies.

Hong Kong-based Protectserve Pacific was showing its RFLoc security device and looking for OEM / ODM partners. The RFLoc uses a small "key" module worn by a computer user and "Lock" plugged into a USB port. When a user gets within about 6 feet / 2 meters of a protected computer, the two modules communicate and automatically enter a username / password combination to unlock the machine. Moving beyond the 6 foot zone automatically locks the machine again. Signaling is done in the 315 / 433 MHz bands, so the system doesn't collide with cordless phones and wireless LANS.