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Jun 22, 2006 8:01 am US/Eastern
TechStyles: Sneak Peak At New Gadgets
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
From pint sized music players to cell phones that play movies, CBS 2 Tech Editor Brett Larson brings you a sneak peak into the not-so-distant future of home entertainment.
It's not quite flying cars and robots to do the laundry yet, but get ready for smaller, faster and more secure gadgets for your home.
For more than 50 years, the centerpiece of home entertainment has been the television. What started off as simple boxes with tiny black and white screens has matured to big, bright high-definition sets.
And now your TV has plenty of friends with plenty of new abilities.
All of those gadgets enable you to take the information you have on your desktop or your media -- your photos, games -- with you when you're on the move.
The new IRiver Click, for example, is a pint-sized portable that plays your tunes, shows your pictures and even plays video -- though the screen might be too small for that.
Your cell phone may also have a too small a screen, but new models like Motorola's Q will let you make calls and also enjoy movies.
And it's still more than 6-months away, but the newest version of Microsoft Windows -- Windows Vista -- is loaded with new features to make your computer more productive.
The "Sidebar" gives you sort of instant access to small but vital information you need on a day-to-day basis.
Like Apple's "Widgets" in OS X, Windows "Gadgets" offer everything from weather to news and even your photos.
Surfing multiple Web pages is made easier in a newer version of Internet Explorer. It presents small thumbnails of every page you have open to jump around site-to-site faster.
And more importantly, there is more security. An anti-phishing solution will keep you away from pages claiming to be what they aren't.
You might think you're on WellsFargo.com, but you're actually on WellsFarga.com, which looks just like it, smells just like it, but it's really not, and so your username and password is actually going to someone else and not Wells Fargo.
You can even report suspected phishing sites from within the program to prevent other users from falling for the scam Web pages.
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