If your family photos are all digital, you've learned that it's somewhat awkward to gather everyone around a PC to look at baby pictures. And while photo albums are nice, they tend to be a little inflexible.

To bridge this gap, Intel and Microsoft are working on a new breed of portable media players that can store and display photos, videos and music. Think of it as an MP3 player with built-in video.

Intel made the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 9. Along with chip-maker Intel, hardware companies Samsung and ViewSonic will be manufacturing the hardware.

Based on Microsoft's Media2Go software platform, the devices will be able to connect to a PC or other USB-equipped device and store the data using powerful MPEG-4 compression. The pocket-sized units will emphasize battery life and portability. No word on technical specifics, but it's doubtful early models would be able to handle full-length movies.

-- Robert Myers

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