Audio and video in the Palm of your hand

PALO ALTO - Generic Media this week announced it will support the new Sony CLIE handheld, giving users the ability to take their audio and video on the road with them.

Generic Media's gMovie Player is the only supported audio/video application on the CLIE, so users that want to create videos for the device must encode their content with gMovie Maker. The gMovie Maker application can take video, audio and still images and covert them into the gMovie video format.

The new CLIE, which will ship in June, comes with a removable 8M-byte memory stick dedicated for storing audio and video. It is one of the few devices that run the Palm operating system and have true sound capabilities.

"[Sony's] taken a platform from something where media is just an option to a great device for taking media where ever you go," says Peter Hoddie, CEO of Generic Media. "With [the recently announced] 128M-byte memory stick, a user could put a half-hour of video on the device. And though that may not be the most practical thing to do, it is a big step."

While Generic Media is working with Sony to help consumers port their personal videos to the CLIE, corporate users could use gMovie Maker to create mini-training or marketing videos for salespeople to take in the field with them.

Users can download the gMovie Player for free, while the gMovie Maker application is available for Macintosh and Windows for $30.

Generic Media