AUSTIN: There were a number of interesting products on display at Dell World, including Digital Signage concept from Intel and a digital forensics police car from Dell.

Intel's concept features an interactive primary screen, so the device carries out a quick facial scan and displays products based on gender when a customer approaches it.

When a male approaches the screen, the device automatically displays products such as razor blades, for example. Users can interact with products via hand gestures, allowing them to bring up additional information, product reviews and related items.

The secondary screens are built in behind a shelf and are more likely to be incorporated into supermarket aisles. When a product is picked up, the display changes to provide additional information and reacts via an RFID tag on the bottom of a product.

The whole system is powered by Intel's forthcoming Ivy Bridge chipset. The processor used was a quad-core, eight-thread chip with a clock speed of 3GHz.

Primary uses would be in supermarkets aisles and in place of advertising billboards and kiosks. The device is able to gather viewership metrics such as gender and dwell time of the viewer anonymously, and retailers can view these metric in real time and change display products.

Meanwhile, Dell displayed a police car with a removable Dell XFR rugged laptop. Forensic software is pre-loaded on the laptop, allowing officers to extract data from devices and smartphones at crime scenes.

The system helps officers to shift through the vast amounts of data that suspects may have, explained Joe Trickey, rugged mobility and digital forensics marketing manager at Dell.

"Most people have 2.2TB of information. If you look at a typical police investigation, there may be a number of suspects and they have to process all that data," he told V3.

"The digital forensics software allows officers to check devices at the scene of a crime and determine what needs to be investigated further and what can be excluded. It is easier for forensic analysts to process 400GB of data, for example, and data can be processed faster, allowing quicker investigations."

Trickey noted that it is likely that digital forensic kits will be available on smartphones in the future with the advancement in mobile space. He also joked that officers may get a car like the one displayed on the show floor.

13 Oct 2011