In a world full of unnecessary gadgets whose functions can be provided by smartphone apps, the Quicktionary stands defiant. It’s for those rare occasions when you’re laboring over the Bible in its original Greek and can’t understand a thing. Oh wait, the Quicktionary doesn’t do Greek except when it’s English to Greek. Never mind, it covers most European languages anyway. Maybe not Basque/Euskara, but at least the very popular ones. Hebrew too.
The Quicktionary works by running its mini-scanner along a full line of text, with the translation appearing on the rectangular screen on top of the silvery dial. There’s a stylus thrown in as well.
Instead of buying this, why not just read books (including a healthy balance of Enid Blyton and Virgil), broaden your erudition, and memorize Shakespeare? When this happens, no word or phrase can stand in your way, not even a total mindboggler like Sprachgefuhl.
Oh yes, sprachgefuhl. A wonderful gem of German linguistics.
At first glance you’re prone to mistake the Powertrekk for a game controller—an ugly game controller. But it’s not. As depicted by the evidence below, it’s the ultimate gadget charger for any possible gadget (provided the gadget has a USB port.)
Powertrekk is designed and built for the outdoors, which explains its hydrogen fuel cell coupled with a battery pack. The sweet part is both can charge each other, meaning this baby can juice a lot of your gadgets. The Powertrekk would probably be a life saver if you’re the type of person who falls into a crevasse and gets their hand stuck under a rock. Worse, your precious iPhone is out of juice so out comes the Powertrekk and ta-da!
Okay, so maybe James Franco does deserve critical acliam for his role in 127 Hours. Movies aside, Powertrekk is a must for the gadget-inclined who move around a lot with their essential electronics.
Despite its attractive qualities, there’s no word on pricing yet.
With the introduction of a wireless charger for your car, Audi is set to change the way you charge your gadgets while on road in your Audi.
The company at the ongoing SEMA show in Las Vegas has shown off a wireless charging device that sticks up to the car’s audio system to charge all your mobile phones, iPod’s, etc all wirelessly, while you only sit back and see the status of how much the gadget is charged in percentage and the electronics attached for charging displayed on the audio system’s screen. Developed by Audi Electronics in collaboration with Qualcomm the charger works like all the other inductive charging mats we’ve seen over time. There is information for the company which confirms that the system in no way interferes with the operation of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connections.
It’s often nowadays that we find two devices in one structure. And if this Epson PictureMate Show surprises you, then you might be out of touch with technology for a long time.
The Epson PictureMate Show has a 7-inch LCD display screen that flashes your photos by loading them through a USB or memory card port. You can also edit them using the display and print them at a class-leading 5760×1440 dpi.
This half-printer half-photo frame is available for $300. Although I don’t see the point of printing an index of pictures, I can still see the need for something as ingenio
This device from ZyXel is said to be the first LTE (long-term evolution) CPE/SOHO router in the world. Known for its name ZLR-2070S, this device is an all-in-one, multi-service gateway that can deliver cost-effective LTE connectivity to the masses.
LTE is the next big thing in the world of wireless communication technology. It is capable of delivering multimedia content through an all-IP format, as well as opening up a whole new era of connectivity across industries like consumer electronics, appliances, health care, public utilities and telematics.
This router has a hardware that is devoid of the usual junk, and instead focuses on what is important—broadband Internet connectivity, two VoIP ports, home networking through its four-port, 11n wireless switch and USB port. You can hook up printers and other storage extensions through the USB hub.
It also has an enabled Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) support and other home automation services.
For more information, including the release date and price, for this device, you can check them out at the CES in January of next year.
By now the odd designs and unorthodox functionality are not a surprise when it comes to Tokyo Flash watches, but when a particularly fashionable timepiece is released it’s worth noting. The new Kisai Tenmetsu comes in black and silver is definitely one of the better designed devices in the company’s minimalist arsenal.
Of course there’s the requisite arcane time telling functions to figure out, but thankfully the watch comes with instructions in Japanese and English. You can pick up the aluminum design gem for just 21,000 yen ($238) and see video of it in action here.
In lieu of its anniversary, McIntosh released its new integrated audio system called the MXA60. Encased in McIntosh’s trademark stainless steel, black glass and blue lights, this new MXA60 is capable of true-to-life sound reproduction in its tiny size of 22.5” long, 10.6” high, and 14.9” deep, including loudspeakers.
The McIntosh MXA60 is a miniature version of the McIntosh HIFI in-miniature. It is produced by the same team that brought us the $250,000 McIntosh Reference System.
Here are the technical specifications of the McIntosh MXA60:
75 Watts/Channel Output
- Two-way Loudspeaker System
- Cast Aluminum Loudspeaker Construction
- Loudspeaker Tilt
- CD/SACD Player
- 24-bit, 192kHz Sampling Burr Brown DAC
- AM/FM Tuner with RBDS Display
- Custom IR Remote Control
- Balanced and Unbalanced Audio Input
- Line Level Output
- Vacuum Tube Preamplifier
- ThermalTrak™ Output Transistors
- Power Guard
- Two line Vacuum Fluorescent Display
- Illuminated Output Watt Meters
- R-Core Power Transformer
- ¼” Headphone Jack
This complete audio system, which is perfect for a truly relaxing home entertainment, can be purchased for $7,500.
We gadget nerds have to endure unspeakable atrocities in order to slake that early adoption jones: first-run gear shipped DOA, buggy pre-release software, and months of waiting after a product leaks only to be greeted by a jacked-up price premium at launch. So we feel your pain, original Kindle owners, after Amazon announced a major firmware update that brings native PDF support to the 6-inch Kindle 2 and DX readers with the promise of a staggering 85% increase in battery life to all Kindle 2 devices — if you haven’t already received it OTA, the 2.3 software update is now available for download and installation via USB tethering. At least owners of “some earlier versions of Kindle” (quote from the press release) will receive native PDF support whenever the 1st generation firmware update (currently at version 1.2) is released. It’s worth noting that Amazon’s PDF reader lacks a zoom function which makes many PDFs entirely unreadable on the device. Good thing Amazon’s store is chock full of easily zoomable books in a proprietary format then, huh?
Finally, someone is figuring out that if you want a PC in your home theater, you’ll be needing a decent, hardware keyboard. Here’s one of the best ideas yet, and it looks a whole lot like a Blackberry: It’s a wireless USB keyboard and touchpad that might be just what you need.
We like its backlit keyboard and radio-frequency (RF) operation, using the 2.4GHz band, so you don’t have to worry about pointing the device directly at the receiver. While this little handset looks kind of cheap, it’s more portable than a standard-sized keyboard, and its touchpad takes the place of a bulky mouse. If you look at the white one in the gallery below, it actually doesn’t look half bad.
This is a heck of a sight better than those horrendous on-screen keyboards that you navigate with a remote control. Think about it — how many button presses does it take to spell your name? About 50? It’s absurd. Drop $61 on this tiny keyboard, and solve that problem once and for all. Here’s a video of the device in action:
Early this year, Cisco has overtaken Pure Digital—the makers of the Flip camera. And now, a spokesman from Cisco has confirmed the arrival of the new Flip in the first trimester of 2010. What more, it will have a built-in WiFi.
The new Flip, however, will not have a touchscreen but it can move, sliding back to “reveal the record and menu buttons underneath.” This means that the Flip will have a bigger screen—probably more than the current two-inch screen of the top-end Flip Ultra HD. And like the iPhone, I’m sure that there will be some editing abilities so you can upload clipped videos directly to YouTube.
No price or exact release date has been announced for the Cisco Flip, but expect more information to arrive in the following days.
