The Tele Scouter Translates Language on Demand, Provides Anime Jokes

Oh Japan…have I told you lately that I love you?

You’ve given me some of the coolest, strangest, and most downright preposterous topics to write about of all time.  And today, you’ve given me a topic that’s ALL THREE.  You’ve given me a topic that proves conclusively that you’re going insane and yet you’re also brilliant.

You’ve given me the Tele Scouter, a headset-mounted translation device.

Yes, it’s actually called the Scouter.  For those of you now about to quote Dragon Ball Z, indeed, his power level is over nine thousand.

Anyway, the Tele Scouter uses an imaging device to project images directly onto your retina, and the images in question are fields of text, generated by voice recognition and translation programs that literally show you what someone else is saying, in your language, before your very eyes.

And it’s not just translation, either–there’s talk these can be used in sales pitches to get instant access to customers’ shopping records via face recognition technology.  Now, I don’t know what the long term ramifications are of getting all that light shined directly onto your retina, but the thought of an instant translator IS pretty cool.  The price is pretty salty, as you might expect–about eighty three thousand dollars for a set of thirty, plus the cost of any custom software to go with it.

Read the tele scouter language translator

Philips Tapsters Likely Won’t Hit Stores

Several months back, we introduced you to the Philips Tapster headphones.  But there’s some bad news here for everyone who was looking forward to them–there’s now pretty much no way they’ll hit store shelves.

The folks out at Crave on Cnet’s Asian subsidiary believe they know why, too–they don’t work.

It’s a strange theme these days, gadgets that don’t work, but the beat goes on (or rather doesn’t) from these headphones.  They were supposed to be a major innovation in playback and volume controls, which are supposedly controlled by tapping and swiping the ear modules.  Under normal circumstances, this would dislodge them from the ear, but with these, they didn’t dislodge.  Something of an accomplishment there, but the problem was, the purported tap-and-swipe system of volume and playback control never materialized.

So a little bit of vaporware for you, folks…and that’s always at least a little sad.

Read philips tapster