Innovations
Here’s another good reason not to misbehave at your upcoming office Christmas party. Scheduled to go on sale next week is the SpyPen, a tiny digital camera squeezed into a slim upright frame not a great deal larger than an average ballpoint.
The SpyPen takes and archives low-resolution (352×288 pixels) images that can then be transferred to a PC via its accompanying software and USB cable. It will also record a few seconds’ worth of moving images.
Blackmailing opportunities should ensure that the R750 outlay for one is easily recouped.
More details are available from www.spy pen.com.
Good news for owners of hand-held PCs who still can’t get their heads round their device’s handwriting recognition systems. Coming next year is a fabric keyboard accessory for palmtops which can be rolled up for easy storage.
Developed by United Kingdom company ElectroTextiles, the Elektex keyboard can apparently be folded, washed and even sprayed with coffee and still continue to function.
The design the company recently paraded at the IT Expo exhibition at Cannes actually wraps around a palmtop to provide a protective case.
Although ElectroTextiles hasn’t yet signed on the dotted line with any of the hand-held PC operating system owners, it remains confident that the Elektex will be on sale in spring or summer. It is quoting a price for the keyboard as $65 (about R500).
Christmas will come three days early for Japanese video fans. Slated to go on sale on December 22 is the RD-2000, the world’s first pairing of a DVD recorder with a hard disk drive.
The unit allows users to make temporary video recordings on to its 30-gigabyte hard disk and then, if they find something they want to archive, transfer the footage to a DVD-RAM disc.
There’s also a Just mode, where image quality is determined by the amount of space left on the DVD-RAM disc.
Other facilities include pausing and instantly replaying live television, the option of creating on-screen thumbnail images for each programme recorded, and playback of pre-recorded DVDs and CDs.
The price for the unit is expected to be about R20 000.
The UK is famous for inventors but they often have a hard time getting their inventions to market. Enter the Internet: Yet2.com, a United States-based global online marketplace for the exchange of intellectual property, has announced it will partner with UK invention marketing agency Inventorlink Products Ltd.
The two companies hope to provide lone inventors and small teams of innovators in the UK with a channel for introducing their inventions to global markets.
They’re touting a portable flood barrier at the moment too bad someone didn’t snapped up that idea and rush it to market a few weeks ago.