Posts in Printers

Printing in tongues

Edvarcl Heng | Sep 25, 2007

Fuji Xerox has a new concept printer that promises to translate on-the-fly.

The idea of a trilingual photocopier is pretty neat, though strictly speaking, it's really not since it can only translate Asian languages (Japanese and Korean) to English and vice versa.

But whatever its linguistic abilities, yakitori restaurants are going to love it. Why pay a language student peanuts to translate the contents of a Japanese menu to English when you can fork out a king's ransom for the same mangled translation?

The copier works by scanning a document (in the recognized language) before the built-in microcomputer translates the text and prints out a copy. We do not have any indication of its processing speed, though we are sure, as most translation gadgets go, that it's bound to get tongue-tied at some point.

Via uberreview

Filed under: Printers
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New HPs roll into Asia with a boom

Edvarcl Heng | Sep 11, 2007

Yes, it was Big Bang time again when HP held a regional consumer launch event in Singapore today.

Four product categories saw new entrants, but it was the printer category which dominated the proceedings with a staggering 13 new models along with the announcement of the Snapfish online photo service in Singapore.

The Palo Alto-based company also debuted five new iPaqs--two business-oriented PDA-phones, two PDAs and one GPS navigation device. The hero product of the bunch is the iPaq 612 Business Navigator which includes a raised touch-sensitive circular edge on the keypad for navigation.

Over on the computing side, Chin Hon Cheng, vice president for HP's Consumer Products and Mobile Business Group, elaborated on one of its strategy cornerstones. "We will engage the youth as an emerging segment of our consumers… and this youth will one day become a working adult." Chin explained that HP hoped the impression made on the youth will influence the products and technologies they will be using in working life.

To help its bid to net the youth market, HP has extended three new design finishes--Verve, Influx, Trace--to its laptops. Chin also revealed that Webcams will be a standard feature for its future laptops.