Gadgets - March 13,2008

Ambient Corporation is developing a neckband that can "hear" and transmit your words even if you don't speak them aloud. It intercepts nerve signals on their way from the brain to the vocal cords and transmits them to a computer which interprets them as speech and sends the words as sounds on to the intended destination. This could be handy, they suggest, if you want to have a private phone conversation in a public place, for example. The completed system could also be used as a voice for "people who have lost the ability to speak due to neurological diseases like ALS – also known as motor neurone disease" according to New Scientist. It can even control a wheelchair using just thoughts. There's still a way to go before the neckband is ready, though. The one demonstrated at the TI Developers' Conference took quite a while to translate even short, simple phrases into speech, and as of yet the software can only decipher about 150 words and phrases.

I don't know who thought to make their Etch-a-sketch into a clock, but it makes a pretty impressive one.

The New York Times' tech reporter, David Pogue, reviewed two non-traditional music players this week. One is the Media Street eMotion Solar, which, as the name implies, runs on sunlight. The other, the Baylis Eco Media Player is crank powered. Neither sounds completely ready for the mass market, but they seem to be, as he says, "the advance team for a new, very promising, very green world of products." His review is an interesting read for gadgetophiles.

Newsweek's Steven Levy managed to loose the review sample MacBook Air he was loaned by Apple. As Wired notes, "Much has been made of the thinness of the Mac notebook, mostly its ninja-like ability to slide, almost undetected, into a manilla envelope." Apparently, it was so thin that he and/or his wife did not notice it was sitting on, in, or with a Sunday New York Times. They recycled it with the paper, he thinks. Newsweek is paying for the unit. Levy argues, "Can you really blame a guy for losing something that's called Air?"