Technology Flashes [Archives:2000/16/Science & Technology]

The L&H Voice Express 
Have you ever dreamed of a device that can record notes and dictation and then transcribe them without having to do the writing yourself? Well, technology has found a very compelling solution for this problem. The L&H Voice Express Professional package can hold up to 75 minutes of speech in its 8MB flash memory. This 2-ounce device has unique features like batch transcription and environmental noise compensation. You can navigate through the device, edit recordings and change settings such as date, time and microphone sensitivity by means of its easy-to-use menu button. This startling equipment has an LCD screen that shows the current folder, battery status, dictation mode and length of current recording. In addition, you can connect it through your PC’s serial port and then transfer the files into the hard disk. After that, you can use the L&H XpressPad Mobile to listen to your WAV files or transcribe them directly into text. The XpressPad has features that could recognize punctuation marks by simply using dictating the commands “comma”, “period” and so on. This amazing device costs $229.99 and you can check the company’s Web site for more details (www.lhsl.com). 
Samsung’s Wristwatch Phone 
Marking its strong stand in the technology race, Samsung has released its new wristwatch phone with the birth of the new millennium. You will be able to make phone calls, send and receive e-mails messages and even surf the Web through your wristwatch. However, you may wonder how you would be able to perform all these tasks without having a keyboard? For this purpose, Coversa has developed a built-in voice recognition and text-to-speech support. So, all you have to do is speak to your wristwatch. In addition, you would be able to program your friends’ phone numbers, place calls and pick up Call Waiting by voice and, moreover, it will read your e-mail messages aloud for you. Still, the primary version cannot compose e-mails or surf the web but those are main feature of the main design of this device. The product is now selling in Korea and is expected to be distributed to the rest of the world later this year. However, it is expected to arrive later to the Middle East since most of the countries in the region do not support the GSM system. 
The Internet Pager 
It is very likely that no one has ever expected that a small device like a pager could one day handle tasks such as emailing, faxing and information services. Now, a Weblink Wireless paging service has been established in the US. Therefore, if you have a compatible Motorola, Philips or Glynare Wireless you can receive your personal or business email via an ePager mailbox, notice of online faxes, updates of Internet contents as well as several other services. Moreover, you would receive a free My Yahoo! Email account and a Callwave online fax number. The prices of the pagers range from 60$ to $170 but still the service is not available in the Middle East. 

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