Magic Block: voice recorder with speech recognition

by Marc Perton

If IBM is ever able to manufacture its Magic Block voice recorder, it'll make just about every other recorder obsolete overnight. The Magic Block is a concept for a digital voice recorder that includes a few handy features -- such as biometric security and an intriguing design that limits accidental recordings -- and one function that makes it unique: built-in voice recognition software that can recognize both spoken words and the actual speaker, allowing a user to search for text as well as for comments from specific speakers. Since IBM already makes speech recognition software, we assume this is something that may be more than just some pie-in-the-sky design. Then again, given that a top IBM exec recently declared that there's "no such thing as the next big thing," maybe the company has already given up on actually bringing new products like this to market -- though we really hope not.

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Gigabyte's GN-BT06T Bluetooth Media Adapter

by Paul Miller

We spied this little GN-BT06T device from Gigabyte while browsing the FCC today and like what it has to offer. Basically it's a Bluetooth media receiver, but it works both ways. Not only does it take music from your audio player and pump it to your Bluetooth headphones, but it can also use music from your computer and jack into your stereo. We're not sure when this will be available or what it'll go for, but we like where it's headed.

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Synthesize plastic suitable for printing electronics

by Evan Blass

A team composed of academic and corporate scientists from the US and UK have succeeded in creating a conductive plastic that could soon lead to the cheap printable electronics that we're often promised but have yet to see. Researchers from Merck, PARC, and Stanfords University and Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory were able to tweak the structure of a regular organic polymer to create a so-called "semi-conducting polythiopene," which improves upon standard silicon in that it can be laid down using simple inkjet printing techniques while at the same time producing less waste. Although the new material will never replace silicon as the choice for hardcore computing applications, the fact that this team has already created transistors with the new technology may mean that the promised land of ubiquitous, disposable e-paper is closer than we think.

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