The Arabic language if you didn’t know is quite a challenging language to learn. In fact, because of the myriad of tonal nuances and sheer number rules, Arabic is as difficult as Mandarin Chinese — a complex and very involving language. While Spanish is regarded as a relatively easy language to learn, taking on average of 6 months to become proficient, Arabic is exponentially more complicated and like Mandarin can take upwards of 2 years to master the same skills. Further complicating matters, learning resources and good teachers are hard to come by. If you find yourself struggling to pick up this seemingly impossible language, why not add another tool to your belt? It can’t hurt can it? Starting today, Arabic Language Buddy™ developed by Sakhr Software has been released for the iPhone and iPod Touch 2nd Gen and up. Currently available in the App Store (iTunes Link), Arabic Language Buddy looks to make the long and treacherous path of learning Arabic easier and more fun. Features include:
Speech recognition for U.S. English
Acceptance of “free form” dictation, no user training needed
Optional keypad entry
Translation into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)
Translation displayed as Arabic script and English transliteration
High accuracy translation, ranked #1 by U.S. government metrics and human evaluation
Audio playback in Arabic
Recent translations stored for easy access and practice
Feeling adventurous? If so, hit up the iTunes link above and begin your long and laborious journey. I could of course go on…but I’m sure you’d much rather watch the video below…
One of the pleasant side effects of electric vehicles is that their motorless operation means a reduce in noise pollution. While one here or there won’t add up to much of anything, the difference when considering an entire city full of silent electric vehicles becomes quite apparent. Gone would be the annoying sounds of idling cars. Imagine how odd it would be to be standing in the middle of Times Square and see hundreds of cars whizzing buy, except all you could hear would be faint tire noise, people talking, and birds chirping. However, that will all be but a dream if politicians have their way. It seems the silent nature of these beasts is a cause for concern, or at least for those who don’t look where they’re walking or for oncoming traffic when crossing the street. Silent future cars are “too” quiet.
Apparently, enough people have already been injured because they failed to see a two ton plus silent electric vehicle coming at them. In defense of some, particularly the blind, they can’t help it and for them this issue is a real concern. Still, adding useless “features” to a device or car that don’t really need to be there is in my mind dumb. At least Nissan is having some fun with it as they are reported to be looking at adding more “futuristic” sounding engine effects. How cool would it be to watch some ho-hum styled car drive by yet sound like it came straight out of Bladerunner? Better yet, what about a Toyota Prius sized car cruising along belting out X-Wing Fighter sounds? Hey, if they’re going to go all futuristic, you might as well go over the top no? Is your geeky self excited?
Beer beer beer. How I love beer. Another love which I’m also become increasingly addicted to is Twitter. What better way to show of your geeky chops than to combine the two. That’s exactly what SparkFun Electronics did. They took the company Kegerator, which was becoming increasingly difficult to monitor and keep full, and tapped (pun intended) into the real time tracking benefits of Twitter. The SparkFun Twitter account tells you such things as pull count, beer temp, and beer level giving anyone who needs to able to remotely monitor their kegs a leg up on the situation. Collecting and organizing all of the information is done with four pressure sensors (one one each leg) to monitor remaining beer, a temperature sensor (self explanatory), and a magnetic switch/sensor located by the tap handle to keep track of handle pulls.
I have definitely got to get myself a keg and try this out! If all you want is SparkFun keg updates and you’ve got nothing else to do, add @SparkFunKeg to your Twitter account. But, if you want a more in depth, “how-to” look at this shinning example of innovation and geeky beauty, SparkFun is your stop.
I didn’t think beer/Twitter could get any better or be used more interestingly. Did you?
Palm’s Jesus phone, the Palm Pre may soon be coming to O2 Germany if various sources are to be believed. According to nimsso from PreCentral, after receiving a Palm Pre promotional email he decided to call up O2 and inquire further. After talking to an O2 rep, he was advised to call back in 2 weeks at which point he could follow through with a pre-order (no pun intended). If you take into account two weeks starting today and then add another week or three for pre-order waiting, we’re looking at a mid-late October to early November launch. A perfect turkey day gift. Though a more appropriate holiday for our friends across the pond would be that of Christmas. Heck, do we really need need a reason to buy the latest and greatest gadgets. *clears throat* No. I’d be interested in knowing how Palm hype is doing over there across the deep blue. Any European readers care to give us a little insight into your fantasies?
**Update: Deutsche land O2 users can mark October 13th on their calendars as the day while their friends in the UK and Ireland have the 16th to look forward to. Palm Pre fanatics start countin’ down! SlashPhone
Well if this isn’t ironic — Linus Torvald, the founding father of the Linux kernel made a not so small admission Monday at LinuxCon calling the current fruits of his labor “fat & bloated”. The once svelte and task limited OS has grown over the years as people demand more and more features from their OS. The expanding waistline is starting to turn Linux into an open source Windows, or so they claim. However, there is hardly cause for concern as Linux’s popularity is larger than it was back in the early days. While it is more “bloated” or feature filled than what Linus may care for, with added adoption and a larger customer base, weight will no doubt be added. Though it is worth noting that Linux, in its many forms has adapted and will continue to adapt to whatever the user needs or wants. From minuscule sub-500K distros to modern giants such as Ubuntu, Linux offers quite a wide range of choices for any user/environment. Powering everything from a college student’s laptop to the server farm inside of a multi-billion dollar corporation, Linux has plenty of proof of available versatility. If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, maybe now is the time to face any fears/doubts you may have and give Linux a chance. Beauty Size is in the eye of the beholder.
While an actual PS4 or Xbox 720 (if they’re even called that) are still several years off, it doesn’t hurt to dream does it? Not to mention, such awe-inspiring concepts give us gadget nerds a taste of what the future may hold as well as spurring creativity for future designs. In the image above, the device on the left is the conceptual PS4 while the mini-UFO looking thing is the next gen Xbox 720. The transparent touch panel and big twisting knob are definitely quite the sight. The 720 meanwhile looks more spacey — almost if it were picked straight from a Halo game. Want more? A couple more pics await you inside. All you have to do is jump…
Whatever walk of life you choose, whether it be Android, iPhone, WinMo, or Symbian (sorry BlackBerry users), Waze as of today has you covered. If you didn’t already know, Waze is a user input generated GPS app that provides real-time tracking of traffic as well as turn-by-turn functionality. For those looking for a quick look at the iPhone version, take a minute stop over here. While it has already been available for Android and the iPhone for some time now, those two platforms aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. For the individuals who hate all things Apple and aren’t quite down with Android and whom instead use WinMo or Symbian, the alpha testing that I mentioned in my earlier post has ended with the final WinMo/Symbian release announcement coming today at DEMO ’09. As soon as the details are announced, head on over to http://www.waze.com/download/ to enjoy one of the most helpful GPS apps in the mobile app sphere now on Windows Mobile and Symbian. Wrapping it up…if you’re on the fence about Waze, one important thing to remember is that it is FREE. Enticing isn’t it?
Somehow, somewhere, someone thought I knew a thing or two about mobile devices. Take a minute or two to check out Freescale's Smart Mobile Device Pundit 2012. There's some pretty big names on there and some awesome people. Not to worry. I won't judge you if you vote for someone else.
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