The Intel Reader Photographs Text and Reads it Back to You [EReaders]

Intel's Reader for the visually impaired isn't a concept; it goes on sale today. Using an Atom processor, 5-megapixel camera, and Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS, it turns book pages into digital text and MP3s…then reads aloud in a synthesized voice.

Ben Foss, Director of Access Technology at Intel's Digital Health group said the device is also intended to assist those with severe Dyslexia, an impairment he himself grew up with. 'We want people to experience the independence of being able to read on their own in a public place or anywhere they want to.'
Prototypes of the paper-back sized device were tested with more than 400 visually-impaired users, including some who were completely blind. The reader can adjust the speed of reading, and it's 2GB of storage can hold about 500,000 pages of text; roughly 600 pages of scanned books.
At $1500, it's not cheap. But compared to even more expensive Braille readers, it has a shot as a specialty device.
[Gizmodo via Intel via VentureBeat]

RevolveR Journal is a Twist in my Sobriety [Press]

Bookbinding is part of what I test during a typical day at work. This one is kinda mind boggling. The RevolveR, a $21 reversible journal, will put a hurt on your brain.
[Gizmodo via RevolveR via boingboing via Making Light]

eBook Craze Goes Outside [Ebooks]

eBook Craze Goes Outside [Ebooks]: "

With the introduction of a solar-powered eBook from LG Display, owners will soon be able to read for hours on end, so long as they're outside and the sun is up.
This is because the new offering boasts both an eBook and a thin-film, 10cm solar cell. Surprise!
Four to five hours of sun exposure yields an additional day's worth of reading time. You can read inside too, of course, thanks to the battery, but if you do that how will you show off the fact that you're on the cutting edge and hip with your eBook?
[Gimodo via OLED Display]

Teaching computers to read: Google acquires reCAPTCHA

The image above is a CAPTCHA — you can read it, but computers have a harder time interpreting the letters. We tried to make it hard for computers to recognize because we wanted to give humans the scoop first, but we're happy to announce to everybody now that Google has acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that provides CAPTCHAs to help protect more than 100,000 websites from spam and fraud.

Since computers have trouble reading squiggly words like these, CAPTCHAs are designed to allow humans in but prevent malicious programs from scalping tickets or obtain millions of email accounts for spamming. But there’s a twist — the words in many of the CAPTCHAs provided by reCAPTCHA come from scanned archival newspapers and old books. Computers find it hard to recognize these words because the ink and paper have degraded over time, but by typing them in as a CAPTCHA, crowds teach computers to read the scanned text.

In this way, reCAPTCHA’s unique technology improves the process that converts scanned images into plain text, known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This technology also powers large scale text scanning projects like Google Books and Google News Archive Search. Having the text version of documents is important because plain text can be searched, easily rendered on mobile devices and displayed to visually impaired users. So we'll be applying the technology within Google not only to increase fraud and spam protection for Google products but also to improve our books and newspaper scanning process.

That's why we're excited to welcome the reCAPTCHA team to Google, and we're committed to delivering the same high level of performance that websites using reCAPTCHA have come to expect. Improving the availability and accessibility of all the information on the Internet is really important to us, so we're looking forward to advancing this technology with the reCAPTCHA team.

Posted by Luis von Ahn, co-founder of reCAPTCHA, and Will Cathcart, Google Product Manager