News for Friday, 7 May 2004

Thank you Peter for the info

I've been on the look-out for quite some time for a speech recognition system that would work on audio files (i.e. files from a mp3 voice recorder) and transcribe directly in a text file. There are a few solutions on PC (Philips, Olympus, etc.) and only one for Mac (Olympus: http://www.olympus.com/consumer/voice/intro.cfm?id=DS-3000 around 400 Euros). And then I found Vpedal, a small Aussie vendor (http://www.vpedal.com/) who offers the ideal product. They sell this small USB pedal that can directly use Quicktime or iTunes and play the audio files in the background, and features pro voice recorder functions such as fast rewind/forward , variable rewind/forward, pause, etc. All of this, foot-controlled. They also have their own audio file player. The VPedal costs $75 plus $15 of S&H which is roughly a quarter of other available pro systems, with the same quality. For the recording, one can use Amadeus, that allows to choose the compression codec (mp3, purevoice, aac, etc.) and thus making it easier to send the files over the internet. Vpedal also comes in a PC version along with a few audio players for this platform.

It is not yet official, but Miglia should launch a new version of its Director's Cut interface which will sport a SCART connector.

The SCART Director's Cut is compatible with the PAL, NTSC and (at last) SECAM standards. It should retail at about 250 Euros (around $300).
Get more details here:
http://www.miglia.com/products/video/dcscart/

With the GDDR3 equipped graphic cards not even on the market yet, GDDR 4 seems to be in the works. This type of memory could be running in the 1.4GHz speed range. It should be finalized and approved by the JEDEC towards the end of this year.

Thanks to Louis-Martin for sending this picture.

It was taken from the adequately named 477m high SkyPod in Toronto.
Apple really got it right with their colorful iPod adds.