You’ve probably never used a fountain pen, or accidentally spilled a jar of refil ink and ruined your favorite pants. And for that, you have the ballpoint pen to thank. The handy gadget is having its 75th birthday today, so go sign away your rights to something to celebrate!
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THE U.S. NAVY ANNOUNCED TUESDAY THAT THEY WILL NO LONGER TRANSMIT INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS IN ALL-CAPS. LOWERCASE MESSAGES, THEY SAID, "PROVIDE A MORE READABLE FORMAT" AND ARE "HERE TO STAY." LOWERCASE MESSAGES ARE THE FUTURE. ALL-CAPS CAN SUCK IT.
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Inventor Falk Wolsky and his better half Mandy, a child care worker, were inspired to make the Lernstift (“Learning pen” in German) after seeing their son struggle with writing. They came up with a prototype that detects “writing movements” and alerts the user if he makes a mistake.
Currently, the prototype has two modes. Calligraphy Mode detects errors in form and legibility, while Orthography Mode checks the spelling and grammar. The Lernstift’s motion sensor also has one other advantage: the user can practice even without paper or any writing surface. It will supposedly be able to detect “words, gestures and symbols, even if you only draw them in the air.”
The Wolskys also hope to include a pressure sensor to teach kids not to grip the pen too tightly. The idea is that if the pen detects that the user is pressing too hard on it, it will vibrate in an intensity proportional to the user’s grip. They also want to equip the pen with a wireless module, so your teacher can send your embarrassing mistakes to your parents, other teachers and classmates in a snap. As if having your pen vibrate all the time wasn’t shameful enough.
The Wolskys – via their new company Lernstift UG – will seek crowdfunding for the Lernstift later this month, so keep your eyes out for that if you want to pre-order the pen. But if you’re willing to invest in the company, you can reach out to them right now via their website.
The pen sounds like a good idea, but I wonder how effective it will really be as a learning tool, especially in the use case that inspired it. I say that because the pen can only say when and where you are wrong, but not what you’re doing wrong and ultimately how to do it correctly. Should it also have a voice assistant, like an English teacher version of Siri? Or perhaps a small laser that traces out the correct answer? Or maybe it could provide advice by vibrating in Morse code?
[via Lernstift & Wired UK via Likecool]
At the height of the Space Race both Soviet and American astronauts faced an unforeseen challenge: taking notes when the lack of gravity rendered normal pens inoperable. The Americans reputedly “spent millions” on an advanced pressurized space pen while the Soviets—they simply brought pencils. More »
Livescribe is a been around for a while and can take your handwritten notes and allow you to transfer them to computer as digital files. One limitation up until now is that you had to connect the pen to your computer using a cable to upload stored notes. Livescribe has a new product called the Sky that has integrated Wi-Fi.
The new device said to be the first digital pen to integrate Wi-Fi technology and cloud services. Using the Sky and, users can take handwritten notes and then have those notes automatically uploaded to a Evernote account. The notes can be searched based on keywords and other parameters and can be shared with others.
The Sky pen is available to purchase online and in stores right now. The 2 GB version supporting about 200 hours of audio sells for $169.95. A 4 GB version is available for $199.95 and an 8 GB version sells for $249.95.
It takes years for a person to learn how to write Japanese or Chinese characters. There’s good news though. Robots can do it a lot quicker. A research group has developed a ‘bot that can identify and mimic detailed brush strokes that are required to write these kinds of characters.
The Motion Copy System was developed at Keio University by Seiichiro Katsura. It stores the gestures associated with traditional Japanese calligraphy, and copies them. All that one needs to do to train the system is to guide the robot’s arm with their hand, and it can precisely replicate their recorded brush strokes. Unlike traditional system, the robot can record and reproduce the force applied to the brush similarly to when people touch something.
The calligraphy replication ‘bot was presented at the 2012 Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies in Tokyo, Japan.
[via DigInfo.TV via designboom]
From the minds who brought you the concrete sketch pencil comes the implement you’ve been needing to flesh out your concrete collection: More »
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Sometimes we wonder, what would we have ended up doing if we didn’t spend our time trawling the web for the week’s best alternative tech stories? We could have been paleontologists, novelists, engineers, or if we were really lucky, worked for Google. Instead, here we are bringing you some of the more colorful tech-tales from the last seven days, which we’re really not complaining about. That said though, at least on this occasion, we got to taste a bit of all the above. This is alt-week.
Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt
Alt-week 9.15.12: The ultimate wind machine, Egyptian Lego and the office of our dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Sep 2012 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Fantasy author Silvia Hartmann is doing something rather brave: just this morning she started writing her new novel on Google Docs, and is letting the world watch over her shoulder. More »
Almost everything can be turned into a weapon. I think that much is clear if you’ve seen footage of prison brawls, where anything from spoons to toothbrushes can be deadly objects. How much more if prisoners somehow manage to grab an officer’s pen?
Of course, they came prepared: with these Stab-Resistant Prison Pens.
I’m not sure if these are the exact same ones that they use in prisons, but I’m pretty sure their pens have the same ‘stab-resistant’ feature. Which is, they bend this way and that when someone tries to use them to stab somebody.
So if you have some sort of phobia that has something to do with getting stabbed by a pen, then you’d better carry only these types of pens in your home and in your office.
A pack of five Stab-Resistant Prison Pens are available from ThinkGeek for $5.99(USD).
[via The Green Head]
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
