Written on October 24, 2008 – 10:54 am | by Maria Mihale |

Wizcom’s Quicktionary TS brings us back, spiritually speaking, to some certain artifacts of the 1990s. You must remember the times when a handheld text scanner the size of frying pans was dragged across the page in order to scan it? This successor is much the same thing, but now has a more focused purpose – it looks up words and tells you what they mean – and is only (only?) the size of an adult forearm.

It’s not the first time to see such an electronic language translator, and while this device is surely useful to some people, I think this Quicktionary TS model goes a little bit overboard. When it comes to its features, there are no complaints, as the 400 dpi scanner built into the tip of the pen allows you to scan single words or full lines of text which are then displayed on the high-resolution LCD screen complete with detailed definition, such as idioms and phrases. Most Quicktionary TS products provide audio pronunciation for selected languages, so it allows the user to hear the words spoken back so that you can familiarize yourself with the correct pronunciations.

In addition, the LCD display is a touchscreen, so you can access the dictionary functions by manually typing in words or phrases via an on-screen keyboard. But the device is a little bit… oversized, as it has a relatively normal-sized human adult hand, which is pretty much.



Anyway, the Quicktionary TS is an ideal tool for anyone in need of multilingual support, such as students, travelers, researchers and business people. This electronic language translator features some advantages that might catch your eye. First of all, it allows you to stay focused on your reading while the Quicktionary TS helps you interpret your text quickly and easily. Not to mention it allows you to save all the time you would have spent searching through paper dictionaries or typing into electronic dictionaries. More than that, you can take this handheld text scanner wherever you go, being small, portable, designed to fit in your pocket, and you can practice your vocabulary using the included word games.

There is a Quicktionary TS German that has the following additional special features: a sophisticated algorithm that identifies the 2 elements of a split verb in any given sentence, a unique algorithm that divides compound words into their corresponding dictionary entries and a German spelling support that includes the 2005 spelling reform.

As far as the Quicktionary TS Chinese Simplified is concerned, it includes: English and Chinese Simplified OCR (optical character recognition), bi-directional translation, a unique algorithm that divides Chinese Simplified strings into their corresponding word segments and a handwriting recognition with an additional input method using the stylus to insert Chinese and English characters.

The Quicktionary TS is available from the Wizcom Technologies online store for $189.95.

(Source gadgets.boingboing.com)