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By David Rothman

iranianebookreader A new e-book reader from Teheran could be irresistible for educators.

Just touch a word with a stylus. Bingo! The e-book reader will pronounce, define or translate it. Just the ticket for students, especially those with language difficulties?

Helps understand pictures, too

Edited slightly, here’s the lowdown from the Iranian Students News Agency:

“Iranian inventor Ramin Sedighi made a small device that turns silent books into speaking ones. The gadget is a useful computer system that pronounces, translates and explains pictures and words of a book located on it when its electronic pen touches them. The device can provide a very effective method for teaching foreign languages to children between 4- 16 and will be available in early 2008. It contains a USB port, audio output, electronic pen, 512 megabyte memory for storing 15 books and a SD card which can store 60 books as its flash memory. It works with electricity or battery, is as big as a 13-inch laptop and is light enough to be portable.”

Enticing mix

Of course, text to speech is hardly novel, but if nothing else, I like the mix of the touch-the-word feature and the translation and other wrinkles.

Meanwhile this is yet another reminder that the Western world doesn’t have a monopoly on innovation. The stricter the laws that Washington wants in the copyright and patent areas, the more they could eventually boomerang against the U.S.

The trade sanctions angle

If nothing else, I’m also curious about something else—U.S. trade sanctions against Iran. I know they ban various Iranian exports. But how about imports of the Iranian e-book reader?

Detail: I wonder about explanation of pictures. I suspect that there’s no magic image scanning, just the use of text hidden in the background (alt-style, as with Web pages).

(Thanks to Gizmodo and Raw Feed.)

 
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