Intel Reader

Just shoot a picture of that fine print on a book or restaurant menu, and have it read out to you

Just shoot a picture of that fine print on a book or restaurant menu, and have it read out to you

Earlier this week, Intel announced the availability of a product called the Intel Reader. It is a full-fledged PC with a screen, 5 megapixel digital camera and multimedia. The digital camera takes a photo of any printed material and the Intel Atom processor-based reader converts the images—of the book or a restaurant menu—to text, using an OCR engine. And then it reads it out to you via headphones, or enlarges the words to help read the fine print. This device is primarily targeted at people who have learning disabilities or visual impairment.

The reader weighs nearly 500 gm and is the size of a paperback novel. Though I won’t suggest you walk around with this in your pocket, it can fit into a backpack or purse. You can navigate yourself to the stored documents using a word, sentence or page number. During playback, the words being read out can be highlighted, making it useful as a learning tool too. It has a 4GB Intel Solid State drive on which the information is stored, of which 2 GB is available for user data. The 2 GB can hold up to 600 processed pages (images and text). The built-in rechargeable batteries provide 150 minutes of usage time.

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