GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

LAS VEGAS — Orb, maker of the little $100 set-top box that brings web content to your TV, will now do the same for your Blu-ray player in the form of a Blu-ray disc, called Orb BR.

Pop the disc into your PlayStation 3 or other Blu-ray player, fire up the companion smartphone app and you’re good to go. You can now stream Netflix, Hulu, Comedy Central, and Amazon video, amongst others, and watch it on your big-screen TV. With server software installed on your computer, you can also send content from there.

In fact, in some ways this magic disc is actually better than the actual Orb set-top box. The hardware only supports standard-def video. This $20 disc, on the other hand, will do 720p and 1080p.

Orb BR will be available late February.

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Word Lens for the iPhone is, quite honestly, one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Take a look at this, but put down any hot liquids first.

It’s an augmented-reality, OCR-capable translation app, but that’s a poor description. A better one would be “magic.” World Lens looks at any printed text through the iPhone’s camera, reads it, translates between Spanish and English. That’s pretty impressive already – it does it in real time – but it also matches the color, font and perspective of the text, and remaps it onto the image. It’s as if the world itself has been translated.

Impressed? You’re not the only one. John Gruber of Daring Fireball puts it best: “[It's] as though near-future time travelers started sending us apps instead of Terminators.”

If it works as well as it does in the video, Word Lens really is a taste of science-fiction, something like a visual version of the universal translator or the Babelfish. Only instead of being a convenient device to avoid movie subtitles, it’s a real, functioning tool.

Word Lens is free, and will do some fancy word-rearranging to show you how it works. The Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionaries are in-app purchases, for $5 each, and the app runs offline – perfect for when you’re traveling. You can pick your coffee back up, now.

Word Lens download [iTunes]

Word Lens product page [Quest Visual]

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Most people I know who have an Apple Magic Mouse hate it. They hate the carpal-tunnel-inflaming multi-touch gestures, and they hate the stupid shape, which fits nobody’s hand. One thing they probably don’t hate, though, is the resilient glass surface on top.

Even the most cautious of Magic Mouse lovers would likely shy away from this $15 MouseGuard, essentially a screen-protector for something that sits on a desk all day. A screen-protector makes sense when that screen is swinging around your neck (camera) or sitting in your pocket with some carelessly forgotten keys (phone), but not when the worst that could befall the glass panel is being lightly scraped with an untrimmed fingernail.

It’s not even like you need to look through the screen. Seeing a scratch on the LED panel of your $800 camera is frustrating at best, but a mouse is something that is always covered by your hand when in use. In fact, the MouseGuard comes in two opaque flavors, white and gray.

What next? A case to protect your case? Even my friend Pedro, who buys cases for pretty much everything he owns and will likely be spending the next few weeks handling his new iPad with cotton gloves until he finds the perfect sleeve, would shy away from the MouseGuard. And when it comes to protecting gear from scratches, Pedro is an expert. You should listen to him.

MouseGuard [Moshi Mode via Oh Gizmo]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Source:wired.com

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It turns out that the Magic Trackpad, released yesterday, isn’t the first external trackpad from Apple. Way back in 1997 the $7,500 Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh came with a detachable trackpad in its keyboard. It wasn’t a Bluetooth pad, of course, but instead popped out and remained tethered by a wire. And once it was removed, according to Wikipedia, a classy patch of leather was left underneath lest you have to look at an extra square of desk instead.

What are the other differences? Well, apart from not using the fancy new capacitive touch of all Apple’s glass-paneled trackpads and touch-screens, there are surprisingly few changes: The size and the color, and that’s about it. But what about the buttons, you ask? Well, the new Magic pad actually has buttons. With typical Apple style, these are secreted in the little rubber feet under the pad’s front edge. Press down on the whole pad, just as you would with those on the MacBooks, and they’ll click.

So there you have it. Nothing is ever really new, if you look hard enough. And Apple doesn’t really hate buttons. It just hates the ones you can see.

New Magic Trackpad: not so new [Simon OS via ]

Apple Magic Trackpad [Macworld]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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Apple’s oft-leaked multi-touch trackpad is now on sale. The Magic Trackpad is a multi-touch tablet-style pad which is either a bigger version of the trackpad on the MacBook, or a smaller version of the iPad’s screen.

Like every other Apple touch-device, it is made from glass, and the panel is set into an aluminum base. The batteries that power it (the unit is Bluetooth) sit in a tube at the back, and it looks like nothing more than Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard, chopped in half and with the keys removed.

The pad works with swipe and pinch gestures, and even has the “momentum-scrolling” familiar to iOS users as well as owners of the latest MacBooks. It’s not going to replace your Wacom Tablet, as there is no pressure detection, but it will replace a mouse on a desktop Mac. The price? $70, and available now.

Magic Trackpad [Apple]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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