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Nuggets: Calling all Jim Bond fans

It's a pen, but not as we know it... (far too clever to be just a pen)
Written by Justin Pearse, Contributor

The latest must have accessory for spies everywhere has to be the C Pen 600 from C Technologies.

This is a pen sized (really) handheld scanner with automatic translation capabilities (for those of you who recognise this from a previous Nugget, notice that it now translates as well as scans!) -- perfect for covert translations on Bond-style missions.

Moving the pen over text captures information through the pen's integrated digital camera. The images are then transformed into computer-readable text through an OCR system, which stores it as an editable text file. Files can then be beamed to a PC via a built-in infrared port. Which is one of the drawbacks of this otherwise estimable little device, because if you don't have an IR port you're stuffed.

The really clever part of the pen is that it can automatically translate from and back to English and Spanish, French, Italian, German and Swedish. Why Swedish? Er...C Technologies is a Swedish company.

The C-Pen is powered by an Intel StrongArm processor and comes with 6MB of on-board memory, capable of storing up to 2000 pages of text.

The company promises that next iterations of this nifty little gadget will support email too.


I love gadgets so take me to the Nuggets Special page NOW!


There's a stupidly simple Nuggets competition going on at the mo. Click here and you could win some fab gear for your PC

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