Lost in Translation
I live in Japan half the year — a wonderful experience in most regards, but the lack of English books drives me nuts. A few stores in Tokyo stock bestsellers, but who wants to pay $16 for a 250-page paperback? Thanks to eBooks, though, I can download tons of printed material, which have the further benefit of taking up zero space in our teensy apartment. Plopping my 9-pound laptop on my tummy so I could read in bed wasn’t a great idea…so when I strolled by the 2.8-pound Panasonic Toughbook W2 in the computer store, I did an abrupt about-face and bought one immediately. This little cutie has a crisp 12-inch screen, an integrated CD/DVD player, and keeps my tummy warm while it hums away. The keyboard is a little cramped, but perfectly adequate for answering email and adding annotations to eBooks. It has a 5-hour battery and fits inside a large purse, making it a totally portable computer solution as well.
Figure 15: At only 2.8 pounds, the Panasonic Toughbook W2 is light enough to tuck into a handbag.
Speaking of eBooks, everyone reading this probably knows how easy it is to create eBooks with Adobe Acrobat, but oddly, creating books with Microsoft Word is a bit obscure. Overdrive has a free plug-in for quickly converting Word, HTML, and text documents into a neat eBook. They have upscale converters too ($119), but the free version is pretty powerful.
International computing can be a bit of a problem, thanks to all the weird restrictions on playing DVDs from other regions. Japan’s media stores stock an abundance of DVD movies, but if you have an American player, you can’t watch them, thanks to region codes. I fooled around with several alternatives and discovered DVD X Player, a region-free DVD software player that provides smooth playback for movies from all six regions. I found it a much better player than WinDVD, which I’ve used for years, but which causes most of my players to click and groan when loading a movie. DVD X also whips by the FBI warnings, supports widescreens, and is Macrovision-free, so you can watch movies on your TV-out device. At $99, it’s a bit pricey, but worth it if you are stuck in a hotel room in Singapore and want to pass the evening with a bit of Americana.
Some other cool utilities I can’t live without are actually free, but friends on your gift list should know about them. Perhaps burn a CD for them with these and other freeware options:
- CoolRuler: Puts a virtual ruler on your desktop so you can measure anywhere with any unit scale. The company appears to be defunct, but this freeware app can be downloaded here.
- eudcedit: Not only is it free, but it’s part of Windows XP that you probably never knew existed. It’s called the Private Character Editor and with this totally obscure little gem, you can create up to 6,400 unique characters (such as special letters and logos) for use in your font library. Characters can be copied from any font file (including OpenType and Unicode) and easily linked to another font. The program can be located here C:I386EUDCEDIT.EXE} in your XP directory.
- Arjan Mel’s Font Viewer. If you want to gaze upon the wealth of characters hidden in Unicode fonts, get a copy of Arjan Mel’s Font Viewer. With this little freeware gem, you can examine every possible aspect of a font file, including the entire character set, metrics, encoding, statistics, and other arcana that you never knew existed.
- Freelang.net. This is one of the neatest Web sites for foreign language fonts. Here you’ll find all sorts of resources, including translation software, dictionaries, and every possible foreign language font in the world, including multiple American Indian languages, Inuktitut, and Qumran. Check out the free Unicode keyboard enhancent utility, on-line translators, and the wealth of freeware pocket dictionaries too.
Pretty as a Picture
As the holidays are all about connecting with friends and family, I’m excited about two products that let me stay in touch through images. I think Apple’s iSight camera is the coolest thing since the Ceiva Digital Picture Frame (see below). I still send photos to the Ceiva on my mother-in-law’s kitchen counter… it’s very cool.The iSight brings people together better than e-mail, and it makes the quality of online family communication better. I bought one a couple of months back, and I love it! I have used it for casual communications and a formal three-hour remote class for my Cal Poly students (I was in Atlanta, they were in the classroom). When I am in a hotel, I can use the high-speed services available to connect, and then use iSight for communication. The entire thing is handled by either Apple’s or AOL’s Instant Messenger circuit. There are no long distance charges, no per-call phone fees to connect to the long-distance company, and the family gets to see my smiling face from – sometimes – far away!
The iSight works great on my PowerBook, and our home DSL service is more-than-adequate adequate for a pretty good image with excellent sound. Hotel connections are usually faster, and therefore better. Overall, I think it’s a great gift for a remote family and business contact. It takes two to tango, however, so buy one for both ends of the potential video chat. iSight is fun, easy-to-use, and the quality is really surprising.
I wrote about the original Ceiva Digital Picture Receiver a couple of years ago, expressing my admiration for this clever gadget. I bought one for my mother-in-law, and I regularly send photos to the frame via the Ceiva Web site. Every night the frame wakes up, checks-in with the Ceiva photo center over a standard phone line, and downloads any photos that have been posted to it in the past 24 hours. During the day it cycles through the images it has received.
I send family photos fairly often to my mother-in-law’s frame, and I also have her signed-up for her local weather page, the Lottery results, and a cartoon. This frame is fun, and it allows me to keep grandma aware of what my teenage son is doing through pictures (she probably wouldn’t appreciate the sound).
Figure 16: The Ceiva Digital Picture Receiver makes it easy to share photos with faraway friends and family.
Ceiva recently announced a new model that holds more photos (30), has a nicer LCD panel, and a feature to order prints by pushing a button on the frame itself. The new frame is $149, and the company is offering a $25 rebate for the next few weeks. The original frame, still a nice unit, is available for $99 while supplies last.
In addition to the purchase price, a $7.95 monthly subscription is required for transmission costs and file management — Ceiva provides thousands of local and toll-free access numbers to subscribers. This fee, Ceiva reminds us, is less than shooting and processing a single roll of film every month (does anyone shoot film?). I find the monthly fee to be modest for staying in touch, visually, with my family. Discounted subscriptions are available for yearlong, and three-year memberships.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on December 9, 2003
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!Loading comments...
