Here’s a gadget that we didn’t see coming: a calculator that doubles as a spy camera. If you’d like to keep tabs on anyone from your babysitter to your colleagues, this device delivers. The calculator copies the design and functionality of a Casio DS-5500, so it is a usable calculator. It records at 640 x 480 resolution at 30 frames/second. Apparently, it can also take 1280 x 960 pictures, for those of you that plan to use it as a replacement for your digital SLR.
Click here for my video of the Microsoft Mathematics Add-in for Word 2010 and OneNote. On Tuesday, Microsoft released the Mathematics Add-in for Word 2010 and OneNote users. If you’ve never used equation editor or a previous release of the mathematics add-in, it gives significant mathematical capabilities to Word. Teachers (myself included) love it for writing quizzes, tests, and worksheets. Students will appreciate the ability to easily make their assignments and papers look more professional.
In an age where we are surrounded by computers that solve problems of almost unimaginable complexity in a matter of seconds, students of math may be surprised to learn that there is an entire category of problems generally believed to be “unsolvable” by computers. The class of P problems can be solved in “polynomial time,” while NP problems are solved in “nondeterministic polynomial time.” At the risk of oversimplifying, P problems can be solved by a computer fairly quickly.
UPDATE (7/27/11): After hearing nothing for a year, Canon has announced they will release the Cannon X Mark 1 Calculator Mouse in August 2011. Buy the X Mark on Canon.com. The gadget world was all a twitter over the weekend as Canon announced the creation of the X Mark I, a combination mouse-calculator-numeric keypad. This bluetooth mouse features large, PC sized buttons. With all the gadget gurus falling all over themselves to report the excitement of this new device (Engadget called it “magical”), apparently no one is asking, “Haven’t we been here before?
Open SciCal Earlier this week, Matt Stack made headlines when he announced he had created an entirely open source software and hardware graphing graphing calculator. For those unfamiliar with the concept, “open source” means that the programmers who write the computer code make it public for anyone to tweak, improve, or customize. This differs greatly from commercial software efforts where code is a carefully guarded secret. The news of Matt’s creation, Open SciCal, was quickly picked up and reported on by Wired and Gizmodo among others.
Texas Instruments has done a nice job of consistently releasing updates for its TI-Nspire handheld. But with OS 2.0 released in April, it is surprising to see OS 2.1 released just 3 months later, not that I’m complaining. A quick review of features on the official TI-Nspire OS site reveals that there are almost as many updates for teachers using Nspire Teacher Software as there are for those using an actual handheld.
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