Verbarius Polyglot [It's a clock]

[nfotxn]

Verbarius Polyglot, originally uploaded by nfotxn.

"As you can see above, the clock does away with the usual time-telling tools in favor of spelling things out, in five different languages no less. What's more, it changes up its verbiage each time you ask it the time, displaying variations like "forty-five minutes past four," "fifteen minutes to five," "four forty-five", and "a quarter to five." This being Lebedev, of course, they're also taking their time to build up anticipation in the device, with the clock supposedly set to only begin shipping in November. You can get your pre-orders in now, however, with a discount price of $158.25 available to those who order before September 1st, after which it'll set you back about $180."

via boingboing.net

I gotta admit I think the simplicity here is pretty stunning. What I find funny about the art of design and technology these days is that the real progress is in the streamlining and minimization of the impact of devices in our lives. A clock that communicates, when asked, in natural language(s) is pretty interesting. A bit geeky and high-brow but interesting none the less.

It's also stupid expensive and not shipping until November. Oh well!

Comments

[telecommunicate.livejournal.com]

Kind of along the same lines of my portable record player with the built in speaker that's entirely made out of ultra light plastic and can be mounted to your wall to play records sideways. Also shares the attribute of being stupid expensive..... but it's light blue and clear plastic!

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Like the Soundburger or the Handitrax?

[telecommunicate.livejournal.com]

It's the Columbia GP-3 Portable Player.

[kingfuraday.livejournal.com]

re: streamlined - agreed and welcomed
re: pricey - a bit... guess I'll have to make do with my sundial a whiles longer...

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Somebody needs to make like a Vista Gadget or OS X Dashboard widget for this for free.

[pensivegargoyle.livejournal.com]

Way too much for a clock. I think I can deal with not being quite that cool.

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

It's the cost of realizing design like this, unfortunately. One day GE or RCA or somebody will see this and rip it off and sell it at Radioshack and Zellers.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Hello, a polyglot clock? Like I WOULDN'T enjoy that! And how sad is it that I'm thinking to myself: if only it had more languages ... ^o^

[bcbud.livejournal.com]

Leave it to artists to make it look ultrasexy and enhance the interface, but leave out an alarm feature that'd make it useful.

I want one that wakes me up every morning with a different racial slur against my lineage... the day would only go up from there.