Hitachi is looking to take advantage of the education market, so the company has developed some new electronic blackboards. New and improved versions of the transformed PX-DUO-50 electronic blackboards will be resurrected in each of the elementary and junior high schools in Japan. Costing about ¥700,000, the electronic blackboards have a PC built-in and use a detection device consisting of two infrared cameras, with the lens having a field angle of 170°.

Measuring 50-inches, the blackboards support all of the character input and character recognition that teachers need and come with a terrestrial digital TV tuner.

If you are a smoker, now is a good time to either quit or find some cheaper way to maintain the habit. Cigarette prices are rising and more states are banning smoking in public places. Blu Electronic Cigarettes can help. These “cigarettes” use a nicotine cartridge that contains an atomizer that vaporizes the nicotine.

It will deliver your nicotine without the harmful carcinogens, while satisfying the habitual aspects of smoking, like actually holding the cigarette and blowing out what appears to be smoke. That smoke is really just water vapor. And you can smoke these anywhere, even in places where smoking cigarettes is prohibited. Because they aren’t cigarettes.

We all take our sight for granted and tend to forget how fortunate we are that we can experience an entire visual existence that those with no sight will never know. For the blind, content on the web is like a giant gaping void that they have no way of navigating. Monitors are useless for conveying info to the blind. They basically live in a different world just parallel to our own. One that we will never know.

Thanks to this Electronic Braille Reader that converts web content to Braille, the blind can finally get a taste of what we have been experiencing on the web. Check out a video below.

e-cigarettes seem pretty fashionable these days. I guess it beats being hooked up to an iron lung machine. Despite the fact that some people have a huge problem with smoking, it’s a part of our culture. We even covered a phone that looks like a carton of smokes awhile back.

Riding the wave of e-cigarettes is this electronic pipe. The Electronic Pipe will give you the taste and feel of smoking on a pipe while looking like you are solving crimes in the 19th century. You just won’t get all the negative effects of nicotine. It will give you a nice a orange glow and even a puff of fake smoke to complete the illusion.

The EZ-TP Electronic Teaching Trumpet from Yamaha is now available in Japan. Sorry rest of the world. You’re going to have to wait to get your lips on this one. It’s a digital way to learn the trumpet and share and save your MIDI-produced songs to your computer. The EZ-TP trumpet is designed to react to humming, not your mouth positions.

Apparently this lets you play the instrument by making the proper tones yourself. The Lighted Teaching System teaches the proper way to learn fingering. You can even download songs online and load them onto the EZ-TP with the supplied MIDI cable. It has to be asked. Will the amateur kill this device by filling it with their nasty slobber and spit? If so, good way to teach the musical apprentice would be for the instrument to spit it back at them.

The 4th Indiana Jones film will hit theaters in less than a month. Indiana Jones fans can now get themselves a toy version of Indy’s most famous accessory, next to the hat. The bull whip. Now you’ll be able to relive classic scenes from the movies. “Throw me the idol, I’ll throw you the whip.”

While I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to have kids going around whipping things like Devo, this is a toy that’s long overdue. We always wanted one. And yes, it’s as lame as you thought it would be. It’s not likely to hurt anyone by accident. The three foot soft whip features a plastic handle that not only plays authentic whip-cracking sound effects as you swing it, but also the well-known Indiana Jones theme music. A switch on the handle turns the sounds on and off, and it even features a carrying strap for attaching it to your belt. It will cost you $26.99