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Computer-maker NEC calls them the latest in eyewear for the linguistically challenged. The TeleScouter integrates spectacle frames with a personal mini-computer and a head-mounted display unit. The result is a portable language translator. TeleScouter allows two or more people with no language in common, to hold a conversation. One user will begin the conversation in their native language and, with the press of a button send the recorded words to a remote server where they are analyzed and translated. The server then sends the translation to the receiving user who can read the words in their own language on the head-mounted display unit. While the technology is still in its developmental stages, NEC says a faster unit is on the horizon and that the hope is to break down language barriers. [Kotaro Nagahama, NEC Manager]: "With this you don't have to think about having to translate yourself your own words. All you have to do is speak in your own words and that gets communicated to the other person and you don't have to do any thinking. You just have you use your own language. " But TeleScouter will not be cheap. When it reaches the market it'll sell for around $83,000 although the price will come down over time. If all goes according to plan, NEC says foreign tourists will one day, with great confidence be able to tell their hosts "I see what you're saying."

A new Kinect hack places virtual objects anywhere in the real world and lets you interact with them as if they were actually there.Most Kinect hacks just use a single version of the sensor, but a team at Microsoft Research has used four ceiling-mounted Kinects to map an entire room and the objects inside it in full 3D. A handheld projector acts as a flashlight that lets you peer into this virtual version of the world to reveal hidden images or draw in 3D space.This close link between the real and virtual world allows for some impressive interactions, such as creating virtual copies of real objects or generating a stream of virtual particles on a desk and watching them roll inside a real-life drawer.The project is unlikely to become a commercial product any time soon, but it's easy to imagine how a more polished version could lead to a holodeck-like environment in the comfort of your own living room.

Mobile handsets have a bad habit of oversharing with the networks they operate on, with some handsets being chattier than others. This signaling data, as it’s known in the industry, can congest mobile networks, and Traffix Systems, a six-year-old Israeli company wants to help operators solve that problem.

The company said Wednesday that it raised a first round of $7 million led by Bessemer Venture Partners to help it expand operations. Ben Volkow, the CEO, says that 60 percent of operators already have some Traffix gear on their networks to address and manage signaling traffic, but more operators are interested. As more operators began deploying LTE networks, which add to the complexity of signaling traffic and to the overall network, Volkow decided that his previous strategy of growing the business through bootstrapping it no longer made sense. “We needed to scale and grow the business,” he said in an interview.

Signaling traffic is the data the phone or device sends out to the network to tell it where it is, what is it is doing, how much it is allowed to do based on the subscriber’s plan and figure out when to hop to the next base station. Chetan Sharma, a wireless analyst, issued a report last year noting that network congestion is generally caused by two big things: (1) signaling traffic caused by smartphones and superphones and (2) peak data traffic caused by data cards and embedded laptops.