Don't you just hate shopping for groceries? Being around other people, having to spend time thinking about what you want to buy, and the inevitable "shopping hangover" caused by the later realization that you bought a dozen things you don't need or want: yuck. A lot of people head online for their shopping (where else can you read Engadget while you order loo roll?), but for those who prefer to take their cash into the real world, there's now a solution that could prevent the likelihood of encountering one of those aforementioned shopping hangovers: SmartShopper is a device that can convert a spoken shopping list into a printout to carry around in your wallet or purse. Just mount the SmartShopper on your fridge using the magnet, start waxing lyrical about apples and oranges -- don't worry, your neighbors already think you're crazy -- and the little gray box will neatly print all your choices onto a little piece of paper. At $149, the SmartShopper is on the low end of smart fridge solutions, but at least you can feel safe knowing that its limited artificial intelligence prevents it from sticking "5 kg of Soylent Green" on your list.

[Via The Raw Feed]

With fingerprint scanners having become almost a commodity item nowadays-- we've already got a hard drive and thumb drive on biometric lockdown -- it looks like we may now be in for a sensitivity war (oxymoron?) among these devices similar to the ongoing megapixel escalation in digital cameras. Even though it's probably still vulnerable to Play-Doh-equipped hackers, NEC's new external USB reader offers an impressive 800dpi in its 15-millimeter wide sensor -- it seems the best you can do today is around 500dpi -- which at the very least will marginally speed up your web surfing, thanks to its slim 0.0001% chance of misidentifying a print. This "reading precision of the worldwide highest level" (thanks, machine translation) won't come cheap, though, as the pocket-size PU700-20 will cost about $250 when it ships on August 1st.

[Via Digital World Tokyo]