This is a review of Unichal Inc.’s DIXAU.

This is DIXAU.
It look a bit like a space ship.
I couldn’t’ believe that it was an electronic dictionary.
It a bit smaller than a regular Laptop mouse..
When you use DIXAU you don’t have to type anything to look up a word.

If you used an electronic dictionary, you know how convenient it can be.  However, there was no way to replace the input process. (you had to type each word into the dictionary)

Welcome to the world of 1-click dictionary!
If you want to look up a word, you just need to point the word with DIXAU and click.  It shows the results on the screen.

Let’s look at the screen capture.
You see a small window with the image that DIXAU took.
DIXAU uses that image to extract the word we want to look up.
Should we try?

First place the guide right underneath the word you want to look up.

Using this camera, DIXAU takes a picture.

Let’s look up ‘schoolmaster’. Click!

You see that schoolmaster is pictured and DIXAU recognizes schoolmaster.
But as you can see there is a limit.  You can only look up words that are shorter than 1cm.  Bigger words are not recognized.
But there is more to this.
If you look at the results page,

A familiar page comes up.
Yes, it’s NAVER dictionary
You might think otherwise, but I think it’s an excellent choice.
When there is a web service which gets updated regularly, you don’t really have to create a new service.  Doing so, will only raise the price of your product.

At this time, it got me curious.
The maximum length that DIXAU can scan is 2.5cm.
Then it cannot recognize really long words!
I thought, ‘it’s a crappy dictionary!”
So!!!
I tried.
I printed a word which contains 45 characters in 12 point font.
The word is about 10cm.

Look at it, it’s LONG!
I’ll click on it
Click!

As you can see DIXAU only scans 12 characters out of 45.
What will DIXAU look up using a web service?
Drum rolls please..

It actually looks up the correct word!
What’s happening?
If the word is too long DIXAU actually searches for similar words and looks them up.
I hope you enjoyed this review!