I’m working on the next issue of my What’s Next report (nowandnext.com), so I don’t have time to post anything long. Here, then, is something that I read the Nikkei Weekly (Japan) this morning. NEC Corp in Japan is working on ways in which screens can wirelessly detach from the main parent device. For example, a display could be created that wraps around a user’s wrist to function as a watch. It could then be removed and unrolled to create a flat screen that becomes a phone, an iPad-type device or an in-car navigation system. Meanwhile, a laboratory in Japan has developed software to run as an app on Apples’s iPhone that can give real-time oral translation in six different languages. The technology also allows text translation in a further 15 languages. Douglas Adams, if only you were here to see this.*

* The Babel fish was a small creature in the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which, when placed in your ear, would translate any language.