Inventor Sees Future In Talking Labels
Frustrated with the task of hand-labeling piles of photographs, Ken Berkun decided to create a solution — a talking label.
Berkun, 52, founded Labels That Talk three years ago out of his Kailua home on Oahu. He says his product, called , is less than a year away from being on craft store shelves nationwide.
“I have a kid and really bad handwriting and didn’t want to just toss the photos into an album,” he said, referring to his 11-year-old daughter, Eva. “I thought, can’t I just speak something?”
With a background in computer science and experience with Internet startups, Berkun created a computer program that could record sound and transfer the audio file to a dense bar code that can be printed with a regular office printer.
He then built a simple scanner paired with a speaker to “read” the bar code.
“After some work and testing, it went from simply being able to label the photos, to actually capturing sound, like a dog’s bark or a birthday song,” said Berkun.
He says similar attempts to add sound to greeting cards and photos have required bulky speakers and batteries, while his invention is “just paper and ink.”
The scrapbooking industry is his first target market.
Photo by Lucy Pemoni.
cassy on August 14th, 2008 1:37 am
wow, amazing! this is something new. Im sure this is a big boom in the market.
ill check it out if this is available here in our place.
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