Franklin Electronic Publishers, long known for their electronic reference products, and Merriam-Webster, long known for their largely paper-based reference products, have teamed up to create the MWD-170, aka the Merriam-Webster USB Dictionary & Thesaurus Portable Storage Device. All of which to say that it's a dictionary and thesaurus on a USB thumb drive. The software allows you to enter words phonetically in order to find the correct spelling (the example they give is entering "nolige" to find "knowledge" -- but does it recognize both "potayto" and "potahto?"), a grammar reference guide, and other language aides. I mean, aids. The Franklin website doesn't give any clues as to the software's Mac compability.
Not a bad idea, especially for us writers and editors on the go. But hey, memory's cheap -- why restrict the total memory (including the space reserved for the dictionary, etc.) to a mere 256 MB?
For more information, go here.
