Huey Hews Hues (He's a Monitor Calibrator)

The cleverly-named Huey offers monitor color calibration on the cheap, with the hook being that it sits in front of your monitor permanently, adjusting your system's settings on-the-fly to account for changing light conditions in the room.

At only $100, it's hard to imagine it being particularly effective--professional photographers will spend astonishing sums to get their fridge-sized, 150lb CRT dinosaurs just perfect. As a Pantone product, however, it's got the right name on the box and claims to offer absolute colour clarity for those who don't have the understanding of color technology that fancier tools require.

A most interesting codicil after the jump

It also looks like Pantone's going to some trouble to shout down an earlier version of this device, produced in Asia by the same company whose technology Pantone licensed for the Huey. It's being offered as the Huey by unscrupulous sellers, and Pantone warns buyers to make sure the device they're getting has the Huey logo on it.

Prior to the development and launch of the Pantone huey, GretagMacbeth launched a pre-production version of the hardware and software for limited use called the "Display Calibrator". This product was never sold in Europe and was only available via some far-east distribution channels. The product was manufactured in early 2005 and although it bears a good resemblance to the huey, it does not mention the name "huey" anywhere on the product or packaging.

Product Page [Via Shiny Shiny]