Serenity for those who’ve lost it
Bluetrek now offers Serenity, a Bluetooth gadget shepherd. It establishes a Bluetooth relationship with up to 3 items you care about: keys, remote, crack pipe. If any one of them gets too far away from the small base unit, it beeps. If you’re looking for the item, you can make it beep. Great security for people with visual or cognitive impairments. About $100.
Teen-y sound
Remember the Mosquito, the anti-loitering system that broadcasts a tone too high for anyone over 25 to hear? Well, some enterprising British kids turned the idea around and are using the Mosquito as a ringtone that can let them know when a text message has arrived, with their teachers being none the wiser. Umm…can we hope this sudden new appreciation of the effects of aging will translate in a few years to a generation of engineers more conscientious about product design?
Camera on mobile phone plays table tennis
In another demonstration of augmented reality, 2 Nokia phones can play ping pong. The camera is the sweet spot of your paddle. Your display shows your real opponent (and his camera/paddle) and a virtual table. As the virtual ball comes towards you, you move the phone so the camera centers the ball. Amazing. And imagine what it could do for communication aids.
New computer “desktop” adds physics
BumpTop, a prototype operating system desktop, uses the rules of physics to display files. For example, if you “hit” them with the pointer, they scatter. You can make messy or neat piles, or flip through them like a deck of cards. Go ahead and watch the video, while wondering how the heck we’re going to make this accessible to screen reader users.
Microsoft studying how consumers use video on businesses
First a trickle, now a trend, we’ve seen camera phones used to document car accidents, crimes, and bad service. Microsoft is studying how this may play out if everyone who comes to the counter comes with a camera. A real challenge to businesses; more charm school for front-line staff. How about if everyone documented every instance of inaccessibility, be it architectural or attitudinal? Sounds like … victory.
Microsoft studies “reactive media” where everyone videos company employees
Picture symbols for textless messaging
Israeli firm Zlango has launched an icon language of the same name. Two hundred icons let you express thoughts, feelings, invitations, etc. over SMS-capable mobile phones. If Zlango takes off, it might make a pretty cool, inexpensive communication aid for people with impaired speech.
The shape of things
Carnegie Mellon is doing research on a tricky computer problem: How to generate 3-D models from 2-D photos. Part of the solution involves imbuing the computer with a sense of natural laws, so that if it perceives a building or car it knows that the object should be located on the ground. Wonder if this information could somehow be passed to screen readers to provide a crude text description for some images?
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Teach Computers to Perceive Three Dimensions in 2-D Images