On the sunny side of the Tweet
Here’s an interesting Palm Pre hack that lets you interface GPS and Twitter to automatically Tweet your location once per hour. This could potentially become a relatively unobtrusive tracking system for people with dementia; let’s get this going on other systems as well for the benefit of folks who are already using a PDA when Alzheimer’s hits.
PalmPre Hacks: How to Tweet Palm Pre’s GPS Location to Your Twitter!
Eye carumba
Bad enough that we adult types spend nearly every waking moment with eyes glued to some type of screen; now a new study finds that kids in the UK spend an average of 62 hours per week staring at a computer, TV, cell phone, etc. We’ll leave it to others to actively advocate for fresh air and swing sets, and instead call for a continuing industry focus on improving screen quality, legibility options (e.g., modifiable text size and contrast colors), and other good design features that can head off everyone’s eyestrain as well as improve access for people of all ages with visual or learning disabilities.
NPower: Children spend a third of the year staring at screens
Mini’s yoo-hoo
Mini USA has released a new iPhone/Blackberry app, free to Mini Cooper owners, that beams personal information and GPS location to Allstate roadside services at the push of a button during emergency situations. How ’bout a version for wheelchair users?
CNET: Mini launches roadside assistance app for iPhone, Blackberry
The beat goes on
The 3M Littman Electronic Stethoscope, like other stethoscopes we’ve covered before, has obvious advantages for doctors who are hard-of-hearing–including ambient noise reduction, acoustic seal earpieces, and amplification options. But we’re also interested in its recording and Bluetooth capabilities, which allow body noises to be captured and transferred hands-free to a nearby computer for later analysis, accommodating at least medical professionals with dexterity impairments, and possibly other disabilities as well.
Does anybody really know what time it is?
Dyscalculia is a learning disability that can affect anything having to do with math, such as the ability to interpret even a digital clock. Enter the QLOCKTWO, which expresses time in words, e.g., “IT’S TWENTY PAST FOUR.” $1,600 on your wall or $.99 on your iPhone; your choice.
Layared look
Layar is billed as the first commercially viable augmented reality service. For Android devices, aim your camera at any location or object that’s been indexed — a fort, a bar, a train station — and information pops onto the screen, with arrows and captions and everything. They’ve got content from Wikipedia and other sources, and claim to have 500 developers working on content and apps. There are some great opportunities here, as we’ve said before, for people with hearing, cognitive or visual disabilities.
Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Layar Reality Browser 2.0 Launched Globally
Comfortably Nimbb
What if you want to get in on social networking, but typing is difficult, or you communicate better by voice or sign language than text, or you just prefer video? Nimbb is a new service that lets you record brief videos and then post them to either a single Twitter-like page or to other types of sites. There is a free option, but paying a monthly fee ensures that your video won’t disappear after 30 days and will be of higher quality. This seems to be the next generation of video Twitter sites such as 12seconds.tv.