Hi, society
Hate leaving your social networking sites when you have to meet people in the flesh? Now you can have both; aka-aki, a new service from Germany, lets you send and receive information about commonalities with other subscribers within the same brick-and-mortar space, and then use Bluetooth to actually find them. This could be a great means of icebreaking for people with communication disabilities, or for anyone who’d rather put who they are ahead of what they look like.
Times Online: The future of social networking: mobile phones
Twittering away
We have yet to quite see the point of Twitter, the online service that lets you keep the world posted on the most minute details of your day (”Retrieved bellybutton lint, 5:04 PM”). But at least now there’s TwitterFone, a hands- and cost-free option for creating Twitter posts via speech recognition of phoned-in updates. As the article points out, this could also be used to create to-do lists for yourself, so maybe there’s a purpose after all.
Gadgetell.com: Twitterfone: why type when you can call in your tweets?
Text your vote
A significant majority (61%) of polled Americans said they’d prefer to vote in the next election via text messaging, and the percentage is even higher among those who’ll become eligible to vote by 2016. Reliability issues aside, this could be a boon for people with disabilities–or a nightmare, depending on implementation. How will write-ins be handled? Will the system be able to recognize creative spelling (Barak, Barac, Braq…)? Will verification and confidentiality issues be addressed? We refer anyone interested in the implementation of this strategy to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines for a comprehensive view of accessibility considerations.
Cellular News: U.S. Cell Phone Users Open to Texting Their Vote for President
Mulch the vote
As Florida’s election officials move to paper-based optical scanning, what to do about the 29,000 touchscreen machines they have? Well, they’re going to be marketed to other jurisdictions (!) or “de-manufactured”, AKA “taken apart and sold for components and scrap.”
E-Vote: Florida Touch Screen Voting Machines to be Recycled - Government Technology
Eye spy
Toyota is just about to release a system that tracks involuntary eyelid closure to detect when an overtired driver starts to doze at the wheel. How far can that be from tracking voluntary eyelid closure to run a switch input system?
Effective snowball
At this time of year, the primary concern of kids (and selected adults) who use wheelchairs might well be: how can I get into that snowball fight in the backyard? A new device seems perfect for creating the necessary ammunition. It looks like a meatballer on growth hormone, and has the additional benefit of letting you scoop and watch the enemy at the same time. Not so effective in California.
Brain Control to major game
From our “Why can’t I use my brain to control my first life?” file: Researchers have developed a direct brain interface to the keyboard controls for Second Life, the popular online social game environment. As Second Life is now being used for real educational and even governmental functions, access to it becomes more important every day. Non-visual access to its rich graphical interface is another problem.