Ch-ch-ch charges
Power cords, power cords — will we ever be free of your kinky, retentive ways? The bane of portable electronics — especially for people with impaired dexterity or strength — has been the need to insert chargers into wall outlets, and cables into gadgets. Prototype wireless chargers have come and gone, but now we’ve got Powermat — a real product. Just lay your mobile phone or media player on the mat and come back later to a fully-charged pocket playmate.
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
Waiting for Go!
For many years, we’ve been able to show clients adjustable keyboards, and compact keyboards, but a model that was both adjustable and compact turned out to be the Fermat’s Last Theorem of keyboard design. No more; Goldtouch–which has long made a reliable full-sized adjustable keyboard–now has the Go!, which is about the size of a laptop keyboard and only weighs a pound. Even more intriguing, it comes with dust covers that supposedly can be flipped underneath and used as a stand atop your laptop; depending on how it’s set up, you might even still be able to use the touchpad. A new option in ergonomic goodness for only $139.
Red Ferret: Goldtouch Go Travel Keyboard – portable AND ergonomic
Hey, goods looker
We’ve been talking for a while about how people with visual or cognitive disabilities could use mobile phone cameras to identify or interpret objects. Now it’s here, or near. iVisit can either call up a service to describe an object to you, or use a pre-programmed database of images to identify currency, packaged goods, body parts, etc. and speak it out synthetically.
Camera Phones to Interpret Visible World for Blind – Medgadget – www.medgadget.com