Unlike that horrible EchoSense thing that Carin tore apart the other day, these text scanning ring people seem to be on the right track when it comes to developing a product that the blind population actually needs and may want to use. The prototype FingerReader fits like a ring on a user’s index finger, equipped …
Category Archives: gadgets
What’s The Sense Of EchoSense?
I heard about this about a week and a half ago, and meant to blog about it that weekend. That didn’t happen. All I knew about it when I saw it on Twitter was it was some kind of revolutionary device for the blind, going to increase our independence. It was being madly retweeted over …
KNFB Reader For iPhone Is A Thing
Remember back when the makers of the KNFB Reader said it would not work on an iPhone? Well, they’ve gone and done it. Here, have your iBalls. Well, they didn’t call it iBalls, but ya know. I wondered what it would cost, since the price of the app for the Nokia phones was nearly a …
Technology Hitchin’ A Ride
I saw something about this while looking at Twitter. The first time I saw it, it just sort of made me raise my eyebrows. Then I saw it again, and I gave it some more thought. So here’s the story, as much as I understand it. Some researchers in Toronto have built a hitchhiking robot. …
No More Fleksy VO?
Previously, Carin wrote about the decision of Fleksy’s developers to split the app into two versions, one for users of Voiceover and one for everyone else. There’s been some movement on that front, movement that was made back at the end of April but that we’re just getting around to now because hospitals and weddings. …
The Sound Of Floppies
And now, The Sound of Silence as performed by a bunch of disk drives. Music to the ears, isn’t it?
I Think I Want A Mac
As some of you know, I’m still in the market for a new computer. Which kind I should get is proving to be a hell of a puzzler, though. For a while I was pretty much talked into getting a Mac and running Windows in some form of virtual machine so I could still have …
Yeesh. The Phone’s Ringing Again. Somebody Light A Match
I imagine the creators of the oPhone have only the best of intentions, but short of people like me and the vast majority of my friends using it to sicken and abuse each other and people we don’t like, I don’t see much of a market for it. oNotes are texts, images, and sounds accompanied …
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Those Rotary Phone Kids React To Walkmans
From the people who brought you Kids React To Rotary Phones comes the latest reminder that we’re gettin’ old, you guys, KIDS REACT TO WALKMANS. Pretty sure I died a little inside when the one kid exclaimed “My grandpa has these!” when shown a set of our old headphones. And here are the bonus reactions …
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You Sound A Lot Like Me
This is pretty freakin cool. A company called VocaliD has developed a system to create more natural sounding synthetic voices for people suffering from severe vocal impairments so that they’ll no longer have to sound like a very limited selection of computers. Using the voices of people who can speak normally, a recording studio and …