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Description: The xAble Technology Blog details interesting advancements in tools and technologies, with particular attention to technology for persons with disabilities.
There's a cool, new mini-keyboard for your computer called the Optimus 3. It only has three keys, but each of the keys has it's own little screen (an OLED display) and can be customized in many different ways. For example, you could setup a hot key to go instantly to your favorite website (like xAble.com!) or to display when you have new Google mail.
The Optimus 3 is a nice gadget for the disability community. You can create hot keys to perform complex tasks, and with a single key press perform something that might take dozens of keystrokes. You can also set it up for hands off monitoring of various things, like mail, RSS feeds, weather, and stock quotes.
The Optimus 3 is a bit pricey, retailing for about $150, but may be well worth it if you're a frequent computer user looking to save some time and energy. Check out the Optimus 3 website for more info.
How suitable is the iPhone for deaf and hearing impaired people? Despite it's evolution from the primarily music-listening iPod, there are many features that make it worthwhile. I've been a iPhone user for the last couple of months and am impressed in many ways by the device. The web browser is very slick, and actually quite usable given the 3.5" screen. The widgets for Google Maps, weather, and stock quotes are very nice. The camera is 2 megapixels, and takes decent pictures, but don't expect anything too fabulous. All in all, it's a great device with many features regardless of hearing capability.
AT&T has planned to roll-out a new data-only plan for deaf and hearing impaired people. The plan is supposedly priced at $27.99, no voice and unlimited data usage. This is a great win for the Deaf community!
The iPhone won't communicate with a TTY out of the box. You can purchase an adapter for an additional $19 from the Apple store to connnect to standard TTY devices. Third party services are available to call TTYs. It would be nice if the iPhone worked as a self-contained TTY. If enough people communicate with Apple, maybe they'll release the functionality in a future version.
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I am an Apple user and hearing impaired. Thanks for writing about this! Of course, they managed to get extra $$ for an adaptor at the other end... but, how useful is that when they don't know you are going to call? :-O !!!
01/05/08 04:01:29 am
Bram Cohen is the all-star programmer who created BitTorrent. If you haven't used it yet, BitTorrent is a very popular file sharing program on the net. Bram left his dotcom job to write the software, hoping that one of his software creations would actually persist.
He also has a form of Autism known as Asperger's Syndrome, a disability in some ways, a great ability in others for him. He has difficulty in social situations, for example, being able to accurately recognize facial expressions in other people. What he lacks in social abilities, he has gained in strong mathematical skills and powers of concentration. He was able to single-handedly tackle the problem of creating a truly effective file sharing program.
BitTorrent tackles the tricky problem of downloading large files quickly. Typical file sharing programs download the entire software from a single computer. This is fine if you're sharing a file a few megabytes in size, but becomes very slow when downloading files of several hundred megabytes. The big problem is that most broadband lines have a much faster download speed than upload speed. You may be able to download at 3 megabytes, but only upload at 256kb. In that case, if you're downloading from someone with the same speeds, it'll take you 12 times longer than what it should to download the file. A big problem, if you're trying to get that file sometime today!
BitTorrent divides a file in hundreds and even thousands of pieces. When you download a file on BitTorrent, your software will pull pieces from dozens of computers, effectively eliminating the upload/download speed problem. If you have 3 megabytes of download speed, and are downloading a fairly popular BitTorrent file, you can get nearly that full 3 megabytes of speed.
All types of files are shared on BitTorrent. Yes, illegal ones but there's also a growing number of legal downloads for software, music, television shows, and music. You can check out bittorrent.com for a listing of legal downloads. Bram Cohen's personal website is located at bitconjurer.org, and he has a very interesting blog, discussing mathematical topics, among other things.
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bittorrent is my friend! :)
10/22/07 11:10:54 pm
Cool! I passed this info on to some of my team members at work who've used BitTorrent. They were pretty impressed.
Thanks for sharing.
09/16/07 05:09:28 pm
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