I didn’t venture anywhere near a store today. Instead, I spent a couple hours cleaning up a computer virus that may or may not have been triggered when my dad used Internet Explorer this morning. Everything seems back to normal now, but perhaps I need to make the Chrome icon a little more obvious.
The Verge comments on the typos found in ebooks with increasing frequency. I’ve noticed that typos seem more common in older books that have been scanned to create digital versions. The Kindle edition of Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale is so rife with typos that I couldn’t be bothered to finish the book. These are still the early days of ebooks and I expect publishers will eventually fix these problems. But now that I read ebooks almost exclusively, it troubles me that I may be purchasing a shoddier product in comparison to the printed edition.
Here’s another example of eye-gaze technology being used to operate a television and an iPad. Why don’t I have this yet? Why am I still using assistive technology that has been around since Eighties? I understand that it takes a while for a concept to move from the garage to the commercial market, but…hurry up! I’d like to start using some of this stuff before I’m too senile to tell the difference between a website and a cereal box. The 1995 version of me would be very disappointed to know that his 21st century self is surrounded by all this shiny portable tech, but he’s still tethered to his desk because the Apples and Googles of the world are too busy litigating the patent rights on a rectangle to do any proper innovation.
Kudos to Netflix for agreeing to caption all of its streaming content by 2014. Perhaps this will prompt all of the major streaming video players to ensure that their content is accessible. And a big “fuck you” to the Ars Technica commenters who suggested that deaf customers can take their money elsewhere if they aren’t happy with Netflix’s accessibility. As if Hulu and Amazon are doing all they can to capture the lucrative deaf demographic. The whole point of laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act is to compel businesses, within reasonable limits, to make its goods and services accessible to the public when free market principles might otherwise dictate inaction. As a nation, we’ve decided that it’s important for people with disabilities to be included in all aspects of everyday life, including consumerism. But because of recalcitrant corporations and our unceasing hero worship of unbridled capitalism, people with disabilities are forced to constantly re-litigate the question of whether we deserve to be fully participating members of society.
The iPhone 5 is pretty enough, but my 4S is still under contract and I don’t see much need for a bigger screen. My iPad is what I pull out when I want a portable display. I may just hold on to the 4S until it either dies or until Apple releases something that can be operated with an eyegaze interface. Perhaps the iPhone 10?
I don’t have much time to post tonight, but I thought this video from the hacking-themed Ben Heck Show is interesting. It shows Ben trying to create a hands-free control for a wheelchair used by an expectant father with a disability. It’s a little technical, but still enjoyable:
Have you ever stopped to think about how intertwined our various digital identities have become? Our e-mail addresses are linked to Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and any number of other services. And if a malicious hacker gains access to one of those accounts, it’s easy enough to wreak havoc on an innocent person’s digital life. Wired journalist Mat Honan writes about how he became the target of a brutal hack that wiped his Macbook and iPhone as well as his Gmail account, robbing him of gigs of personal data (including photos of his young daughter). Honan’s grim tale should remind us that on-line security is not something to be taken lightly. I’m certainly guilty of using the same password for multiple accounts and I intend to fix that. I’m also going to activate Gmail’s two-step authentication. The additional hassle is an acceptable trade-off for keeping disaffected youth out of my private affairs.
After reconciling myself to the fact that Google Fiber isn’t coming to Minneapolis anytime soon, I called my friendly Comcast representative to see what kind of speed improvements might be available to me. My connection is already plenty fast, but I’ve been downloading and streaming more video in recent months and a little more bandwidth couldn’t hurt. My friendly Comcast representative informed me that I could get the next speed tier for an additional $10 per month. That seemed reasonable and I told the man to take my money. Here are my new and improved speeds:
I was getting 24/3, so it’s not a huge increase. And it’s not even a tenth as fast as what will soon be available to the good people of Kansas City. I’m certainly not complaining, though. Much of America can’t get speeds much better than 5 Mb/s.
The NY Times looks at how more genuine-sounding children’s voices are now being included in communication software for kids with disabilities. While the technology still can’t reproduce the countless nuances of human vocalization, it’s still an improvement over the robotic monotone voices that used to be standard on most kids’ talkers. As research on neural computer interfaces advances, perhaps kids and adults with speech impairments will be able to speak with whatever voice they choose at a rate comparable to natural speech. But until that tech arrives, it’s good to see software developers giving some thought to the style as well as the substance of communication.
Proving yet again that assistive technology doesn’t have to be expensive, a group of researchers are showing off an eye-gaze computer interface using off-the-shelf parts. Total cost: less than $70. If only someone could figure out a way to mass-produce this tech and get it on the eyes of people who could benefit from it. Perhaps this is something that could benefit from a Kickstarter fundraising model, much more so than my idea for an on-screen keyboard. I hope those behind this project are giving some thought to ways to scale up their efforts.