Beautiful view from hotel window, Sydney.
Software designer develops Morse-based texting for deaf phone users
An Indian graduate student has development a mobile phone application that enables people with sight and hearing impairments to send and receive text messages.
The PocketSMS application was developed for Android smartphones, which are generally cheaper than Apple’s iPhones. The application converts text into Morse code vibrations so that users can “feel” the message.
Regular mobile phones already use vibrations to alert users to incoming calls or messages. Anmol Anand, a graduate student at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University in Delhi, realised that the same vibrations could also convey text message content.
He used the open source Google App Inventor to write a new application to covert each letter in a text message into Morse code — in which each letter corresponds to a set of a short and long tones — and then used the phone’s hardware to vibrate for each letter.
An accompanying application, MorseTrainer, has been designed to teach deaf-blind users Morse code, and to use it without having to rely on smartphone keyboards, which can be difficult to see.
Text messaging is growing in importance as a tool for safety and social inclusion. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year, for instance, a group of deaf users protested for their safety late last year when the government shut down text messaging services, the BBC reported.
In Uganda, the National Association of the Deaf is working on a project in which hearing students and deaf students learn how to send text messages together.
“We saw that deaf kids were not integrating,” said education consultant Sacha DeVelle, who was volunteering in Kabale with the charity Cambridge to Africa.
When teachers began showing pairs of hearing and deaf students how to send text messages, deaf children became far more integrated into the school community. “It encourages them to go on and do what they want to do, [for example] go to university or set up a shop,” DeVelle said.
The PAL-V Flying Car, both street legal and capable of gyroscopic flight. This is the flying car that science fictions writers have been talking about for a hundred years. Oh, and there’s a competitor, too: The Terrefugia Transition.
Personally, I think the PAL-V is cooler.
- The Rise of the Content Strategist - Cheryl Lowry via Flip the Media (stoweboyd.com)
- Great book: Alan Moore: “No Straight Lines” (greenfuturist.com)
Project Glass: One day… (by Google)
Tesla co-founder says electric cars have reached tipping point.
Tesla Motors co-founder JB Straubel believes that steady improvements in battery technology over the past few decades have brought the world to a ‘tipping point’, where we will soon see far greater adoption of electric vehicles on the roads.
In a keynote address this week Straubel said that recently energy density in batteries has improved by an average of 7 to 8 percent each year, to the point where EVs can be driven for at least 200 miles on a full charge - a statistic that is only set to improve. Currently 96% of all US transportation uses petroleum.
Straubel said future generations are likely to wonder why so much of the world’s finite supply of petroleum was squandered on relatively short car rides, which he said could relatively easily be replaced with using electric vehicles. In the U.S., he said, about half of petroleum use comes from people who commute 20 to 50 miles per day. While such commuting is easily within the range of EVs from Tesla and others, replacing the petroleum used for longer trips and especially for things like airplane flights is still far beyond current technology’s capabilities.
- “Some people are unnecessarily worried about our current electric grid being overwhelmed by the…” (greenfuturist.com)
- “Of course, the only solution to the problem of human innovation is more innovation. After a resource…” (stoweboyd.com)
- Why Tesla Motors Is Betting On The Model S (fastcompany.com)
(Source: eetimes.com)
The ecological BioLite Camp Stove features a thermoelectric system, after starting the fire, part of the device transforms heat into electrical energy, which moves the internal fan. No batteries required, gasoline or any other energy source. The excess energy generated can be used through a USB port to charge your devices including smartphones, LED lights, GPS and many others. Genius and ecological.
themattsmith does not need this. He is the MacGyver of the wild.
