The post highlights innovative solutions in each category.
Read: 4 Big Trends Shaping The Future Of Design | Co.Design | business + design.
10 Ingenious Inventions for People With Disabilities | Mashable
Inventions discussed:
Google…filed for a new patent that would make eBooks come alive with sounds. The sounds would be triggered by events within the book, such as lapping waves, an ominous crescendo, or maybe an outdoor market. The new application would have the sounds stored on a server and would be pushed out to the eBook users are reading at the time.
The full story: Google Submits New Patent for Triggered Sounds in eBooks | GoodEReader.
Months after he was born, in 1948, Ron McCallum became blind. In this charming, moving talk, he shows how he is able to read — and celebrates the progression of clever tools and adaptive computer technologies that make it possible. With their help, and that of generous volunteers, he’s become a lawyer, an academic, and, most of all, a voracious reader. Welcome to the blind reading revolution.
via Ron McCallum: How technology allowed me to read | Video on TED.com.
Navigating a new campus is all part of the nostalgic movie montage that is freshman year of college. The changing leaves! The quaint Gothic architecture! The… drone tour guide? That’s the concept behind Skycall, a playful prototype that’s designed to help visiting Harvard students find their way around MIT’s notoriously confusing campus—which has been called “one of mankind’s most difficult and disorienting labyrinths.”
The full story: Meet the Drone That’s “Guiding” New Students Around MIT This Fall | Gizmodo
Weartrons may help those athletic readers maintain their focus with its upcoming Run-n-Read peripheral. The clip-on device detects its wearer’s movements and compensates for them on a host Android or iOS device, keeping e-book text steady in the midst of a treadmill run. Owners can also tap the Run-n-Read to turn pages, and the gadget doubles as a pedometer in between reading sessions.
via Run-n-Read keeps e-book text steady while you’re on the treadmill | Engadget
See the Weartrons Run-n-Read crowdfunding campaign.
Three years ago, I wrote here that “libraries are so valuable that they attract voracious new competition with every technological advance” (see “Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition,” LJ 8/10, p. 22–23). At the time, I was thinking about Google, Apple, Amazon, and Wikipedia as the gluttonous innovators aiming to be hired for the jobs that libraries had been doing. I imagined Facebook and Twitter to be the sort of competitors most likely to be attracted by the flame of library value. But it’s the new guys that surprise you. To review the last three years of change in the library world, I’d like to focus on some of the start-ups that have newly occupied digital niches in the reading ecosystem. It’s these competitors that libraries will need to understand and integrate with to remain relevant.
The full story: Start-Ups Take Library Jobs | Reinventing Libraries | Library Journal.
The article reviews competitors GoodReads, Wattpad, Readmill, SIPX and Zola Books.
After two years of seeing smaller companies dabble with smart watches, the big tech companies have decided it’s time to enter the market.
Samsung and Qualcomm both unveiled their first connected watches this week, Sony recently updated its SmartWatch product and Google and Apple are both rumored to be prepping their own releases in the next year or so.
The smartphone war is heating up, but what exactly are these companies fighting for?
See the full story: Why Big Tech Companies Are Going After Smart Watches | Mashable.
infophile 