High-Tech Glove Combats Parkinson’s

From todayonline.com LAS VEGAS —Roberta Wilson-Garrett looked at the glove keeping her right hand steady and smiled.    At bay for the moment were tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease affecting her muscle control. She could do things others take for granted, such as write crisply with a pen or hold a cup of coffee without spilling. …

Retronyms: The New Defining The Old

by Kevin Burton    We all know that time marches on. So does technology and so does the language we use to describe it.    Today from our friends at Merriam-Webster dictionary, we get some phrases made necessary by those inexorable marches. They are called retronyms. Think of them as a blast to the past. …

One Final Encore For The Beatles

by Kevin Burton    I’m guessing the final Beatles song, to be released later this week, will be neither a bang, nor a whimper.    Or maybe it will be a bang, and a whimper and everything in between. That would be fitting for a band that was and is “ way beyond compare” to …

Here’s Yet Another Label For The Disabled

by Kevin Burton In at least one part of the world, people with disabilities are called “people of determination.” Have you ever heard of that?    I had not. But I found a story about an expo where devices for the disabled were on display. (I include part of that story below).That story referred to …

Discrimination Common For The Disabled

by Julia Metraux Mother Jones    After becoming blind in his late 20s, designer and artist Marco Salsiccia had to learn to navigate the world through assistive technology—like a screen reader, software that speaks digital text and image descriptions aloud.    Leveraging that experience, Salsiccia began work as an accessibility specialist, eventually working part-time at a well-known …

How Many Fantasy Teams Are Too Many?

by Kevin Burton    If having one fantasy football team is great fun (which it is), wouldn’t having more than one team be even more fun?    That is the question I asked last year, in my second year as a fantasy manager. I answered it in the affirmative. Yes indeed, great big ridiculous fun! …

Ten Brilliant Facts About Braille

by Kelli Finger (from Mental Floss website)    Braille is a tactile system that blind people use to learn to read and write, invented in 1824 by a blind French educator named Louis Braille.     He revolutionized an existing writing and reading system that allowed blind people to enjoy books  and communication. I certainly don’t know …

A Funny Thing About Technology

by Kevin Burton    Technology is a problem solver. Technology is a problem.    Am I right or wrong?    “Tech-savvy” is a hyphenated adjective that shouldn’t be used to modify certain nouns, such as, for example, “Kevin Burton”    Like it or not we all live in a sea of technology. It’s sink or …

A New Beatles Song? We’ll Take It!

by Kevin Burton    From a beloved uncle or a dear friend who has passed away, you find a previously unknown letter. How precious is that?    It’s a piece of that person that you never had, at a time when you thought there would be no more glimpses into their being. Would you not …

My Grudging Acceptance Of The iPhone

by Kevin Burton    The cell phone, or more specifically, the cell phone call, turned 50 recently.    It’s a story I almost ignored. Here is part of a CNN Business story on the anniversary:    “On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper stood on a sidewalk on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan with a device the …