Skid Software - helping children with disabilities

"17-year-old Arpit Khansili, could not use the Internet earlier because he suffers from a motor disability that makes it difficult for him to use the mouse or the keyboard attached to his personal computer.

However, he is surfing away, thanks to a software program that identifies inputs from any device such as a joystick, wheel or a gaming console. What’s more, it is a free software and based on an Open Source platform – which makes it easily modifiable. . .

The program, named Arpit’s Wheel, has been conceptualised by IIT alumnus Arun Mehta, who has won the Manthan Award this year for his work. “Our software is based on Rubyonrails, a language based on Open Source, and can be accessed on any Web browser,” said Mehta, who is also the managing director at Delhi-based computer training organisation Indata Com Private Limited.

Currently, the software offers about 12 modules that help a user write or edit pictures. The software is available for a free download at www.skid.org.in."
Hindustan Times Link to article

*I met Dr. Mehta at the 2008 Nonprofit Development Summit. If you can help him with his project which provides free software for disabled children, especially if you are a Ruby developer, please visit www.skid.org.in and contact him.

Kryptonite for MRSA?

"A study found that copper fittings rapidly killed microbes on hospital wards, succeeding where other infection control measures failed. In the trial at Selly Oak hospital, in Birmingham, England, copper sink fixtures, toilet seats and push plates on doors all but eliminated common bacteria. Lab tests show that the metal kills off the deadly MRSA and C difficile superbugs."

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/WBL02118/Copper-Sink-Fixtures-Kill-95-Percent-of-Superbugs.html

Reaching beyond your grasp . . .

"The critical path organization of the Apollo Project disclosed some two million tasks that had to be successfully accomplished before the human astronauts were to be returned safely to Spaceship Earth. NASA's Apollo management then put a scientifically and technically competent control group to work to identify all the approximately two million tasks, a million of which required technological performances the design, production, and successful operation of which had never before been undertaken by humans."
Critical Path, R. Buckminster Fuller

Get the Vote Out - and in the system correctly

"Our goal in designing a voting system should be to accurately capture the intent of the voters. If actual, real voters can't figure it out, then you need to redesign the ballot. If election officials need to create detailed instructions on how to vote, then the voting process has already failed."
Dan Wallach, Discovery Tech

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/03/tech-electronic-voting.html

A Key to Free and Fair Elections

"Usability - the ability of everyone to use the voting systems easily and effectively - is a key to free and fair elections." Whitney Quesenbery

Review Whitney Quesenbery's expert research on Voting and Usability:
http://www.wqusability.com/articles/voting-intro.html

Find Your Voice, Find Your Vote

The U.S. isn't the only country where electronic voting machines are causing problems. Usability experts have some harsh words about Finnish voting machines, which where trialed in municipal elections on Sunday and caused about 200 lost votes.

http://news.iwebtool.com/article_74963.html?mp=1

Google Analytics Update

The new features include the ability to create custom reports, better ways to look at audience segments, the ability to track and measure AdSense inside Google Analytics, an API (on it’s way), the introduction of cool bubble “motion charts,” and some user interface improvements. Let’s take these new features one at a time.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008

Armchair Exploring . . .

The internationally recognized WorldImages database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains over 65,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes.

http://worldart.sjsu.edu/?sid=893&x=100582

Destiny vs. Destination

The American Heritage definition of destination:

1. The place to which one is going or directed.
2. The ultimate purpose for which something is created or intended.
3. Archaic An act of appointing or setting aside for a specific purpose.

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." - Martin Buber

Keep those Consonants Coming . . .

"From nursery rhymes to Shakespearian sonnets, alliterations have always been an important aspect of poetry whether as an interesting aesthetic touch or just as something fun to read. But a recent study suggests that this literary technique is useful not only for poetry but also for memory."

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/
2008/lea.cfm


And try the Visual Thesaurus just for fun:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/landing/?word=
alliteration&ad=mwcom.dict.txt1

Graffiti or Art? You decide . . .

since I don't have to scrub it off the next day, I think it's art -

“Digital Graffiti” at Alys Beach is a festival created to celebrate and promote the world’s most talented and innovative digital artists - with the entire town literally serving as their canvas. . .
“We invited artists to project their works onto our town's famous white walls,” said Arnold. “Alys Beach will literally become their blank canvas.”

http://www.digitalgraffiti.info/

Lighting the Bulb

"Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."

Link to New York Times article

Bamboo House Built for Quake Victims

"A USC professor on sabbatical in China has created a prototype of a sturdy, quick-to-build bamboo house designed to help the vast number of people made homeless by the May 12 Sichuan earthquake."

http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/15335.html

Joining Technorati

Technorati Profile

How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint

Surviving PowerPoint: make it minimal and meaningful

http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint/

The Art of Searching

Interesting, appealing, easy to understand advanced search that provides users with lots of feedback and lots of options - from the Boundless Gallery site.

Changing the world - one mashup at a time

Net Squared - remixing the web for social change

Review submissions to the Mashup Project Gallery

Sample Project: The Human Side of the Digital Divide

12 Step Program for Usability

Many organizations can't understand why their software doesn't perform as expected, or why users make unexpected errors. According to David Crow, usability adviser at Microsoft Canada, and Jay Goldman, president of Radiant Core in Toronto, waking up to the need for usability testing is akin to hitting rock bottom. At the Free Software and Open Source Symposium at Seneca College in Toronto last month, the two offered a 12-step program for getting back on track, along with some recommended reading.
Article

Heavenly Derby Day

It's Derby Day again. Happy Birthday Mom.

Wishing you several mint juleps and a Hot Brown . . .

Hot Brown History

Wikis - Clicks and Balances

I was just doing some research on setting up a wiki and found this great article from Geek Girl's Plain English Computing.

I really like this site for it's down to earth info and snappy (plain with perks) writing style.

Link:
Fancy a Wiki

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

the home page of www.uiandme.com






an approximation of how the home page of www.uiandme.com looks to a user with the most common form of red/green color blindness, deuteranope

simulation provided by: vischeck

Usability 'rated over price'

Online retailers can win customers by maximising usability rather than lowering prices, according to a new study.

Read article at Usability News: http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4633.asp

Women in Art

Technology Enabling Nonprofits

Audio Interview

Edward Granger-Happ, CIO, Save the Children, and Chairman, NetHope, discusses how information technology, and the advent of Web 2.0, is changing the way relief organizations organize and deliver aid.

Link to RadioTuck: http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/digital/RadioTuck20/MediaPages/
NetHope.html

Top Ten for the Future

The Top Ten Technologies that will transform your life according to Live Science.


http://www.livescience.com/technology/top10-transform-tech.html

Design and the Elastic Mind

“Design and the Elastic Mind,” an exhilarating new show opening on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, makes the case that through the mechanism of design, scientific advances of the last decade have at least opened the way to unexpected visual pleasures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/arts/design/22elas.html

Facing the Future

Grand Challenges for Engineering

an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century . . .

the National Academy of Engineering has posted the results here: http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/

Finding Art

I found this Oceanic art via art history resources on the web, a site created by
Dr. Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe - hundreds of links to art from all over the world.


Link to art history resources on the web
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html

Inspired

Do you have a great idea or invention to share? Have you been thinking about the next big thing in skateboards? A car that doesn't use gas? A hands-free hairbrush?

Whether it's a re-invention or an idea all your own- send it in to show it off in our Inventors Gallery! But please be careful and learn what it takes to be a Smart Inventor first.

Invention Site for Kids
http://www.inventnow.org/

Opposites Attract

"All great discoveries," the elder Marratta had once said, "are the products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents'."

from Winter's Tale, p. 252, by Mark Helprin

Setting the stage for 2008

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

- Einstein

Let's cast a vote for technology . . .

Until such time as the mostly empty arguments that surround electronic voting and the controversy and finger pointing around the party affiliations of providers, U.S. voters will have to suffer with third-world voting technology. All the while third-world countries are leveraging e-voting technology to ensure freer, fairer and more honest elections.

Link: http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=2811

Article by Chris Shipley