Posts Tagged ‘reviews’
ZOMM’s Lifestyle Connect wins 3 CES Innovation Awards
01/10/2012
ZOMM earned 3 CES 2012 Innovation Awards this week for Lifestyle Connect™, a credit card sized accessory for any Bluetooth®-enabled phone, including the one you have right now. With a touch of a button or an alert from wireless sensors, the device can summon assistance from a Personal Safety Concierge™ or your trusted network of friends, family and health professionals. If needed, the concierge will dispatch police, fire or medical rescue personnel to the user’s location.
Lifestyle Connect utilizes Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy wireless technology to connect with Bluetooth Smart devices such as health monitors, heart monitors, glucose monitors, fall detection sensors, and activity trackers.
Walt Mossberg blasts medical consumer products
12/20/2011
In his TEDMED2010 talk, Walt Mossberg, Technology Journalist for the Wall Street Journal, shares his thoughts about medical consumer products. He’s clearly a fan of Apple’s iPad and iPhone but laments the lack of really useful consumer medical products like blood good glucose monitors. Thankfully, we’ve seen lots of innovation in 2011, but I wonder if it’s enough to change Walt’s mind. Watch the video and let us know what YOU think with a Reply below.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet challenges Apple iPad
12/07/2011
See comments for Cautions & Reviews
Amazon Kindle, including the high-end Kindle Fire, is quickly becoming the second-fastest selling tablet in the market. Sales are projected to reach 3.9 million units in 4Q’11, giving it a 13.8% global market share, which is second only to Apple’s 65.6% share, according to IHS Research. In total, 64.7 million tablets are expected to ship in 2011, up 273% from last year and on tract to reach 287.2 million units 2015.
The Kindle Fire is less than half the price of the iPad2, which starts at $499. It does less, but if all you want it for is entertainment (books, music & movies), shopping, and online web browsing, then the $199 price sounds pretty good. Kindle Fire is sold at a loss (less than the $201.70 manufacturing cost) in hopes of making profit from content and online shopping. The purchase price even includes a one year subscription to Amazon Prime, a $79/year service offering free 2-day shipping with any Amazon purchase.
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Jawbone UP wristband & iPhone app tracks your wellness
11/30/2011
UP by Jawbone (http://www.jawbone.com/up) is a revolutionary system (wristband + iPhone app) that tracks your activity and sleep and inspires you to move more, sleep better and eat smarter. UP also integrates a social experience and open content platform to motivate you with personal and team challenges tailored to help you achieve your goals.
UP is Jawbone’s first step in giving people tools to become engaged as consumers of their own health. It integrates an accelerometer to sense motion and track how much you’re walking, exercising, or sleeping; and it then uploads that data to an app that shows progress charts and lets you photograph and log your meals, even sharing all this with friends for additional motivation if you wish.
Accessible iPhone Apps
10/14/2011
The following article is adapted from some iPhone training material that Pat Pound created for special education teachers in June 2011. It describes over 70 accessible iPhone apps, and I thank her for permission to publish it here.
Vision: A Guide for iPhone Users who are Blind was one of the first articles on this blog. It’s short but has several good links to more info, and this YouTube video demo shows how a blind person would use the VoiceOver feature.
And visit http://www.apple.com/accessibility to learn more about assistive features in iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV and to discover other 3rd party add-on products and apps for all sorts of needs, including visual, hearing, dexterity, and learning.
By Pat Pound
Apple’s iPhones (starting with the 3GS) are accessible to people who are blind as they come, complete with a screen reader, “VoiceOver”, and print enlarger “zoom”. As you know, the iPhone is famous for its touch screen so this is a very new experience for most blind users. Apple reps are well prepared to sell these phones and to explain their accessibility features in their stores, although it’s a noisy environment so it can be somewhat challenging. Similar accessibility is experienced on iPod Touch and iPad devices.
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Smartphone does Vital Signs
10/09/2011
Ki Chon, left, in his lab with PhD candidate Christopher Scully.
Hold the Phone for Vital Signs
WPI researchers turn a smart phone into a medical monitor.
October 6, 2011 — An iPhone app that measures the user’s heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into sophisticated medical monitors able to capture and transmit vital physiological data.
A team led by Ki Chon, professor and head of biomedical engineering at WPI, has developed a smart phone application that can measure not only heart rate, but also heart rhythm, respiration rate and blood oxygen saturation using the phone’s Read the rest of this entry »
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Telikin, a Boomer-optimized Touch Screen Computer
09/09/2011
Telikin is a new all-in-one, touch-screen computer optimized for seniors. It forgoes the Microsoft Windows operating system for a custom version of Linux and is billed as “quite possibly the world’s easiest computer.” Telikin comes with several useful software applications pre-installed, so you can just plug it in, connect to the Internet, and you’re ready to go, according to the website, but it still requires someone capable of doing that. It comes in two sizes with a 18.6-inch or 20-inch display and slightly .
After power-on, the system presents a home screen designed for accessibility. Use the mouse, or tap the always-visible sidebar menu with your finger, to access the applications, which include video chat, email, photos, calendar, address book, weather, news, web browsing, games, calculator, CD & DVD player, file browser, word processor, and common utilities.
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An iPad for All Ages
06/11/2011
No computer skills required … and now no computer either
Flickr photo credits: Toddler by umpcportal.com, Senior by Courosa, licensed under Creative Commons
Everyone says the Apple iPad is intuitive, easy to learn, and easy to use. It almost seems tailored to toddlers and seductive to seniors. Grandparents and great grandparents with no prior computer experience can reconnect with family and make new friends online with email, social media, and video conferencing. But as easy and seductive as iPad is, it still required a PC or Mac in order to download or upgrade its software. Not any more. Apple changed that last week with its iCloud announcement and its latest iOS 5 operating system.
Apple iCloud has implications for home health care
06/06/2011
I amended this post with new information shown in red.
On June 6, at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, CEO Steve Jobs introduced iCloud, a new service that addresses a growing problem of keeping our devices in sync, especially since they now each have the ability to create and store data, images, music, and video.
iCloud stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices. The service automatically uploads the content, stores it, and pushes it to your other devices, and it’s completely integrated with your apps. That way everything happens automatically, and there’s nothing new to buy or learn. As Jobs put it, “It just all works.”
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Mini Eco-i-Lite: When a Great Product Review Turns Bad
05/25/2011
Being a digital home consultant and an advocate for universal design and simplicity, one of my favorite home automation gadgets is the nightlight with photocell. It improves the safety of moving about in a dark room, because it turns on when it’s dark and off when it’s light. Like magic, when you turn on the room’s light(s), the little nightlight turns off; and when you turn off the lights, the nightlight turns on again. That’s why I was happy to find a new version and wanted to write about it.
While visiting OfficeDepot in Houston, I discovered the Mini Eco-i-Lite. It only costs about $10 and combines the functions of a nightlight, power failure light, and flashlight. How cool is that? By addressing the combined benefits of safety, ease of use, and sustainability, it seems ideal for the elderly, so I bought one and planned to write a glowing review about it here. But all is not what it seems.
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