ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

In my effort to walk towards better health I was a little stymied when I wanted to listen to my music on my iPhone as I was walking tethered to the supplied Apple Ear-buds. Looking for a better solution, I came across the LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo Headset which looked like it could foot the bill. I was able to find them for about $46 dollars online and ordered a pair to try out. The LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo

LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo Headset

Headset has a unique design which is makes it ideal for anyone that may be walking or running. The LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo Headset goes around your neck and the ear buds are attached on each side of the arc for easy placement in your ears. The volume controls and Rewind and Fast-forward controls can be found on either side of the headset. The LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo Headset is also equipped with a microphone which can be used to answer in-coming calls. After charging the LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo Headset with the supplied Micro- USB charger, I found the headset easy to pair up to my iPhone 4S and within seconds I was up and running. Just today I took a walk on a trail near my home and used my LG-HBS-700 Bluetooth Stereo Headset as I walked. It is great being hands free and be able to listen to my favorite music as I do my walk. And yes walking to the Doors and Led Zeppelin did in fact help me pick up the pace-turned in my best walking times today on my 4 mile walk :-).

Oh the years do catch up to you and when I turned and looked at myself in October 2012, I knew I had to chart a new course with regards to my weight and health, and so I decided to make some changes. I joined Weight Watchers in mid October and have been attending the meetings religiously which has helped to keep me focused and on track with their program. Each week our Weight Watcher leader encourages us to talk about a topic that  pertains to changing behaviors and thinking about food differently. Having a group of supportive members in the meeting allows us to share new strategies and tactics to help propel us in the right direction. As much as it is a diet - it is really about changing your attitudes and behaviors with regards to food and one's life style. Weight Watchers really instills in you the
importance of looking at the ingredients and the size of the food portions. Using their helpful Weight Watchers app for the iPhone, I can quickly determine the Point value and decide if it something that I will add to a meal- which is invaluable when I am shopping. During the meetings there is a great deal of emphasis on getting off of the couch and keeping active which I have really embraced. Of course being a gadget guy- I knew that in order for me to embrace this change, I needed to throw a gadget or two into the mix and so I decided to purchase a FitBit Zip- which I have been wearing for the past 6 months-which syncs up with my iPhone. The FitBit Zip is a really small digital pedometer that I wear on my belt throughout the day to track my steps and the distance I have walked. It is extremely unobtrusive and has worked flawlessly for the past 6 months providing me with the necessary feedback and encouragement. Yes- encouragement. You see if I walk the 10,000 steps a day it sends me nice messages and keeps me motivated. The feedback and the charting of my activity has really helped me to continue to lose weight on my journey.

I recently got my Kickstarter Pebble Smartwatch and have been using it with the RunKeeper app for the iPhone which has added another dimension to my exercise. Utilizing both technologies I can now track my walk and see the distance, pace, and time on my Pebble Smartwatch. Every five minutes RunKeeper will announce my progress and tell me my pace which really keeps me on track. Once I am home, I can go to the RunKeeper web page and look at the route I just walked, which is a lot of fun. Having tools like the
FitBit Zip and RunKeeper are keeping me motivated to stay on task and continue my new regiment. During this past week, I have walked 31 miles and continue to shed weight as I move closer and closer to my goal. Having joined Weight Watchers has been a god send and has motivated me to make the changes in my diet and activity level which will propel me to good health. For those of you out there who struggle as I do with weight management-commit yourself to a program - add a spice of technology- and walk your way to better health! You will be glad you did- I am!

While having an iPhone 4S has made me much more productive, it seems that wherever I am, I am always looking to plug it in for a quick charge. One of the downsides to owning an iPhone4S is the battery life-make no mistake about that. If I'm traveling and away for the office it not unusual for my iPhone 4S to be down around 10%  by the end of the day. That is where an external battery charger come into play. I recently had a chance to review the Summit 3000, from MyCharge which is a 3000mAh Rechargeable Power Bank and have to say it did a great job of keeping my iPhone fully charged while I was on the road. According to MyCharge, the Summit 3000 will give you 13 plus hours of talk time and 10 plus hours of Browsing on your smartphone.

The Summit 3000 is about the size of the iPhone 4S only a little thicker. What is unique about the Summit 3000 is that all the connectors are built-in so there is no need to worry about toting your cables with you. The Summit 3000 comes equipped with the 30 pin Apple Connector, Micro USB and a full sized USB Port.The Summit 3000 is extremely well designed and pleasing to the eye and feels good holding it your hand. The Summit 3000 can be easily and quickly charged with the built-in ultra-fast wall charger. To check the battery level of the Summit 3000 simply press the button on the front panel and an array of five LED's will light up and the Summit 3000 will announce using text to speech the battery level- nice feature!  Once fully charged you can charge up to three devices at once making this ideal if you own other electronic devices in addition to the iPhone.

In my tests I was able to charge my iPhone 4S which was at 50% charge in two hours. After I had charged my iPhone 4S to full capacity, I checked the Summit 3000 which still had 50% charge, which meant that if I needed to I could have gotten another nice charge out of the battery. I also tested the Summit 3000 with my Kindle PaperWhite which was down to 50% and it took about hour and half to charge it to full capacity using the Summit 3000.

The Summit 3000 is an ideal rechargeable battery bank that can be used to charge not only your iPhone but your iPad and tablets as well. I know that from here on in, I will not leave my home without my Summit 3000 in my case. MyCharge makes a full line of rechargeable batteries with real innovative features- but having the built-in cords makes it an ideal battery for the  person on the go. So now, I always have my Summit 3000 in my bag wherever I go,  and have the confidence knowing that my iPhone and electronic devices can be easily charged when I am on the go. Go to MyCharge to take a look at the full line of rechargeable battery banks.

I'm sitting here today on Thanksgiving Day reflecting on just how thankful I am for family and friends who helped us out during hurricane Sandy! Thankfully our house was spared, but for many like myself we were without power for many days and only resumed our regular schedule last week. To say the least it was very disorienting not having a regular schedule and moving around New Jersey from family and friends to find homes that had power.

The college where I teach got hit hard and was without power for two weeks. During this time, we were alerted about the college closing via an automated system that emails and phones us to give us periodic updates. Because of the nature of the damage there were some faculty and students who reported having trouble getting emails and for a lot of us our only consistent way to get information was using our cell phones which worked pretty well- as long as you were able to keep it charged. There were many times during the two week period without power that I sat in the car and charged my iPhone. Keeping informed with my colleagues, students and friends was important to me and Facebook proved to be a great way to keep in touch and update everyone. I can see going forward that social networking sites like Facebook will become a bigger part of the overall communications system when there are natural disasters. With my iPhone 4S, I was able to check in and get updated information from friends and family. Text messaging proved to be another great way to get in touch with friends and because of the low bandwidth requirements the messages got through when at times it was hard to make a cell phone call.

One other tool that I relied on during Sandy, to communicate with my students was Remind101. Remind101 is a  text messaging service that allowed me to push messages to my students. Remind101 pushes messages in one direction and does not allow recipients to reply. At the beginning of the semester I had my students in each of my classes sign up for the service, which only took a minute or so. Once the students signed up I could now send them up to 140 character messages via my Remind101 iPhone app. Remind101 was great during the hurricane Sandy and allowed me to update my students and keep them abreast as to what was happening. I highly recommend using Remind101 to push messages to students, parents or any one else that is part of your network. I can't say enough for Remind101 and how it allowed me to stay in touch with my students during a natural disaster. So when you are putting together your disaster communication plan consider including Facebook and Remind101.

I would like to thank the folks at Satarri, Inc for sending me the Swivl to review, which arrived this past week. The Swivl is an innovative product for the iPhone 4, 4S and iPod Touch 4th generation that lets you capture video without the need for a camera-person. The Swivl is comprised of two different units-the Swivl base and the Marker. The Swivl base is a motorized turret that houses your iPhone and allows the base to communicate with the Marker which can follow your movements as you record. Set up was a breeze at the company provided a Quick Start Guide that got you up and running quickly.

To get started I downloaded the free Swivl app to my iPhone 4S, placed the provided batteries (nice touch) into the Swivl base and Marker and then seated the iPhone on the Swivl base and plugged in the connector. I powered up the Swivl base and the Marker, opened the Swivl app and hit the record button to start the video recording. As I moved around the Swivl followed me which made recording a snap. The actuators in the Swivl base are very quiet and barely perceptible. I should note that the Marker in addition to being used as a way to track your movements, includes a high quality digital microphone that is used in the recording process. Once you have finished recording you can quickly upload your video to YouTube directly from the Swivl app which makes this a great tool for bloggers, educators, or anyone that wants to incorporate more video into the work that they do. Having the freedom to move around while doing your videos and not be constrained is really a fantastic feature. The Swivl is easy to use and I know that I will be doing more video blogging with it in the future. So if you find yourself wanting to do more video work and you usually work on your own, this is the perfect gift for you. You can purchase the Swivl on the Swivl website or on Amazon.com.

Below is the video that was captured using the iPhone and Swivl with Medium Video size setting in the Swivl app. The Notes for this video were captured using Quartet Kapture, a digital flip chart capturing tool. For more information about Quartet Kapture click here. Please let me know how you might use Swivl?

1. Select the words you want to cut or copy with the VoiceOver cursor by touching the line or flicking left or right.
2. Rotate the VoiceOver rotor to either "words" or "lines." To rotate the VoiceOver rotor place two fingers on the screen and turn them left or right. If you select "lines" you will select one lines at a time and if you select "words" you will select one word at a time.
3. Pinch out with two fingers to begin to select the words you want to cut or copy. VoiceOver will speak which words have been selected.
4. Rotate the rotor to "edit" mode and then swipe up or down to hear all of the options. It will give you options such as cut, copy, paste, define and more depending on which app you are using.
5. When you hear the option you want, double tap anywhere on the screen. Now you have copied the text.
6. To paste the text navigate to a text box and then double tap and hold. Then swipe to navigate to the paste button and then double tap anywhere on the screen to paste the text.

Apple says the following about cut, copy and past with VoiceOver.

TurboScan is a app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The app uses the built in camera to capture a document and convert the image to excellent quality PDF files. TurboScan is $1.99 in the App Store. The app will not work very well with the iPad or iPod Touch because they do not have high quality cameras like the iPhone. The app has a simple interface that is easy to learn. It allows you to capture documents by taking a picture with your iPhone camera or import one from your album. TurboScan also has an option to take three pictures of the document for better accuracy. TurboScan also allows users to scan documents that are more than one page.

Once you have taken the picture of your document TurboScan detects the edges of the document and makes a PDF file. The apps has a few sharing options but not as many as JotNot Pro. The sharing include email and a really nice option called "email to myself" witch allows to quickly email your self the documents you have created.

Once you have your documents on your computer you can open them with Kurzweil to use all of Kurzweil's features such as read aloud and note taking. The PDF files created are crisp and clear.

Click read more below to see more pictures and videos of TurboScan.

Document made with TurboScan click for full size

  

Many people, including children, use the iPhone as an assistive technology device. The Kraken II Dockable case is an ideal case to protect your iPhone. The Kraken II Dockable Case is great for both children and adults who need superior protection for their iPhone. The case will protect against most bumps and drops so there is less need to worry when using the iPhone.


The Kraken II Dockable Case is a rugged and protective case for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. It features three layers of protection and a few cool features. The first layer of protection is a silicon inner shell. The inner shell is attached to the second layer of protection which is a plastic outer shell. The third layer of protection is a build in screen protector which protects the screen against damage. The outer plastic is a soft touch material that feels nice in the hand and does not show finger prints. All of the ports and buttons are covered with rubber but are still usable. The headphone port, mute switch, and dock connector are covered by rubber flaps to keep out dust. The lock and volume buttons are easy to feel and provide good tactile feed back. The home button is flush with the front of the case and can be hard to locate by feel. The phone speaker is covered by a dust shield that works well. Much like the Kraken AMS, case the Kraken II Dockable Case has a kickstand on the back which is perfect for video chat and much more. On the bottom of the case is a thick silicon flap that can be easily removed to dock the case. It is not common for a rugged case to be able to be dockable. However, with the flap off it is difficult to push the home button because it is very recessed.


At the time of the posting, the case costs about $30 from Amazon.com. Trident says the following about their docking feature of the case:

"The bottom of the case features a removable silicone sleeve which allows the case to be placed in a docking station without the hassle of removing the case."

The case does add bulk to the phone, and makes it heavier and less sleek, but if you are looking for protection, and the ability to dock your iPhone this case is for you.


Click read more below to see more videos and pictures of the Kraken II Dockable Case.