If you spend your day iin front of a computer screen, I urge you to install this Eye Relax right now, to protect your eye sight in the long run.
Human eyes weren't made to stare at the exact same spot in space for hours at t time, and that's exactly what Eye Relax reminds you - in case you forget it.
You can set up short and long breaks, for instance: 60 seconds each 15 minutes for a short break; 5 minutes every hour for the long break.
The program is highly customizable, allowing you to define your breaks, sound warnings, and even password protect your breaks.
Eye Relax is free and is available for Windows in both an install version as well as a portable version you can run anywhere.
This Sunday, I'll be talking about accessibility, because not everyone can "surf" through the web (or the real world) as easily as most of us do, and a simple image, sound, ou improperly placed tag can become a major hurdle for someone with impaired vision, sight, or motor abilities.
Let's start with the:
Intel Reader
I know eBooks are all the rage right now, but considering how some "stupid" rights management issues are - making it impossible for you to listen to an ebook reader, for instance - maybe it's not such a bad idea to stick with the plain old paper books for a while longer.This Intel Reader scans and does OCR on it, and reads it back aloud.
It's a pity it costs $1,500 USD! As I find it hard to believe you wouldn't be able to do the same with the hardware you get in a $350 netbook.
Visually impaired Google search
Google has a visually impaired search page allowing you to quickly and easily browse through search results using the keyboard and better integrated with screen readers.
It's an experimental feature for accessibility enhancements but it might be worth it - try it out.
Freedom Leg - crutches B-gone
If you ever had to hop around in crutches, see how much better you'd be with one of there Freedom Leg devices. With the billions spent in medical research each year, why didn't they come up with this sooner?
Speaking without Talking
If speaking is no problem for most of us (some might even have a problem not speaking!) there are thousands of people out there where every single word is a pain.
Thanks to Audeo they'll soon be able to speak just by thinking about it. The tiny electrical impulses from your brain will be picked up by an electronic device and spoken alound by a digital voice.
I can already imagine a cell phone manufacturer wanting to use this technology to power up their hands-free device. Imagine to be able to talk on your cellphone in the middle of a restaurante (or even inside a movie theater) without anyone listening to you! :)
Painting with you Eyes
Thanks to the EyeWriter, which you can build yourself using cheaply available components like PS3's EyeCam even paralyzed people can interact with a computer using their eyes.
