Mobile

2011 will finally be the year of mobile: the array of smartphones available and other 3G/Wi-Fi devices is growing by the day, decent mobile broadband speeds are now widely provided, and access to the mobile internet has become affordable.
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By Lis Shorten

It didn’t occur to me until recently that a blind person would even contemplate using an iPhone. After all, it’s a touchscreen interface that requires interaction between a finger and an onscreen image and lacks any sort of tactile or sensory feedback.

If I turn my phone off, then close my eyes and try to turn it back on, I fail at the first hurdle (slide to unlock). Even though I’ve turned my phone on hundreds, possibly thousands of times, with my eyes closed I never seem to get my thumb in the right place to accurately swipe the slider. Read more…

Everyone has their childhood fears of which some stay with you in adulthood, mine’s that of earthquakes, so much so that since a young age I’ve feared visiting San Francisco. Haiti on the other hand has always been on my ‘radar’ as a place where slavery is rife, as if that’s not bad enough; Haiti is then hit with a devastating earthquake. The horrific effect of the Haiti earthquake however has woken the world up to the plight of the poorest country in the western hemisphere and the humanitarian efforts to bring this devastated country back from the brink have been in effect worldwide. One of the fastest ways donations have been received towards the relief efforts, has been through mobile phones – simply by sending a text from our mobiles to a specific number. Read more…