In the past three years especially, technology that helps the blind navigate through their communities without assistance from others has blossomed. The emergence of apps such as Sendero GPS LookAround and BlindSquare are putting tech to work for the visually impaired. These innovations are not only changing the way the blind travel, but also creating a whole new market that still has plenty of room for fine-tuning.
That moment when bookstore employees just get fed up with customers. pic.twitter.com/0Pu5cVuFtP
— SFReviews.net/SFF180 (@SFReviewsnet) June 25, 2015With this latest version of Apple’s educational software, students will be able to turn in homework from their tablets; these documents will carry a timestamp recording when the student submits term papers, book reports and other work. An integrated grade book will alert teachers when a student’s work is complete and ready for review, or if it’s time to send a reminder.
The simplicity and elegance of the design appeals to me as much as the fluidity of using it. I’ve become somewhat dependent on having the weather alongside my daily events and it has been surprisingly accurate.
Microsoft launched its newest Office program, Sway, last October as a way to easily publish full webpage stories for whatever is on your mind. Up until now though, it’s only been available on the Web and iOS, so Microsoft today released an iPad version of the app and detailed an upcoming Windows 10 version.
This may feel like a big change for the platform, but in reality, Apple has been laying the groundwork for multitasking apps since at least iOS 6. Developers have had to change their apps a lot in the last two years, between iOS 7’s new aesthetic and the introduction of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. If they’ve been making those changes according to Apple’s best practices, then they’re already done most of the work to make their apps multitasking-capable.
We’ll take a quick look at the existing technologies Apple is using to enable multitasking on the iPad, and then we’ll look at what developers need to do to their apps to get them ready. Don’t expect every app in the App Store to support multitasking on the day iOS 9 drops, but it should at least be a pretty easy process for anyone maintaining a universal iPhone and iPad app that plays by most of Apple’s rules.
We’ve spoken to Apple more extensively about the removals now. The company says it’s working with developers to quickly get their games reinstated to the App Store.
“It seems to me that pulling Civil War games might be an extreme response to the flag controversy, as if the Civil War didn't exist,” said Bob Brinkmeyer, a professor of Southern studies at the University of South Carolina. “As these games remind us, the South lost.”
The company claims it’s only zapping apps that feature the flag “in offensive or mean-spirited ways.” But when you look at some of their targets, including many games about the Civil War itself, that doesn’t hold up. A different, stupider explanation — that the company is treating the flag as if it were no less dangerous than the eyes of Medusa — makes more sense.
“We have removed apps from the App Store that use the Confederate flag in offensive or mean-spirited ways, which is in violation of our guidelines,” an Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “We are not removing apps that display the Confederate flag for educational or historical uses.”
Ever since writing about my WordPress-based microblog and linking to similar solutions from Seth Clifford and Ben Brooks, I’ve been hearing from more bloggers about their interesting microblog workflows. Everyone has a slightly different spin on the basic idea, but all of them achieve some independence from Twitter by having the primary copy of each post live on their own site.
For now, let's just focus on fixing it quickly...
6 months later... pic.twitter.com/06nxj2sMqj
— Rik Schennink (@rikschennink) June 25, 2015Real life Xcode for when the computer crashes. Runs natively on your desktop @sorinc03 pic.twitter.com/S0p3iipqNW
— Eric Appel (@ericspaceappel) June 22, 2015For typography fans, electronic books have long been the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.
The fonts are uninviting. Jarring swaths of white space stretch between words. Absent are all the typesetting nuances of a fine print book.
Now Amazon and Google are doing something about it.
So, how do we answer the question if we cannot easily count all members of a given population?
Did you send me that high res image? pic.twitter.com/SPQ93ksBjO
— Siavash Mahmoudian (@siavash) June 24, 2015Thanks for reading.