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The Assistive-Technology Edition Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Tech Enables People With Disabilities To Take Control Of Their Life, by Chiara Sottile, NBC News

Stabelfeldt is a complete quadriplegic with no movement below his shoulders, but he takes every opportunity he can to find independence — including in his marriage to Karen, 48.

[...] He spends most of his time running his IT consulting business from his home office, helping his wife around the house when she's not at work, and building his charity, the TSM Foundation, to help other people in wheelchairs.

And it's all thanks to new smart home and assistive technology like Apple's "HomeKit."

Apple Sends Press Invites For WWDC 2017, Officially Announces Keynote Event For June 5 10AM PT, by Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac

The keynote is scheduled for 10AM PT on June 13, the first day of the conference, and will likely play host to new product unveilings as well as our first previews of Apple’s operating systems, iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, as well as new developer tools to go with them.

Stuff

Apple Updates Support App With Rich Notifications, Authorized Service Provider Appointments, More, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

The update adds support for scheduling repairs at participating Apple Authorized Service Providers. This includes non-Apple stores that are capable of performing certified repairs. Additionally, the update has added support for making Genius Bar reservations in China, Hong Kong, Macao, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. There’s also support for filtering locations by mobile carriers.

Timing 2 For Mac, by David Sparks

The best thing about this app is that it does the work for you. Timing provides automatic time tracking. As you jump around different applications, website URLs, emails, and even conversation partners in Messages, Timing quietly keeps track in the background. It then gives you an interactive timeline that shows you exactly when you did what.

Amazon Launches Redesigned Alexa App For iOS, by Ryan Christoffel, MacStories

Alongside the announcement today of a new Echo product coming soon, the screen-equipped Echo Show, Amazon has launched a redesigned Alexa app for iOS. The new app's highlight feature, apart from a much-improved interface, is the addition of messaging functionality.

Readdle Launches PDF Expert 6 With New Editing Features, Revamped Design, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

With PDF Expert 6, you can do more than just annotate -- the app now supports editing and modifying PDF text, adding images, adding links, redacting information, and more.

Hands-on: iOS-compatible LaMetric Time Clock Is Like A Status Board For Your Desk, by Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac

The LaMetric Time is a highly-customizable Wi-Fi-enabled clock that can be configured via its free iOS companion app. The app allows you to customize the clock face, and load apps for displaying personalized information — things like Twitter followers and realtime YouTube subscriber numbers, for example.

Notes

Apple Acquires Sleep Tracking Company Beddit, But Its Site Will Stay Live, by Lucas Matney, TechCrunch

Beddit’s latest product, the Beddit 3, is a thin strip of sensors that goes across a user’s bed, analyzing sleep-related data such as “sleep time and efficiency, heart rate, respiration, temperature, movement, snoring, room temperature, and room humidity,” according to a product description.

The Local News Business Model, by Ben Thompson

This is the problem with newspapers: every aspect of their operations, from costs to content, is optimized for a business model that is obsolete. To put it another way, an obsolete business model means an obsolete business. There is nothing to be saved.

Food Wednesday

Why Do We Cook So Many Foods At 350 Degrees?, by Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic

The magic of cooking at 350 degrees isn’t magic at all, but chemistry. It is, for example, the level associated with the Maillard Reaction, the chemical process that gives so many foods a complex flavor profile—and an appealing golden-brown hue—when sugar and protein are heated together just so.

Bottom of the Page

Little things that bothered me recently:

a. The user interface of the ATM has been changed. Again.

b. I still occasionally changed my iPhone's brightness or the playback position when swapping between the different Control Center's panels.

c. CSS.

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Thanks for reading.