the iPhone isn't just a geek toy

Austin Seraphin's blind. His new iPhone has changed his life.

This has been popping up my reading list this weekend, and no wonder. His blog post is a beautifully written description of just what some carefully thought out hardware and software can do to make someone's life better. The place where I started going "Oh, oh my god" was when he talked about being able to hear colour through the medium of the phone's camera and an app that reads out colour names. Just think about what that can do for someone who has just enough residual vision to make out colours in light sources.

For a lot of users, the iPhone is an expensive toy, a status symbol as much as anything. But not for all. Mass market information technology has created affordable "make a difference" devices for the disabled.

I love living in the future.

Book review: Diana Dors -- Behind closed Dors

Book 59 (Although I've actually been reading this on and off for several months, and have only just got around to writing a capsule review.)

Second volume of memoirs from Diana Dors. This is in A-Z format, with several short tales under each letter heading, covering a range of topics. A lot of it is salacious gossip about assorted big names of the day, and not just people from the entertainment field -- some sympathetic, some not. There is also a small selection of photos of Dors.

If you're interested in Dors herself, or the period in British cinema and tv when she was working, this is well worth reading, and the format makes it a good book for dipping into for ten or fifteen minutes; but be aware that it really was aimed at the salacious gossip market, so if you find that sort of thing tedious you might be better giving this a miss, as you'll be skimming large chunks of it.

LibraryThing entry