EnjoyTech

While in Brazil, describing his country, one of my friends said, "We have all the natural resources that we need to be a self-sufficient country and we have had no natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. The only disaster that we had: we lost the worldcup." This pretty much summarizes Brazil. A helipad in front of my hotel in São Paulo. On one side, São Paulo, the seventh largest city in the world, has one the largest per capita helipads in the world where the rich people don't like to drive around in traffic in cheap cars to avoid getting kidnapped at stop lights. On the other side, it is one hell of a city, just like Mumbai - large, organized chaos, and money. It is growing and it's growing fast. While income inequality has been on a steep rise in emerging economies as well as in the western world, it is declining in the Latin American countries, especially in Brazil . If you're thinking of building or expanding enterprise software business in Braz

Google just updated its iOS search app to include advanced voice search. The new feature is similar to Apple's Siri. Click here to download the free app. With the Google Search app you can ask questions by voice and get spoken feedback. The Google app is very quick and the voice recognition  is accurate. It is almost indential to the voice search included in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean . It is able to answer a broad range of questions and always has Google search results to fall back on. The Google app cannot read text messages, call people, set reminders, dictate notes, set alarms or be used from the lock screen like Apple's Siri . The Google app is still great for asking questions and getting good answers. Also for people without Siri the Google app is a great alternative.  Watch the video above to see Google voice search in action. Click read more below to view screenshots of the Google Search app in action.

A new movie called The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia is going to premier Monday, October 29 on HBO. I was lucky enough to go to a screening last week and would recommend it to anyone with HBO. The film gives a good overview to dyslexia and leaves viewers on a hopeful note. A large part of the film focuses on a dyslexic teen's journey through high school and into college. The film also follows other dyslexic students and their parents. The film features a number of famous dyslexics and Dr. Shaywitz, a nationally renowned expert on dyslexia. I hope The Big Picture will help educate and empower people around the country. Click read more below to view more videos from The Big Picture.

Today, Apple announced the iPad mini a 7.9" iPad running iOS 6 . The iPad mini is cheaper than the full size iPad with a starting price of $329. The smaller size and lower price could make the iPad mini perfect for teachers and students. Like the full size iPad the iPad mini includes a number of great accessibility features including VoiceOver , Speak Selection , Siri , Assistive Touch , Guided Access and Zoom. These accessibility features makes the iPad mini great for all types of people. The iPad mini includes a FaceTime HD camera, 5 mega pixel rear facing camera and A5 processor. The 5 mega pixel camera allows OCR and scanner apps to work well. The iPad mini also includes the lighting connector that is smaller and easier to plug in. The iPad mini will be available for pre-order on October 26 and for sale on November 2.  Click read more to view more photos of the iPad mini.

Netflix and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) have settled a lawsuit regarding captioning of streamed movies. Netflix agreed to have 100% of streamed movies captioned in 2014. The agreement is good news for deaf movie watchers everywhere. The settlement may help compel other movie streaming services to add captioning. Captioning is necessary for deaf and hearing impaired movie watchers.

Ariadne GPS is an app for iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch that allows people with visual impairments to navigate their surroundings. Ariadne GPS app is best suited for the iPad and cellular iPad because those devices have the most accurate location information. The app is fully compatible with VoiceOver allowing visually impaired users to use all features of the app. Ariadne GPS helps the user explore their surroundings by using the GPS of your iOS device to convey information about location, direction of travel and nearest favorite locations. The app can enable blind users to navigate streets, transit systems and even large buildings. When traveling on a train or a bus a blind user could set Ariadne GPS to alert them when they were getting close to their stop. A blind user could also program there classroom locations into the app in order to help navigate a large school building. As a user walks with the app can read street names and numbers. iAriadne GPS also has a map mode which allo

Apple issued invitations to select members of the media for an October 23 special event. The event will begin at 10 AM pacific. Apple is rumored to announce a new smaller iPad  dubbed iPad Mini and possibly updated Macs. If the rumors are to be believed an iPad Mini could be a great device for education because of its smaller size and rumored lower price point. No matter what Apple announces on the 23rd chances are that it will have accessibility features to make it usable for those with disabilities. Check back on the 23rd to learn about Apple's  announcement and the accessibility  implications.

This is the story of Tim Zimmer who has been working as a technician for one of the large appliance store chains. His job is to attend service calls for washers and dryers. He has seen a lot in his life; a lot has changed but a few things have stayed the same. The 80's saw a rise of homegrown IT systems and 90's was the decade of standardized backend automation where a few large vendors as well as quite a few small vendors built and sold solutions to automate a whole bunch of backend processes. Tim experienced this firsthand. He started getting printed invoices that he could hand out to his customers. He also heard his buddies in finance talking about a week-long training class to learn "computers" and some tools to make journal entries. Tim's life didn't change much. He would still get a list of customers handed out to him in the morning. He would go visit them. He would turn-in a part-request form manually for the parts he didn't carry in his truck and l

A new feature in iOS 6 called Do Not Disturb is great for people with ADD or people who just do not want to be disturbed by calls, texts, emails or anything else that pops up on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Do Not Disturb blocks all notifications and calls. To enable Do Not Disturb go to settings and then turn on Do Not Disturb. To scheduled Do No Disturb mode to turn on at a certain time, go to notifications and then Do Not Disturb. It is a great feature for teachers and students so they can use there devices as educational tools without being distracted by notifications or calls. When Do Not Disturb Mode is on, a moon appears next to the time. Do Not Disturb allows users to allow calls from certain contacts or allows repeated calls to come through. Watch the above video to learn more or click read more to view screenshots.

iOS 6 the latest operating system for iPhone , iPad and iPod Touch includes new VoiceOver enhancements. The enhancements allow VoiceOver users to use zoom, Assistive Touch and maps simultaneously with VoiceOver . These new features are built into iOS 6 so there are no additional downloads. Watch the above video to learn more about VoiceOver improvements in iOS 6.

Apple's iOS 6 improves on the Assistive Touch feature that was originally introduced in iOS 5 . Assistive Touch allows people with physical disabilities  to use an iPhone , iPad or iPod Touch . People with physical disabilities may not be able to use two fingers to pinch or to zoom, or may not be able to double tap a button, but Assistive Touch makes these tasks easier. Among the improvements are quick access to Siri , multitasking and screenshots. Assistive Touch still gives users the ability to make custom gesture. Assistive Touch now is compatible with VoiceOver so you can use both features at the same time. To activate Assistive Touch go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Assistive Touch. Click here to learn more about Assistive Touch. Watch the above video to learn more. Click read more below to view screen shots.

Apple's newly released iOS 6 includes a new improvements to Speak Selection that highlights words as they are read aloud. Click here to learn how to update to iOS 6. The new feature is available on any iPhone , iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 6. To access the feature go to settings > general > accessibility > speak selection. Once enabled simply highlight any text and press speak to have the text read with text-to-speech . Speak Selection is great for people with dyslexia or for reviewing documents.