EnjoyTech

Many enterprise software vendors sympathize. "We know it's a bad experience" or "We will fix the usability." One of the reasons the software is not usable is because the makers never had any empathy for the end users who would use it. In many cases the makers didn't even know who their end users were; they only knew who would buy the software. As far as enterprise software is concerned people who write checks don't use the software and people who use software don't write checks and have a little or no influence in what gets bought. Though the dynamics are now changing. Usability is the last step; it's about making software usable for the tasks that it is designed for. It's not useful at all when the software is designed to solve a wrong problem. Perfectly usable software could be completely useless. It's the job of a product manager, designer, and a developer to assess the end user needs—have empathy for them—and then design software that...

The HoverCam is a collapsible document camera and scanner all in one portable package. The HoverCam first slides out of the base and then swings out from the arm. The HoverCam T5 has a five megapixel camera which allows the HoverCam to capture crisp scans of documents up to 11" X 14". The HoverCam plugs into a Mac or PC using USB and does not require any external power. To begin using the HoverCam, launch the HoverCam Flex software which is included with the HoverCam T5. The HoverCam Flex software gives you the option to start scanning, capture a video, or show and annotate a document on a projector. Click read more below to learn more. Scanning: In order to scan to a PDF, JPEG, or other file type,  place the document under the camera and position it properly then snap the picture. If you have more than one page you can use an included alignment bumper to line up each page more quickly. The HoverCam takes pictures very quickly with almost no time lag. Scanning ...

Two years back I wrote that the primary challenge with NoSQL is that it's not SQL . SQL has played a huge rule in making relational databases popular for the last forty years or so. Whenever the developers wanted to design an(y) application they put an RDBMS underneath and used SQL from all possible layers. Over a period of time, the RDBMS grew in functions and features such as binary storage, faster access, clusters, sophisticated access control etc. and the applications reaped these benefits. The traditional RDBMS became a non-fit for cloud-scale applications that fundamentally required scale at whole different level. Traditional RDBMS could not support this scale and even if they could it became prohibitively expensive for the developers to use it. Traditional RDBMS also became too restrictive due to their strict upfront schema requirements that are not suitable for modern large scale consumer web and mobile applications. Due to these two primary reasons and a lot more other rea...

Here are the top 10 posts on the Assistive Technology Blog as rated by number of views. Thanks to everyone who read the blog. Please check back in the new year for more cool posts. iOS 5 Tips: Use Assistive Touch to Replace a Broken Home Button, Lock Button or Volume Button What is Assistive Touch? What does iPhone 5 and iOS 5 Mean for Assistive Technology? Read PDF Files Aloud with vBooks PDF Voice Reader iPhone 4S Accessibility Features iOS 5 Tip: Look Up Any Word Android Becomes More Accessible With 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Assistive Touch Improvements in iOS 6 The Kindle Fire Is Not Accessible Prizmo : Fast, Accurate, Full Featured OCR App for iPhone Review What was your favorite post of 2012 let us know in the comments.

As 2012 comes to a close I decided to make a run down of my favorite assistive technology apps and products that I have been using this year. This list is in no particular order. Click read more view the list. Sky WiFi Smartpen from Livescribe The Sky WiFi Smartpen is easy to use and seamless. It has a built in recorder and camera that, when used with specialized paper, syncs audio and written notes in the cloud. To read the Sky WiFi Smartpen review click here. iPad mini iPad mini is a great tablet because of its size, app selection, and accessibility. The lower price point makes it even more compelling. Most of all iPad mini runs all the apps that the full size iPad does and has accessibility features second to none. Click here to read more about the iPad mini. iOS 6 While iOS 6 many have been short on mainstream features it has several useful accessibility features including Guided Access , highlighting with Speak Selection, Siri improvements, and VoiceOver improvements. Click...

Nuance's PaperPort Notes app for iPad received a major update. The highlight of the update is the ability to take a picture of text to add the text to your notes. The Optical Charactor Recongition (OCR) feature is slower than other competing apps but is accurate. The improved cameras on the newest iPads allow OCR to work well. To learn about the other features of the free PaperPort Notes app click here.   Click here to download the app. Click read more below to view screenshots of PaperPort Notes.

While I ponder on 2012 and plan for 2013, I always keep the regret minimization framework (watch the short video clip above) in back of my mind. Of course luck plays a huge part in people's success, but we owe it a lot to Jeff Bezos. We probably wouldn't have seen Amazon.com and we most certainly would not have seen EC2. No one predicted anything about Amazon being a key cloud player. A few years back Twitter didn't exist and Facebook was limited to college kids. I do make plans but I have stopped predicting since I will most certainly get it wrong . "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight Eisenhower I use regret minimization framework not only as a long-term thinking tool but also to make decisions in short-term. It helps me assess, prioritize, and focus on right opportunities. While long-term thinking is a good thing, I strongly believe in setting short term goals, meeting them, and more importantly cherishing them. If you're not minimiz...