Plan.b a digital street plan for blind people concept device

Planb_normal_01Planb_normal_02Planb_normal_03Planb_normal_04Planb_normal_05Planb_normal_06Planb_normal_07Planb_normal_08Planb_normal_09Planb_normal_10Planb_normal_11

Plan.b is a brilliant concept device of a digital street plan for blind people. It « prints » a palpable image of their immediate surroundings.

The surface of the device is made of dots, just like braille displays, but at a bigger scale. User’s position is indicated by a small arrow at the center. The « printed » map represent a zoomed area of map, where the streets are represented by the black (flat) areas.

The user can feel the buildings and have a better appreciation of distances, architecture proportions and a more global view of the surroundings.

By pressing the dots the user could get additionnal audible informations about buildings and streets (using speech synthesys, I guess).

Such device could help blind people to freely and independently navigate in foreign places and environment. 

Concept by Robert Richter – Oriko Design Büro.

 

 

The Rise of Facebook Mobile

Ft-mobile2

Facebook recently announced that the site now has 150 million mobile users worldwide. Much of this has to do with the rapid growth of app usage, specifically on smartphones.Perhaps not surprisingly, social networking apps are the the fastest growing category of all apps, with download rates increasing by 240% in the last year. Of these, Facebook apps are tend to be the most popular; in fact, Facebook is the number one app across most mobile operating systems. We took a look at the rise of Facebook mobile, and compiled a number of the most interesting facts and figures in the above graphic.
It’s quite amazing.

 

Playing with the Nexus One

01042010203

I’ve played with the Nexus One (Android 2.1) the other day. I didn’t see much difference with my Milestone (Android 2.0.1) except, of course, the animated wallpaper, additional home screens and multi-touch in Maps, Gallery and web browser. ;-)