Father's app lets disabled son 'speak' thru iPad

Victor Pauca will have plenty of presents to unwrap on Christmas, but the 5-year-old Winston-Salem boy has already received the best gift he'll get this year: the ability to communicate.
Victor has a rare genetic disorder that delays development of a number of skills, including speech. To help him and others with disabilities, his father, Paul, and some of his students at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem have created an application for the iPhone and iPad that turns their touch screens into communications tools.
The VerbalVictor app allows parents and caregivers to take pictures and record phrases to go with them. These become "buttons" on the screen that Victor touches when he wants to communicate. A picture of the backyard, for example, can be accompanied by a recording of a sentence like "I want to go outside and play." When Victor touches it, his parents or teachers know what he wants to do.
"The user records the voice, so it's something the child's familiar with. It's not robotic," Paul Pauca said.
The app, which should be for sale for $10 in Apple Inc.'s iTunes store by early next week, is one of dozens of new software products designed to make life easier for people with a range of disabilities.
The category is expanding so fast that Apple now has a separate listing for it in the App Store. More apps are added every week, ranging from Sign4Me, a sign language tutor that uses an animated avatar, to ArtikPix, a flash card-like app that helps teachers and speech therapists improve their students' articulation of words.
"It opens up his mind to us, because he can show us what he's thinking," said Victor's mother, Theresa.
Victor has a rare genetic disorder called Pitt Hopkins Syndrome, a diagnosis he shares with about 50 other people in the U.S. The ailment causes delays in cognitive abilities, motor skills, social development and language skills. Victor's progress, in many ways, has been good — he could walk at age 2, whereas some children with the condition can't walk until they're 10 or older.
The Paucas tried a number of therapeutic devices designed to help people with similar disabilities communicate. These standalone devices are often low-tech — the one the Paucas first tried required paper printouts. Or they are expensive: a top-of-the-line model similar to the one used by famed physicist Stephen Hawking can cost about $8,200.
Paul Pauca, a computer science professor, decided that he and some of his students could do better. Starting in January, they worked to create an app that would use the versatility of the Apple devices to make communication easier.
Because the hardware already existed, and the work was done as part of a class, there were essentially no direct costs of development. The prototype was done by late spring.
"We're not a big-budget operation, and that allows us to sell it for $10," said Tommy Guy, who is one of Pauca's students and is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto.
Jim Tobias, president of consulting firm Inclusive Technologies and an expert on disability-accessible technology, points out that VerbalVictor takes advantage of general-purpose, mass-market gadgets that cost hundreds of dollars rather than thousands.
People who already own an iPhone or iPad need to pay only $10 more for the app, "instead of taking a risk with $1,000" with specialized machines, said Tobias, who is not involved with the project.
There are dozens of apps designed to help people with a variety of disabilities, ranging from sign language aids to apps that play back text on the screen in a clear voice to help visually impaired people navigate their phones.
The apps also offer a rich experience with bright colors, high-definition photos and crisp sound recordings that weren't possible before mobile computing technology, Tobias said. But a potential downside exists when people start to think of the apps as a magic wand. Not every app will help every person, he said.
"I've been contacted by about 100 eager and enthusiastic parents in the last three or four months about things like this," he said, "and if it doesn't work out, they're a little bit at a loss as to what to do next. We still need to do more to help professionals understand what's available and what might be best suited for individuals."
For the Paucas, who founded the Pitt Hopkins Syndrome International Network to meet and share information with other families, something as seemingly commonplace as a smart phone app has added inexpressible richness to their family life.
"He has the most positive attitude and the brightest smile," Theresa said about Victor. "He teaches us something new every day about what we need to be thankful for."

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Facebook, PayPal tycoon embraces sci-fi future

In the movie The Social Network, the character of Peter Thiel is played as a slick Master of the Universe, a tech industry king and kingmaker with the savvy to see that a $500,000 investment in Facebook could mint millions later.
Reality is a little more rumpled.
On a recent December night, Thiel walked, slightly stooped, across a San Francisco stage to make a pitch to an invitation-only audience of Silicon Valley luminaries — investors and innovators who had scored sometimes huge fortunes through a mix of skill, vision and risk-taking.
The billionaire PayPal co-founder didn't tell them about the next big startup. He wanted them to buy into a bigger idea: the future.
A future when computers will communicate directly with the human brain. Seafaring pioneers will found new floating nations in the middle of the ocean. Science will conquer aging, and death will become a curable disease.
If anything can transform these wild dreams into plausible realities, he believes it is the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley — the minds and money that have conjured the technological marvels that have already altered everyday life.
"Do we try to pursue ideas that are weird and have optimism about the future, or do we give up on all new things and compromise?"
Sitting before him in the audience, among others: Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and technology publishing guru Tim O'Reilly.
As venture capital in Silicon Valley chases the next big mobile app or group discount service, Thiel was asking for them to fund technological breakthroughs that some believe in fervently and others see as sheer fantasy.
He even has a name for it: Breakthrough philanthropy.
Instead of just giving to help the less fortunate here and now, Thiel encouraged his fellow moguls to put their money toward seemingly far-fetched ventures that he believes could improve the lives of everyone for good.
Gathered on the stage were eight groups that Thiel thinks are on the right path.
One was the Singularity Institute, whose members believe in the near-inevitability of the arrival within the next century of computers smarter than the humans who created them.
The institute works to ensure that self-programming machines will create a world that looks more like Star Trek, less like the Terminator.
Another was the SENS Foundation, a group of biomedical researchers seeking a path to radical life extension based on the controversial aging theories of computer scientist-turned-gerontologist Aubrey de Grey.
And the Seasteading Institute, led by Patri Friedman, the grandson of famed economist Milton Friedman. It looks to establish distant ocean colonies to serve as laboratories for experimenting with new forms of government or "startup countries."
"As innovators, you are the best at finding and nurturing the right big ideas that can change the world," Friedman told the audience.
The history of Silicon Valley is filled with such ideas. The smartphone, the Web, the search engine, the personal computer itself — these all seemed far-fetched until they became commonplace.
To raise money from the wealthy, it's a time-honored strategy to flatter. Witness the names emblazoned across hospital wings and university buildings. But building important buildings has never seemed to especially interest Silicon Valley's elite.
They have "the right kind of cultural DNA to at the very least pay attention," said Greg Biggers, a longtime software executive who recently founded a startup, Genomera, that lets members conduct health studies using their own genetic data.
Biggers said Silicon Valley entrepreneurs would likely be receptive to Thiel's unconventional message because they succeeded by not conforming to others' expectations of what was possible.
"This is a roomful of people who bucked the system," he said as he mingled, glass of wine in hand.
Charles Rubin, a Duquesne University political science professor and blogger who has written critically about some of the movements endorsed by Thiel, said these visions of the future align closely with the Silicon Valley outlook.
All share the view that "scientific knowledge and technical capacity will continue to increase at an accelerating rate," Rubin said. "This is a core idea that practically defines what Silicon Valley is all about: ceaseless innovation."
Thiel himself seems to thrive on flouting convention, sometimes in ways that have led to harsh criticism.
In September, he announced a program designed to discover the next Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, by paying $100,000 each to 20 young people under 20 years old to skip college for two years to learn about entrepreneurship.
Jacob Weisberg, editor of the online magazine Slate, excoriated Thiel for the program and what he sees as its underlying impetus.
"Thiel's philosophy demands attention not because it is original or interesting in any way — it's puerile libertarianism, infused with futurist fantasy — but because it epitomizes an ugly side of Silicon Valley's politics," Weisberg wrote.
Thiel is not a traditional conservative — he has donated to Republican candidates but also to California's marijuana legalization ballot measure. But he does seem to believe in a trickle-down theory of technology.
Unlike the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has poured billions into providing basic health care for some of the world's most impoverished people, Thiel said he wants to prioritize major scientific advances he thinks will spread to benefit humanity as a whole.
His faith appears grounded in a pervasive Silicon Valley belief that motivates gifted individuals to achieve on a grand scale, no matter the apparent hurdles — death included.
But even Thiel admitted he has no idea how long that last obstacle will take to overcome.
"I would like to say that I would still be doing this even if I thought there was no chance I would benefit from this in any way," he said in an interview. "I think we have to work on these things even if they take centuries."

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Google brings extra Christmas cheer to Nepal

Despite a deepening political crisis that has cast a dark shadow over its floundering peace process, the Himalayan republic of Nepal still has a good cause to rejoice this Christmas with a pat on the back coming from an unexpected benefactor – Google.

For two days starting from Christmas eve, Google replaced its corporate logo on the internet with 17 images that have now become synonymous with the holiday season.

The 17 interactive images featured on the Google doodle, which is also Google’s holiday card, has been designed by Michael Lopez, who spent over six months to create a doodle that would celebrate “the holiday season in the spirit of world unity and peace”.

The images, picked from across the globe, are as diverse as the St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, gondolas of Venice, and Kanga, a colourful, popular African garment.

Nepal, despite its tiny size, remains one of the world’s most favourite holiday destinations due to its amazing geographical and religious diversity as well as being home to eight of the tallest peaks in the world, including the 8848-metre high Mt. Everest.

The world’s newest republic is one of the 17 images in the doodle, done mostly in blue. The Nepal image shows three young Sherpa girls singing in front of a Buddhist tower with traditional Buddhist prayer flags fluttering in the wind.

Both Nepal’s two big neighbours – India and China – have also been included in the vignettes. While India is represented by a danseuse who highlights the subcontinent’s rich repertoire of traditional dances, China is represented by its legendary Great Wall.

The other image from Asia is that of Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan.

The Google representation comes as a shot in the arm for Nepal’s tourism ministry that is gearing up to celebrate the New Year as the Nepal Tourism Year 2011 with the aim of bringing one million foreign tourists to the lap of the Himalayas.

Nepal’s inclusion among images of holiday associated especially with Christmas comes four years after it became a secular republic from being the only Hindu kingdom in the world.

The first Christian missionaries arrived in Nepal in the 1950s, mostly on invitation to start schools and hospitals.

However, conversions remained a punishable offence till 1990 when a pro-democracy movement clipped the wings of the Hindu king of Nepal, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah, forcing him to become a titular, constitutional monarch and lift the ban on political parties.

It took another pro-democracy movement in 2006 to end the army-backed regime of Birendra’s brother Gyanendra, resulting in parliament declaring Nepal secular and Christmas a public holiday.

In 2007, the Vatican appointed the first Catholic bishop in Nepal.

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Users at risk of IE bug, warns Microsoft

Microsoft has issued a warning about an Internet Explorer bug that might hack into and take control of unprotected computers.

Although Microsoft has already released a workaround solution for the bug, it is still working on the permanent solution, it said.

In the meantime, it recommended those concerned use a protection system known as the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit.

The bug revolves around the way that IE manages a computer’s memory when processing Cascading Style Sheets - a widely used technology that defines the look and feel of pages on a website.

Criminals can exploit IE's memory management to inject their own malicious code into the stream of instructions a computer processes as a browser is being used.

Installing and applying the toolkit may require Windows XP users to update the version of the operating system they are using. But even if they do that some of the protection it bestows on Windows 7 and Vista users will not be available.

We’re currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the claimed vulnerability or of customer impact,” the BBC quoted Dave Forstrom, the director of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, as saying.

"As vulnerabilities go, this kind is the most serious as it allows remote execution of code. This means the attacker can run programs, such as malware, directly on the victim’s computer,” said Rik Ferguson, senior security analyst at Trend Micro.

He added, "It is highly reminiscent of vulnerability at the same time two years ago which prompted several national governments to warn against using IE and to switch to an alternative browser."

Disclaimer: All information on this news has been compiled from their respective official websites or through public domain sites and leading newspapers. Although, we have taken reasonable efforts to provide you with accurate information, but we assumes no responsibility for the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the Information and would advise you to verify it from the official product provider. We cannot guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. If you would like to advertise on our site please contact us