Driving Blind While Drawing On An Android Tablet — iGRIND (PHOTOS x VIDEOS)
Today we look at apps, cars. Get your ride and your drawing on!
What: Driving Blind
Ford of Europe recently let 30 blind and/or visually impaired Europeans take a Ford Fiesta for a test run and the results were surprising. “Driving it was not a big problem for me,” driver Katrin Berus of Kleve, Germany told Wired after the test run. “Operating clutch and gearshift was easier than I expected.”
Teaching the blind to drive may become as ordinary as plastic water bottles since sensors and cameras are becoming cheaper to produce. A blind man drove a lap recently at the Daytona 500; he was guided by sensors.
“Last week’s test drivers in Cologne relied on directions from professional instructors and not sensors,” reported Wired. “Ford still saw the event empowering blind and visually impaired drivers. In addition to letting them get behind the wheel, engineers also showed them how cars crumple during a crash and let them explore vehicles through touch and feel to better understand cars’ shape and size.”
Read more on this fascinating story here.
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What: Float app
Made By: Scribd
What It Does: Its an eReader for your iPhone.
Platform: Iphone, desktop.
Available: Now
GG Certified: The good folks at Scribd wants you to experience reading on devices as if you’re watching Netflix.
CNET got their hands on the app and spoke to Scribd CEO and co-founder Trip Adler and here’s their take on the app.
“It’s actually difficult to describe exactly what it does, but imagine it as a cross between Flipboard, Instapaper, and a filtered Twitter feed. You select various areas of interest and pick favorite Web sites to “follow” and you get stories delivered to you in a constantly updated feed. You can then select stories to view or store them in your “library” for later viewing (iOS 5, which comes out this fall, will integrate a similar reading list option into Safari that allows you to save articles for later viewing). You can also customize how the page appears much like you can using e-reading apps like Kindle and Nook, changing the font size or choosing a sepia tone (newspaper) or a night reading mode with a black background. You can also link your Facebook, Twitter, and Scribd accounts to Float and easily share content with those sites.
Video of the app in action after the break!
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Scribd App in action.
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What: Sketchbook Pro
Made by: Autodesk
What It Does: Helps you get your Picasso on on Android tablets.
Platform: Android
Costs: You can try it out for free for a short period but expect to pay $5 for the full version on Android Market.
GG Certified: After making its debut on Apple devices awhile back, being downloaded 5 million times, Autodesk has announced the publication of Sketchbook Pro, the wildly popular drawing app for amateur and professional artists who use Android tablets. The app runs with Honeycomb, the latest version of Android. See it in action after the break!
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Sketchbook Pro for Android in action.
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What: AlmostFamous.com
Made by: Tedd Page
What It Does: AlmostFamous is a new talent discovery social media platform based in Miami, FL that launches it’s public beta last week. It is the most complete social media talent discovery site on the market to date.
GG Certified: Anything that will let you know about an artist without navigating away from a singe page is great in our book. With AlmostFamous, artists can upload their media into module boxes on their profiles. On these modules they can upload images, videos (YouTube or Vimeo) and audio (soundcould or direct upload) as well as create calendar events, link twitter or their blogs RSS feed, or just simply write a note for their followers. Once all their content is in they can share their profiles on existing social media sites including Facebook and Twitter.
