from the useful-technologies-for-more-normal-lives dept.
The Center for American Progress reports:
Those who suffer from Parkinson's disease often find it difficult to take part in normal, everyday activities because of a surge of tremors that cause parts of the body to shake uncontrollably. But a new tool may help make some of those problems a thing of the past.
Liftware, high-tech silverware produced by San Francisco-based technology company Lift Labs, detects movements in real-time and cancels out hand tremors that occur during the act of lifting a utensil to one's mouth. Google recently acquired Lift Labs and announced the production of soup spoons and forks.
The article also mentions Medtronic's brain pacemaker, a gadget built at Purdue for speech improvement, and mobile apps that can help folks detect or deal with this condition.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:00AM
So will it in addition record each tremor on Google's servers?
(Score: 1, Redundant) by E_NOENT on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:40AM
Yep.
Google, aka the "We're richer than most third-world countries....because marketing!" company.
Not only will it work on their servers, but it will also use advanced telemetry in the spoons to measure the frequency and amplitude of your grandparent's hand tremors, sending full reports of their condition to Pfizer, who can (here's the clever twist) market directly to the physicians who in turn will write moar prescriptions for your aging relatives!
What a country!
I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @01:07PM
I looked into buying this for someone who has a similar disease. It is nearly 300 bucks. They get very little a month from SS and a small pension. They have little to no insurance to help cover it. Basically they couldnt afford it. :( I offered to buy it outright for them. But they do not want a gift 'that extravagant'.
So yeah if you have a decent amount of money and/or decent insurance that would cover it. Yeah get it.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Tuesday September 23 2014, @02:11PM
Exactly. A really fantastic product for rich people with tremors!
(Score: 1) by art guerrilla on Tuesday September 23 2014, @10:37PM
...hipsters on sunday morning ? ? ?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by randmcnatt on Tuesday September 23 2014, @12:24PM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 23 2014, @03:39PM
That seems like it would be a lot more difficult. Wouldn't that require essentially stopping the tremors by force with some kind of exoskeleton glove? I could be totally wrong here, but that sounds complex, difficult, and possibly painful for the user. Easier to just move the small fork around.
How about just strap the screwdriver/soldering iron to the fork? :) Seriously though, they could probably make a more universal device like this. I'd bet it would need much stronger motors and maybe a larger range of motion to handle something that big or heavy, after all a fork is a lot smaller than a soldering iron, meaning it would cost more too. Maybe not though, guess that depends how much food they designed the fork to hold...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:25AM
That's a fascinating idea, and certainly has broader applications. The other reply has a point about the force needed, but seems to me if it's mostly just damping out small tremors, that's not so much and one could learn to go with it. It wouldn't be working against you, just producing a tiny opposing vibration. It only needs to damp out the NET motion, not YOUR motion.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday September 23 2014, @12:51PM
I propose a better title:
Something along the lines of "Newly developed electronic spoon could help improve the Lives of People with Parkinson's" maybe?
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Tuesday September 23 2014, @02:08PM
I noted this device last year, and thought it was a great idea...but pride in patients might prevent them from adopting it.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:35PM
Not content with adding significant amounts to submissions and failing to note that those were made by the editor, [soylentnews.org] Marty has found a new method to make unneeded changes to submissions:
Where, after someone has made an effort to add an # indexing to the URL of a page, [soylentnews.org] Marty now strips out every one of those (even the ones that appear in the original article).
Liftware [liftlabsdesign.com]
Bad editor; no bacon for you.
.
Yes, when a page's source code looks like it's stuck in 1996, I use #Web0.001 to note to myself that I have already checked that page and that it contains NO accessibility features or that accessibility is implemented in a completely useless way.
Alternately, when the actual content begins at the very top of the page--just imagine that--and it serves no purpose to attempt to index the page to a point further down, I add a simple #, again to note to myself that I have checked the page.
Marty, if you absolutely -must- change something to feel that you are doing your job as an editor, feel free to remove ONLY THOSE 2 TYPES OF INDEXING.
Previously, I noticed that n1 had removed the indexing in my Phoronix links.
A lot of the "content" there is in my block list, so I suspect his view of the page is different from what I see and that that was a valid move on his part.
Maybe someone who surfs "normally" can verify that.
without indexing [phoronix.com]
with [phoronix.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by martyb on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:43AM
In reference to your first comment; see the revised version of the story and my reply to your comments.
In this story, I failed to notice the two cases where the fragment IDs in the original submission were actually present on the linked-to pages. I should not have deleted those and they have been restored. Thank you for pointing out those mistakes.
It just so happened that prior to reviewing your submission, I had completed an effort to clean up a bunch of RSS links for personal use. Those were infested with redirections and spurious data in the URL which were present solely for tracking purposes. I cannot explain why, but I somehow mistook this submission's fragment IDs as being of the same ilk. I will henceforth use extra vigilance when reviewing stories after 10PM. =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:07PM
after 10PM
BTDTGTTS.
Have a good day.
-- gewg_