Category: Gadgets

Lex Gillette may not be able to see, technology is letting him show kids how sports look from the athlete’s side.

Lex Gillette has been blind since he was 7 years old, but this hasn’t stopped him from becoming a three time American Paralympian, and he is now able to use Google Glass to share this experience with kids, who will be able to see his sport in a way that even he cannot.

Gillette is a competitor in the 100 meter, 200 meter, triple jump, and long jump events at the Paralympics.

Without being able to use his eyes to see what he is doing, Gillette has managed to bring home two silver medals in track and field events at the Paralympics. Now, with advances that have been made in camera technology, this athlete will be able to broadcast his sports, from his own perspective, with Google Glass augmented reality glasses. This will broadcast its way to classrooms throughout the United States, in August.

Gillette will be wearing a Google Glass headset to take kids with him when he takes off at a sprint.

According to Gillette, “I’m a blind athlete, and to be able to wear the glasses and have the kids see through my eyes although I can’t even myself, that’s amazing to me.” He added that “I’m a jumper primarily. There’s a lot of things that go on with that, having someone basically directing me down this runway, and I’m running fast, he’s making calls on the fly.”

To Gillette, this provides an AR experience that “would definitely be cool” for the children to be able to actually view the way in which all of this occurs, and to be able to see the visual of what his sports would look like if they were running in his shoes.

This entire experience is the result of a program called Classroom Champions, which uses technology to connect children who may be struggling in the classroom, with Olympic and Paralympic athletes. The purpose is to help them to understand the purpose, nature, and ability to set and pursue goals. Gillette pointed out that he doesn’t have any physical sight, but this has never been able to stop him from “having any dreams or the vision to accomplish my goal.”

A number of forms of technology other than Google Glass will also be used in this program including the Go-Pro spidercam and octocopters.

Researchers have discovered that a great deal of data held by these smartphones can be extracted from them.

According to a recent mobile security acknowledgement from Apple, it is possible for its employees to be able to use previously unpublicized techniques in order to be able to extract data from consumer iPhones, such as contact lists, photos, and other types of personal data such as text messages.

The equivalent techniques could also be applied by law enforcement to work around backup encryption.

This same mobile security sidestepping technique could be applied by others who have “trusted” forms of computers to which the iPhones have been connected. This according to an expert in privacy and security who brought about the admission from the tech giant. Last week, at a presentation that took place in a conference, Jonathan Zdziarski, a researcher, demonstrated how the services were capable of accessing considerable quantities of data by way of diagnostic services that Apple has said are meant for use by engineers.

The researcher said that iPhone users are not told when this mobile security and private data access is occurring.

Zdziarski also stated that there is no way for users to disable the services or prevent them from running. This means that there is no way for the user of an iPhone to know which computers have already been labeled as a trusted device by way of the backup process and these users cannot choose to stop future connections. He stated that “There’s no way to `unpair’ except to wipe your phone.” He then went about demonstrating that he was capable of extracting private data from a locked phone through the use of a computer with trusted status.

Although some have stated that they feel that this is evidence that the National Security Agency and Apple are collaborating with each other, Apple has denied all claims that they have constructed any type of “back doors” to their mobile security be used by intelligence agencies. A statement from the company said that “We have designed iOS so that its diagnostic functions do not compromise user privacy and security, but still provides needed information to enterprise IT departments, developers and Apple for troubleshooting technical issues.”