Dave Warnock drew my attention to the post by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing HOWTO make a Senior Remote with only five big, friendly buttons such a simple neat and useful idea. But why, oh why does no one manufacture the things? Cory's post is itself drawing attention to the original (I think) by anonymous on IndestructiblesSenior RemoteWhich reminded me of another simple modification to an electronic gadget which could make it user friendly for older folk. An MP3 player with big buttons, and ideally a bigger screen font. I first explained in 2005 why I'd like to find a source for these. If they were cheap enough I'd buy 50 or 100. But no one seems to make them, and it has to be a small mod to make a cheap MP3 player user friendly for a whole new market. Add Librivox for talking books, add PodBible for talking Bible... or as Dave wants to add recordings of the service for shutins... the possibilities are huge. So, why does no one make them?
Mod your mom's TV remote to make it senior friendly.
My mom was born in 1931. She is from the generation of radio and WWII. Her eyesight is failing and she isn't good with anything electronic. TV remotes confuse her. This mod came to me after she called me one day, claiming her TV remote stopped working. It turns out, she inadvertently hit the button that activated the VCR functions. She didn't know or couldn't see the button to reactivate the TV functions. So I decided to "dumb" down the remote to only three functions: On/Off, Channel and Volume.
My post back then "Tim needs an MP3 player with large buttons" was in response to an amusing meme from Maggi Dawn, incidentally several of the real candidates still appear, Tim [still] needs help and a theme... plus ca change...
PS Back in 2005 I wrote: BTW if you choose to run with this meme, could you please quote the phrase "Tim needs an MP3 player with large buttons" as I'd love to see that come up top on Google when some other Tim decides to try the meme! Who knows a manufacturer might see one of those posts and actually make one! I'd like to still echo that, both to please make the link, and the hope that some manufacturer might see and take note - there is a market for these things.
Update: So, players with big simple buttons exist, designed for pre-schoolers. The Fisher Price one is a bit on the expensive side and I can't see an NZ stockist, some of the US stores have cheaper ones though, so I'll look when I am in Thailand unless someone can point me to a suitable source here.
Thanks to Stephen and Anonymous (though your DSE link did not work for me bringing up other products :(
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http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/477dc85a00c51bb2273fc0a87f3306e5/Product/View/G0008
By 
, at
January 4, 2008 6:50 PM
Those sort of remotes do exist, and crop up particularly in hotels and motels where the original remote controls are replaced by one that will only change channels, change the volume or turn the TV on/off. A real pain if you want to play a DVD through the TV off the laptop and the TV/AV button is missing.
Like the link above notes several are available from your local electronics store. However, having said that, they may need some technical ability to configure initially?
By 
Stephen G, at
January 4, 2008 11:05 PM
For MP3 players then some of the ones in toy shops might also fit the bill
http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2620&e=fp3landing&Fp3Redirect=kidtoughplayer
By Stephen G, at
January 4, 2008 11:09 PM
Here's a remote I purchased: www.FlipperRemote.com. So far, its been working great, and operates both a TV and Cable box. I ut in the users favorite channels, and it solves the problem of menus.
LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.One LibriVox project I've worked on has now been released back into the wild: Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar. This is a fine Victorian comedy melodrama in which Sherlock Holmes makes a bungling appearance! Do have a listen, and let me know what you think... ¶ 5:36 PM
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Tim,
Thank you for working on Arsene Lupin. He was one of my favorite characters in my youth. It will be fun to listen to his adventures again.
Claude Mariottini
By Dr. Claude Mariottini, at
February 1, 2007 8:04 AM
Claude, my dad was a francophile Sherlock Holmes fan, so he introduced me to Arsene Lupin as a kid. I shot through the stories with a torch under the bedclothes (really!) then, and found I still enjoy them decades later.
By Tim, at
February 1, 2007 9:37 AM
Arsene Lupin
The characters are simple minded and cartoonish but there is some nice portrayal of emotions at the climax. The plot moves slowly, not an action, but the humor is delightful.
I did thoroughly enjoy this book, a likeable one! :)
By Bie, at
September 11, 2007 6:25 PM
Bie,
The negative things you say are quite true! There is no characterisation, the "people' in the Lupin stories are cardboard actors in a child's "theatre" there is indeed little or no action. It is ridiculous melodrama. And yet, as you say, enjoyable and entertaining... now there's a wonder! I'm not even convinced that you are quite right in the positive thing you say, (that the humour is "delightful") maybe the whole is more than the sum of the parts, or maybe it is precisely the childishness, somewhat like the appeal of cartoons...
By Tim, at
September 12, 2007 6:46 AM
Shouting Stones - seminar for churches
I've been giving myself some short breaks from the serious business of preparing next year's new courses (for the first semester 50% of three new ones) by working on a new short "video" introducing the seminar I offer for churches Shouting Stones: geography and archaeology reveal the Missionary God of the Old Testament. The full thing started life as a weekend camp, was cut down to just a few 50min academic hour sessions, and now I've made part one into a quarter of an hour's video called "Who is God?" (there is also a low bandwidth version).I wonder if I've used too many presentation slides and too few pictures, and also whether I should have adapted the material more as well as compressing or summarising... Do let me know what you think, I'm not really thin skinned! ¶ 5:24 PM
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(Insert imprecatory psalm about Windows Media codecs here)
Wouldn't play on the Mac (OS X 10.3.9) with Microsoft Media Player 9, nor with Quicktime with Flip4Mac installed, nor with the latest version of VLC.
Got sound (sort of), but lots of complaints about video.
Perhaps a different format would be more "open".
More info on Flip2Mac:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
By Stephen G, at
December 18, 2006 8:12 PM
I'm with Stephen about the codecs. A superb tool is "Riva FLV Encoder" It will convert almost anything to flash (and almost anything to almost anything) another option would be the open source ffmpeg but you need a fairly high powered linux machine to make that work.
As for the video (which being a windows user I could watch) it is a very good (Web 1.0) presentation. I confess I did drift slightly once or twice. I like to put that kid of thing on while I do other stuff. I suspect that it depends upon your intended market. It would definitely make a good introduction to discussion in a conventional house group.
I have been thinking about how we best re imagine Christian learning in our current (western?) context. I think this kind of thing is a great idea if we could intertwine it with (web 2.0) interactivity.
Thanks for sharing it with is. (also thanks for the pod bible bookmarks, I must talk to you about that some time).
By Graham Doel, at
December 19, 2006 1:45 AM
Really liked the video. Anytime we can glorify the name! dt www.davetilma.com
By dt, at
January 14, 2007 2:46 PM
Thanks, Dave!
By Tim, at
January 15, 2007 6:57 AM
Same for me; no video, but some sound. I'd suggest using Flip4Mac: http://www.flip4mac.com/
Studio version. Very inexpensive and guarantees that everyone will be able to view the content. F4M is the most used piece of software on my Mac.
Looking forward to seeing the video.
By Antonio, at
January 24, 2007 5:52 AM
Nice one people, the consensus is none of the multiple formats in the post above works for every Mac user. So I need to buy Flip-4-Mac then the video will play on Macs. Trouble is I'd have to buy a Mac first to run Flipping-4-M. And people say MS uses too many proprietary formats ;-)
By Tim, at
January 24, 2007 9:14 AM
SBL Podcast (info box) ::
A bunch of the bloggers at SBL got together and made a podcast Bibliobloggers @ SBL. We just sat and chatted, and despite our fears we did not run silent as soon as the mics were switched on. At times it sounds more Marx Brothers than Biblical Scholars on a Plane, but conversation included blogging and blogging tools, as well as current research and publications and of course Hebrew Tattoos.The Firefox blogging plugin some of us plugged is Performancing, neat and cool, as we said it allows you to press F8 and then to drag and drop, type and edit your post live in the bottom of ther FF window as you surf. Then when you have finished (and I now have) just click to publish... ¶ 11:49 PM
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Tim, thanks for posting the link to this. I enjoyed listening to your (very polite) conversation.
I graduated four years ago and it is nice to hear that tutors are embracing the new media. Your conversation sent me to your archives to look for posts about teaching and technology. Thanks.
By Graham Doel, at
November 21, 2006 5:56 PM
I'm glad you enjoyed it, I was afraid our rambling conversation would be boring to outsiders to the group! I noticed your comments to the piece about chat etc. I will reply there.
By Tim, at
November 22, 2006 12:53 AM
Thanks for the plugin Tim! I will fire up FireFox and see if it works on the Mac version.
By Cb, at
November 22, 2006 1:12 PM
It is great! Thanks for plugging the plugin Tim.
By Cb, at
November 28, 2006 5:54 AM
Well, I think it is a great plugin, so deserves a plug for all or us who are wired (or today wirelessed) ;-) It did once send one of my posts down the plughole, but only because I clicked the wrong button. Otherwise it's great stuff, made blogging so much easier for a visual person as I can see what I am blogging about!
By Tim, at
November 28, 2006 8:30 AM
