Accessibility has always been taken into consideration in computer design. There are screen readers, magnifiers, alternative point and click devices, and more. I imagine that it’s still difficult for a blind person to comfortably use a computer, and Jonathan Lucas is trying to make a difference with the Siafu display. “It lays flat like a tablet and allows the user to fully interact with it by way of touch. The surface utilizes a conceptual material called magneclay or magnetized liquid. This material has the ability to morph upward into any shape via a controlled electromagnetic field enabling the device to create a braille surface for reading and even pictures in 3D relief.”

Here’s a nice download tip from Lifehacker. A simple freeware application, Windows Hidie can hide any window on your desktop from view with a simple keystroke or through its slightly more advanced interface. When Windows Hidie hides a window, it disappears from your taskbar and from the Alt-Tab switcher, so essentially it’s completely gone from the casual onlooker’s view.

The photographerusa.com website has a nice tool for calibrating your monitor. View the page and set the contrast, brightness, and color depth of your monitor and display settings so that you see the test patterns as described. It’s not good enough for professional graphic artists (try a Spyder if you want the best results), but for most of us it will help make sure you’re not missing significant details while viewing online photos.

In a scene straight out of the Jetsons, PostlerFerguson shows how their “Life Machines” may someday work. You could get a nice shave or ear cleaning from the robot barber before the robot cook serves you breakfast in some kind of Lego tableware. The site claims “Life Machines engages with the question of how an ageing population’s needs can be met through technology. It investigates a possible future society in which humans and robots coexist in domestic spaces and asks what issues arise in a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology.”

A concise and interesting history of the internet is published on the website of the Computer History Museum. From the earliest days in the early 1960s before the word “internet” was even invented, up to 1992 when more than a million computers were connected, there are pictures and brief descriptions of the major events of each decade.