Mercury News – Jay Forderer, a teacher’s aide, worked on a student’s monthly progress report Thursday morning, whizzing through the first paragraph in a matter of minutes.
Pretty standard fare, except for the fact that Forderer is partly paralyzed and it usually takes him 30 to 45 minutes to type one or two paragraphs in Microsoft Word. But a Microsoft philanthropic program that’s teaching him to use dictation software changed all that.
Getting better at using that software has helped the 43-year-old San Jose resident hold down a job. "All employers are looking for a person who can do the job not only accurately,” Forderer said, “but also in a timely fashion.”
Seattle PI – More than two decades after leaving Microsoft Corp., Paul Allen still has designs on the computer business. But this time, he’s aiming for something smaller.
It’s a miniature computer, dubbed FlipStart, and it’s slated for release later this month, after years of development. The device rests on the palm but looks like a tiny laptop, contains a 30-gigabyte hard drive and runs full-fledged software on a microprocessor good enough for a traditional desktop computer.
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"Really, FlipStart gives you everything that your laptop does," said Robin Budd, senior director with FlipStart Labs, a Seattle-based subsidiary of Allen’s Vulcan Inc. "We’re not promoting the idea that you would do CAD design on it, but for Office applications and most of what people do with their laptops, it’s great."
The Bis Key Chronicles 