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Last week, the world’s gadget makers and tech swamis gathered at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to celebrate the latest gizmonic advances — wearable computers, refrigerators with Internet connections, teddy bears that measure pulses, iPhone-controlled drones, Facebook apps for cars.
But as the devices get more sophisticated — Samsung’s new Android phones recognize “air gestures,” which amount to waving hands above the screen — there are hordes of users who can barely keep up. Sixty-two percent of Americans now own a smartphone, a Gallup poll shows. For many of them, smartphones are confounding and intimidating, and they often wind up just using the phones as expensive cameras that can make calls — if they don’t hide the phone icon by accident.
And lest anyone think the technological stumbling blocks are limited to senior citizens, consider the example of a 41-year-old interior designer in Montgomery County who is so embarrassed at her smartphone ineptitude that she would allow only her first name — Jennifer — to be used in explaining the repeated trouble she once had snapping photos.
“I couldn’t get the camera flipped around so it would take a picture of an object and not myself,” Jennifer said. There were a lot of pictures of Jennifer. “Finally a client said, ‘Here, let me help you with that.’ ” Full story...
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Last week, the world’s gadget makers and tech swamis gathered at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to celebrate the latest gizmonic advances — wearable computers, refrigerators with Internet connections, teddy bears that measure pulses, iPhone-controlled drones, Facebook apps for cars.
But as the devices get more sophisticated — Samsung’s new Android phones recognize “air gestures,” which amount to waving hands above the screen — there are hordes of users who can barely keep up. Sixty-two percent of Americans now own a smartphone, a Gallup poll shows. For many of them, smartphones are confounding and intimidating, and they often wind up just using the phones as expensive cameras that can make calls — if they don’t hide the phone icon by accident.
And lest anyone think the technological stumbling blocks are limited to senior citizens, consider the example of a 41-year-old interior designer in Montgomery County who is so embarrassed at her smartphone ineptitude that she would allow only her first name — Jennifer — to be used in explaining the repeated trouble she once had snapping photos.
“I couldn’t get the camera flipped around so it would take a picture of an object and not myself,” Jennifer said. There were a lot of pictures of Jennifer. “Finally a client said, ‘Here, let me help you with that.’ ” Full story...
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