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Catharine McNally - April 27, 2011 "...For those of you who are still on the fence about Twitter, let me assure you that it is not always full of self-promoters or useless babble. When Twitter is "done right" it is a powerful tool for people to tell you what's going on - in a "little d democratic" kind of way. These 140-character statements challenge one to be tactful in how they write, to be understood, interpreted, and actionable. Effectively, the character limit forces one to cut through the fluff to get to the point. For a deaf person like me, Twitter is really helpful. It's kind of a digital version of my friend who sat next to me at lunch in middle school, who I would (often) turn to and ask, "Hey, what's everyone laughing about?" That person-bless her heart-would re-iterate the joke for me concisely and quickly, and of course, I would then laugh when everyone else had stopped laughing. ..."

Not "Breaking News" (see date) but likely to lead to developments

Andy Carvin July 27, 2011 (CET) ""If you're pulling a news report completely out of your ass, it's safer to go with Muslim." - Colbert on #Oslo coverage http://bit.ly/pa64sI"

http://twitter.com/#!/acarvin/status/96009688751144960 (in case Diigo mangles the full URL)

"August 1, 2011, 5:51 pm By Rachel Wiseman College students with very poor vision have had to struggle to see a blackboard and take notes-basic tasks that can hold some back. Now a team of four students from Arizona State University has designed a system, called Note-Taker, that couples a tablet PC and a video camera, and could be a major advance over the small eyeglass-mounted telescopes that many students have had to rely on. It recently won second place in Microsoft's Imagine Cup technology competition. (...) The result was Note-Taker, which connects a tablet PC (a laptop with a screen you can write on) to a high-resolution video camera. Screen commands get the camera to pan and zoom. The video footage, along with audio, can be played in real time on the tablet and are also saved for later reference. Alongside the video is a space for typed or handwritten notes, which students can jot down using a stylus. That should be helpful in math and science courses, says Mr. Hayden, where students need to copy down graphs, charts, and symbols not readily available on a keyboard. (...) But no tool can replace institutional support, says Chris S. Danielsen, director of public relations for the [NFB]. "The university is always going to have to make sure that whatever technology it uses is accessible to blind and low-vision students," he says. (Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.) (...) This entry was posted in Gadgets."

In "(Arizona State U. has gotten in hot water in the past in just this area.)" the words "in the past" are linked to http://chronicle.com/article/Blind-Students-Demand-Access/125695/ , about a Spanish work book inaccessible to blind students, with a reference to the lawsuit against Arizona State U over the adoption of the Kindle. So classifying this post in "Gadgets" is particularly paradoxical: in fact one reason why Arizona State U. was sued over the adoption of the Kindle was that Amazon presented its text-to-speech as a gadget.

"25 August 2011 Last updated at 02:17 GMT Help People who are deaf or hard of hearing have long complained that going to watch a film can be an unsatisfactory experience, with subtitled films on at unsociable times and often suffering from technical problems. But a solution could soon available in the form of special glasses which allow the wearer to see subtitles directly in front of their eyes, giving them the freedom of choice afforded to hearing people. Graham Satchell reports."

"VW: The Dark SIde Volkswagen opposes key European laws that we need if we're going to save our planet from climate change. But all is not lost. We feel the good in Volkswagen. Tagged with change, climate, co2, darkside, greenpeace, vw, vwdarkside July 01, 2011" Video taken down from YT, then from vimeo, due to a copyright infringement claim from George Lucas Films.

Again, not news (dated July 1 2011) but currently discussed elsewhere; see http://governancexborders.com/2011/07/01/the-dark-side-of-copyrights-force-lucasarts-v-youtube-v-greenpeace-v-vw/ for context.