In an effort to make braille more accessible for the visually impaired in signage and printed media, Tokyo-based designer Kosuke Takahashi has hit upon a novel solution that merges those characters with English and Japanese alphabets, so they appear in the same place. Essentially, the fonts in Takahashi’s Braille Neue typeface feature characters overlaid with their braille equivalents (with the dotted symbols embossed). That negates the need to accommodate braille text separately, and makes it easier to include braille in more spaces and media. Takahashi developed the typeface by basing it on Helvetica Neue, and then tweaking each letter to include braille characters. The project features two main fonts: Braille Neue, which features Latin characters, and Braille Neue Outline, which supports both Latin and Japanese characters. Braille Neue is being designed to work in large formats as well, so it’s suitable for signage in public spaces. It isn’t the first such … [Read more...] about This clever new font combines braille with Latin and Japanese alphabets
Alphabet
Google’s Eric Schmidt stepping down as executive chairman of Alphabet
Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, will step down from his role and become a technical adviser, the tech giant announced on Thursday. Schmidt, 62, an industry veteran who previously served as Google CEO, will remain on the company's board. “Since 2001, Eric has provided us with business and engineering expertise and a clear vision about the future of technology,” Alphabet CEO Larry Page said in a statement. “Continuing his 17 years of service to the company, he’ll now be helping us as a technical advisor on science and technology issues. I’m incredibly excited about the progress our companies are making, and about the strong leaders who are driving that innovation.” … [Read more...] about Google’s Eric Schmidt stepping down as executive chairman of Alphabet
How to sort Safari bookmarks alphabetically
Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re browsing through a huge folder of bookmarks, then having any kind of sort order is better than none. And if you’re using accessibility options — for instance if you are using screen readers because your sight is impaired — then alphabetical listings are essential. Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks in the Safari menubar, or type Option-Command-B on the keyboard. This brings up the bookmark page, which contains all your bookmarks, bookmarks folders, and special collections (Favorites, and the Bookmarks Menu). If you right-click on one of your folders, you get options to rename the folder, or two open all its bookmarks in tabs. Sort By to sort bookmarks alphabetically. You can sort either by the bookmark’s name, or by its address (the URL). The latter is good for gathering all bookmarks from a single website together in your list, whatever their page titles may be. Finally… According to Mac OS X Hints founder … [Read more...] about How to sort Safari bookmarks alphabetically
Amazon jumps Alphabet for No. 1 spot in LinkedIn’s 2018 Top Companies list
Tech firms have been through a lot over the past year, what with the seemingly endless onslaught of data breaches, security vulnerabilities, hostile takeover attempts, leadership shakeups and more. Yet remarkably, public interest – and a desire to be employed by major tech players – hasn’t waned as evident by the 2018 LinkedIn Top Companies report. The annual list is based on four key pillars: interest in a company, engagement with a company’s employees, employee retention and job demand. To avoid a conflict of interest, both LinkedIn and Microsoft are excluded from the list (Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in mid-2016). Topping this year’s list is Amazon, the Seattle-based e-commerce giant that recently passed Alphabet to become the world’s second most valuable company. Amazon, who is in the process of selecting a location for its second headquarters, is the second-largest private employer in the US with a global headcount of 566,000. … [Read more...] about Amazon jumps Alphabet for No. 1 spot in LinkedIn’s 2018 Top Companies list
Top A.I. Researcher At Alphabet’s Calico Leaves Company
March 2, 2018 - Written By Daniel Golightly There’s been another shuffle in employees working in the A.I. industry this week as one of Alphabet’s subsidiaries says goodbye to one of its top artificial intelligence scientists. More specifically, Daphne Koller is reportedly leaving the company after working with the company’s medical research organization, Calico, for a little under two years. Her separation from the research team appears to be occurring on good terms, however, with Calico spokesperson Neil Cohen lauding Koller’s work with the organization. According to Cohen, Koller was “instrumental” in building out the computer infrastructure around Calico’s machine learning projects and in advancing the company’s knowledge of biological aging mechanisms.Koller, for her part, has said that she enjoyed working with the team and has great respect for the “aspirational” mission Calico is trying to accomplish but that … [Read more...] about Top A.I. Researcher At Alphabet’s Calico Leaves Company