Summer lingers in that August lull before all are back-to-business. Broadcasters are substitutes; columnists are away; the world is awash in out-of-office emails. So it is seems to be the right time to recap the last month of blog posts before heading into the forward-look at conferences and events about businesses targeting the older adult market. For example, you may be looking at attending, sponsoring, exhibiting or just learning about LeadingAge, Aging 2.0 Optimize, DigitalHealth Summit At CES or Aging in America. While mulling those over, check out our new research, a July white paper on social isolation sponsored by GreatCall. Now here are those five blog posts you may have missed.
A virtual assistant that can misunderstand you more effectively. So perhaps you never liked asking Siri questions, partly because the answer was often a website you peer at on a phone. How dumb is that? Siri was created a long time ago, but it really got its name when it was introduced into the iPhone in 2011 and dubbed an ‘Intelligent Personal Assistant’. Maybe there is a Siri improvement you wanted that will be available sometime in the fall in iOS 11. Maybe you want Siri’s English to be in Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Maybe you don’t care because you are too embarrassed to speak to Siri in public settings, like meetings, and prefer the auto-correction of your mediocre typing. Or maybe you are excited now, because Siri may, just possibly, soon work with other apps. Woohoo!
In home and out and about – new and not quite here offerings. The top of the list alphabetically is the not-yet-here and pricey Amazon Echo Show. Is this a ground-breaking innovation? Or is it an always-watching irritant set to ‘drop-in mode’ which automatically will accept a video call after 10 seconds? On the positive side -- start chatting with an aging parent who lacks or hates PC/Macs, tablets, or smartphones. Consider the potentially negative response: an intrusive person (your loving relative) sneaks up on your screen, ready to converse when you least expect it. How creepy-Skype-y is it? Here are the five:
In home and out and about – new and not quite here offerings. The top of the list alphabetically is the not-yet-here and pricey 