Memo to everyone who knits. You may be losing your job.
I just saw a new invention on Kickstarter that is a compact, consumer version of an industrial knitting machine. People who love to knit will be able to turn digital designs into knitted garments.
Called Kniterate, the invention can make scarves, beanies, ties, dresses, sweaters, etc. in just a few hours.
Dress designed by Jinhee Park. Knitting time 5 hours on the Kniterate.
Step 1: Create your design from scratch or using a template
Step 2: Let Kniterate knit it for you, ready to be worn or assembled
Step 3: Wear your own unique knits, gift or sell them to others
Step 4: Share them online with the Kniterate community
Kniterate will not he available till next year. If you want to donate to their Kickstarter campaign, click here.
This Saturday, Eliot and I will be living together 40 years. This November, we will be married 38 years. We always celebrate both anniversaries. Considering we are together 24/7, one could say we should be celebrating over 100 years.
Whatever the number is, we decided to do something outrageous to mark the occasion. We both agreed to get “Warholed.”
Gallerist Gail Williams, of the Williams McCall Gallery, arranged for master printers, Debbie Carfagno and Michael Enns, to produce Warhol-like silkscreen portraits of us. The artists worked for Warhol in the late 1970’s until his death in 1987.
The whole experience was wonderful. We were stylized and photographed. Then Debbie and Michael did their Warhol interpretation. We couldn’t be more pleased. The portraits represent the best of memories.
Facebook has a new feature that just may entice you to become a member of the social media platform.
Facebook has started a Town Hall section which allows you to have easy access to your local, state and federal government representatives. With just a click of a button, you will be able to call or email them. No more hassles trying to find and communicate with local politicians.
These days, reaching out to your local reps is of ultra importance. Many of you want your voices heard. This is a super, easy way to do it.
Facebook also encourages you to follow your local reps. If you do, their posts will automatically appear in your news feeds. You will be able to comment on their posts and share the information with your family and friends.
Additionally, Town Hall will also send you Election Reminders for local elections. Facebook wants to be your one-stop political resource.
Take advantage of it. You are living in the digital age.
When I was in my ’20s, I would get furious if someone referred to me as a girl. I would open my big mouth to correct them. “I am woman, hear me roar.”
In the last number of years. I find myself referring to other females as “girls.” I’m sorry, I can’t help myself. It just slips out. I know where it’s coming from. I want to be a girl. I want to be young again with my whole career ahead of me.
Instead, I’m an elderly woman pretending to be young. While I’m working, I feel young. It works very well until I pass a mirror. Then I scream in horror. Who is that senior woman looking back at me?
My friend, Kent Karosen, Managing Director/Partner of Cantor Fitzgerald, and author “Why Can’t Grandma Remember My Name?” hates when I call the women in his office, “girls.” The ladies are in their late 20’s, so to me they are “girls.” He is always correcting me. It’s embarrassing, especially since I have been a career woman all my life.
I also recently read that actress Mayim Bialik really dislikes when people calling women “girls”. She also did a YouTube video about it. The Big Bang Theory star wants people to think about the language they use when describing women. She is really passionate about it. Her video generated over 44,000 views. She makes some great points. I hope you watch it.
I love discovering new inventions and introducing them to others. That is my specialty. I turned that passion into a profession. That joy never gets old.
My new discovery may seem like one for those under 50, but may be us older folks can have some fun too with a portable, foldable, electric scooter. These are the kind of e-bikes that can be used for a 20-mile joy ride. Or we can use an e-bike when we go shopping to avoid parking problems and parking fees.
I first learned about the Whizzy Ride e-scooters from Wojciech Stan Stanowski, one of the entrepreneurs who brought the Whizzy scooters to the United States, first stop Miami. We met each other at a Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce meeting last week. When Stan heard I was a publicist in the consumer electronics industry, he invited me to his showroom at 820 Collins Avenue to see the lineup of Whizzy bikes.
The scooters are foldable and can easily be transported in a car or on a boat. Other features include no gas expense and bluetooth speakers to connect your phone and listen to your favorite music during a ride.
You can buy or rent. $1,385 purchase price. Let me know if you want a test ride. I will make all of the arrangements.
Allen Hirsch, the inventor of HandL phone cases, our client, spent the day with us yesterday, taking in the view. First and foremost, Allen is a well known, international artist, who has painted a dozen Time magazine covers. I have talked about him several times in my DigiDame posts.
His art studio is in his SoHo loft in New York City. He carries his art supplies with him everywhere. We watched him do his thing on canvas for two plus hours. After he was done, he created the digital landscape below on his iPad in 15 minutes. We watched both of his creations with great admiration. The speed of the iPad painting reminded us of the wonders of technology.
Three different men sent me stories today about a big advancement in semen analyzation. They thought I should share with my DigiDame readers. It’s a serious topic that doesn’t get talked about enough. Thank you to all of them.
A group of Boston scientists developed an app and camera attachment that analyzes sperm quality using a smartphone. Their findings were presented in a study published Wednesday in the Journal Scientific Translational Medicine.
It’s amazing just how many functions our smartphones can perform. This new one shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. Several tech publications wrote about this development today. Mashable was one of them. Read their comprehensive story here.
The new smartphone-based semen analyzer takes the usual high expense and embarrassment out of sperm testing. The semen analyzer focuses on concentration and how well the cells can move around. This is very important to get the full picture of fertility. The smartphone accessory and microchip cost $4.45 to build. In the past, this process cost tens of thousands of dollars on a traditional computer.
The inventors said the sperm analyzer has a 98 percent accuracy. “More than 45 million couples worldwide experience infertility and more than 40 percent of those cases involve male infertility.”
Ever since I managed to get a stress fracture right under my right knee, I have become acutely aware of so many other people with physical limitations. When I was using a walker, other people limping along would stop to compare notes. At first, I was embarrassed, but then I started to get into it. Eliot and I had conversations on the street with people that we never would have met before.
This morning I met a neighbor who broke her elbow. She would have normally walked right past me, but she remembered I was using a walker for a few months so she was eager to tell me about her mishap. I started to think about seniors who get permanently disabled and wondered how we are all going to cope if it happens to us.
Tech journals are always keeping me up-to-date on really smart people who invent miracle mechanisms that can get folks moving again. This is one I recently read about and I wanted to share it with you because a slew of these will be available in the next few years.
Kyu Jin Cho, a mechanical engineer at Seoul National University in Korea, and his team, designed a glove made from a flexible, rubberlike material that can help disabled people of all ages grip objects. The website explains that the Exo-Glove Poly fits over the thumb and two fingers of a person’s hand.
“It helps them perform simple, but previously impossible, tasks. Wires attached to those fingers can be moved by a small motor. The motor, controlled by a simple switch, pulls on the wires to open and close the hand. The result is a glove that can help people function.”
Cho’s said “Exo is Greek for ‘outside.’ It refers to the fact that this glove is worn outside the user’s body. Poly is Greek for ‘many.’ That refers to the fact that the glove’s rubberlike material is a polymer.”
The cool fact is that Exo is waterproof. “Users can wash their hands or clean dishes while wearing it. The glove also can be removed and washed when it gets dirty.”
Pricing hasn’t been established. Please watch the video to see how it works.
A fun new app from Apple is about to be introduced. Called Clips, the app will let us take videos and add our very own captions and voice overs to them. It will also let us connect several video clips together. Then I can post my creations directly on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo.
I might be starting a new career as a videographer. Let’s see what happens.
The area that is definitely going to be fun is posting videos to Apple’s own Messages app.
Now get this. Apple will recommend with whom to share videos. That is based on which friends are in my videos and whom I most frequently contact. Software programs are totally intuitive today
Eliot and I hosted a meet and greet Monday night in our condo for Dan Gelber, hopefully the next mayor of Miami Beach. It was a big success. We met Dan a few years ago through our friend Elaine Bloom. We were thrilled to introduce Dan to our neighbors and friends. It’s going to be an interesting political journey.
DigiDame 