While much of today’s technology might seem to be for the younger set, technology is also advancing for the fastest-growing segment of America’s population (people 65 and older).  Life for this age group can be enhanced by technology that enables independence.

Medication is often one of the first places that a senior may want some help.  E-Pill has pill reminders of all types.  There are watches with reminders that vibrate for the hearing impaired as well as a pill dispenser with a voice alarm.

For someone who uses a personal digital assistant (PDA), On Time Rx provides software downloads for PDAs, laptops and smart phones.  This allows you to not only get reminders to take medication, but also reminders to order refills and keep a self medical record.

Cell phones are coming with more bells and whistles than ever, but not everyone is interested, especially those who have not used a cell phone.  Jitterbug has made a simple cell phone with big buttons and a bright display screen that would be perfect for a first-time user.

For ease with the usual tasks around the house, an automatic jar opener or an iRobot Roomba Vacuum might be helpful.

In the coming weeks, we plan to share more ways that technology can help the lives of seniors as well as the lives of caregivers. Women who have not yet found themselves caring for an aging loved one will likely do so in their lifetime.  For those of you who have, please share your advice and tips.

Here are a few posts we spotted this past week that you might like. Feel free to share anything you think might be of interest.

1. Techmamas is looking for votes for the Moms Who Tech SXSW panel.  My vote is in!
2. Are you interested in A Cheaper Way to Make Cell Phone Calls? Bizzy Women thinks it is in our future.
3. Here is a fun one - The Top 10 Geek Girls of TV!

Have a great weekend!

One Saturday morning, out and about with my family, we found ourselves in an unfamiliar situation. We had actually finished our errands earlier than planned.  Such an unusual dilemma - what to do with two extra hours? A movie sounded good - the new Disney flick had recently opened up. But with no newspaper, phone book or computer in sight, how would we find the best movie time and location? My husband left his BlackBerry at home so we could fully enjoy our family time (good boy), so we were left with the simple, low-frills mobile phone I carried around.

That’s when I remembered Google SMS. By texting “movies: Austin” to 466453, Google sent a text back with a list of movies currently playing in my area. I responded with the number corresponding to the movie we wanted to see, and Google replied with the theaters and showtimes. We found WALL-E playing at our favorite theater, and enjoyed a pre-nap matinee.

Since then, Google SMS has helped me out with many other tasks:

• How should I dress the kids for school? Text “weather” and your zip code or city.
• How do I get to the birthday party? Text the starting address followed by zip code or city, “to”, then the destination address followed by zip code or city.
• The family is starving, and I have nothing in the fridge. Text “pizza” followed by zip code or city.
• Date night! Text “sushi” followed by zip code or city.
• Have a bet with spouse. Is “deleterious” a word? Text “define deleterious”
• Having a family dinner at a very authentic Mexican restaurant. How do I order milk for my daughter? Text “translate milk in Spanish”
• Will my in-laws flight make it in on time? Text “flight” followed by the flight number.
• I always forget - how many ounces in a pound? Text “1 pound in ounces”
• Hubby wants to know who won the game while he was stuck in the chick flick with me. Text “score cubs”

Check out the online demo at www.google.com/sms to see all the cool options and test them out online. To use this service, you will need a mobile phone with a text messaging-enabled device and a text messaging plan. Be sure to check your carrier’s plan. This service is free from Google, but charges from your carrier for usage may apply.

How many times have you picked out the perfect outfit with the perfect shoes and the perfect accessories, only to find that there is no place for your phone? Without pockets big enough or a belt to clip a phone on, staying connected and still looking fabulous can be challenging.  New Launches may have found a great solution for this fashion dilemma.

How about a stylish bracelet that syncs up to your cell phone through Bluetooth and vibrates every time you have an incoming call? Pretty chic geek-tastic, right? I think so, too.

Available at Sourcing Map for $36.99 USD, this bracelet is made out of adjustable rubber, which conceals an aluminum casing for a small motor and the bluetooth electronics. It works with your phone being up to a mile meter away, which definitely makes communicating easier. it easy to go from meeting to meeting and not have to carry your phone everywhere.

This bracelet really appealed to me, not just for the great, simple look and flexibility of not having to carry your phone with you, but because phones seem to have a special migration strategy of making it to the bottom-most part of a gal’s handbag. I miss calls constantly, because I don’t hear them or feel my phone vibrate. This would keep me from missing those calls as well.

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments.

Editor’s Note: This is the second and final segment of Jacqui Zhou’s post on China’s “Bandit” cell phone industry. If you missed the first installment, you can find it here.

Shan Zhai Ji, or Bandit Cell Phone, is gaining huge attention these days in China. In my previous post, I showed you its cool functions. Besides these functions, what other factors enable Shan Zhai Ji to obtain 25% of China’s cell phone market? Here are several:

Low price
A killer advantage of Shan Zhai Ji is its low price. Usually Shan Zhai Ji is sold at a fraction of the price of brand name phones. Check out the prices here from Taobao, the largest online c-2-c ecommerce site. You can get a phone with all those cool functions mentioned earlier for less than 2,000 RMB (about US $300). Unlike in the U.S. where cell phone hardware prices are subsidized by service providers, Chinese customers have to pay full price for their cell phones with the freedom to choose service providers of their choice. A decent cell phone can easily cost $500.

How can Shan Zhai Ji be sold at such a low price? In 2006, a Taiwan integrated circuit company called MediaTek developed turnkey solutions for cell phones which combine cell phone circuit board with software. It used to cost cell phone companies hundreds of designers months to develop such a solution and now anyone can buy the platform from MediaTek and make their own cell phones. Needless to say, Shan Zhai Ji has its cost benefits because their manufactures steal designs and ideas from other companies, avoid quality and safety compliance, sometimes use shoddy materials, evade taxes and spend no money on customer service.

Low-end target market
More than 90% of Chinese use cell phones. It has become a must-have communication tool throughout the country with more users than landlines. Yet not everyone can afford expensive handsets. Shan Zhai Ji aims at this huge low-end market with its functional yet inexpensive products. They pay a lot of attention to functions and details that are important to shrewd Chinese customers. They don’t invest in building their own distribution channel but are willing to share a big chunk of their profits with resellers and sales people, a very effective method to stimulate sales.

Fast innovations
Shan Zhai Ji manufacturers move very fast. Whenever they see a new trend, they study it and come up with near-identical copies within weeks. Even when the market seems small, they are willing to go for it. For example, they designed cell phones blessed by monks for Buddhists, cell phones with a taser feature for women and cell phones preinstalled with stock market program for avid investors. They even let you build-to-order, where you can add your name and design to the phone and personalize your functions. However small the niche market is, their nimble structure enables them to move along with the market trend.

Unique culture
Shan Zhai Ji attracts many Chinese with its grass roots humor. They do not try to hide the fact that they are copy cats. On the contrary, they make fun of it. For example, they named the knock-off of Apple “iPhone” as “Orange.” It really rubs Chinese people the right way. I asked my friends and most said they really appreciate the non-assuming attitude of Shan Zhai Ji. They laugh at Shan Zhai Ji but at the same time enjoy the convenience of multi functions at low cost. The Chinese media and blogosphere have been discussing the “innovation” side of Shan Zhai Ji, despite all its other obvious misdeeds. Right now, about 40% of Shan Zhai Ji is exported to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you should buy such a phone. Besides the fishy copyright issues, you never know the quality/safety of the products and customer service and tech support after sales is practically zero.

Yet with such a trend happening in the world’s largest market, I cannot help wondering whether Shan Zhai Ji will evolve to become a force in the global cell phone market?

Editor’s Note: Shanghai native Jacqui Zhou manages the Direct2Dell Chinese blog. This is the first of a two-part post in which she gives Your Blog readers a glimpse into a marketplace that can be starkly different than our own. 

Natalie blogged about some of the world’s most expensive cell phones the other day. While the newly rich in China are all over everything brand-name, there is an emerging trend in the world’s largest cell phone market that goes in the opposite direction.

The phenomenon is called Shan Zhai Ji, which I would like to translate as Bandit Cell Phone. It refers to white box cell phones manufactured by unauthorized or small-scale factories on the southeast coast of China.

Though the popularity of Shan Zhai Ji has been building for some time, the buzz only surfaced after recent news coverage from China Central Television, the national television station. Shan Zhai Ji has since generated tons of discussions in the Chinese blogosphere. I won’t be surprised if one day people around me think it is cooler to carry a Shan Zhai Ji than an iPhone. Shan Zhai Ji is apparently becoming a unique sub-culture with dedicated Web sites promoting it. 

As background information, you might want to know that with the fierce competition from global brands like Nokia and Motorola, most Chinese brand name cell phones have seen better days. So how does Shan Zhai Ji manage to survive and even acquire 25% of China’s handset market? 

Shan Zhai Ji copies the designs of popular products such as iPhone and BlackBerry. At the same time, they throw in a lot of other useful functions that mainstream companies do not. For example, extra-long stand-by time of up to one month, dual SIM card support, quadruple cameras and speakers, radio, GPS, touch screen, extra large screen, handwriting recognition, and compatibility with all types of media files.

Shan Zhai Ji even has a lot of functions that you never dream of, such as analogue TV reception tuner, taser, ultraviolet laser for testing counterfeit bank notes and even fortune telling programs. These highly localized functions with Chinese characteristics are not usually on the radar screen of a multinational company’s design team.

Don’t assume all Shan Zhai Ji are mere imitations. Sometimes you will be amazed by the imagination of those Shan Zhai Ji designers.

This is not a pack of cigarettes. It is a cell phone. Yet you can insert as many as seven cigarettes into it.

It has micro SD card slot.

It even has a 1.3 mega pixel camera.

Adding a couple of more bucks, you can get different covers.

A cell phone with Beijing Olympics mascot.  

This watch-like cell phone incorporates four microphones, metallic rim and a camera.

It is not a Ferrari toy car. Turn it around and you will find a cell phone key pad and screen.

Hopefully I’ve given you a good overview of Shan Zhai Ji. In my next post, I would like to walk you through some of reasons why Shan Zhai Ji has attracted such a big following in China, as well as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Stay tuned!

It’s clearly the summer of the phone. From the BlackBerry Curve to the Samsung Instinct to Apple’s iPhone 3G, the buzz is everywhere. Even Samantha and Miranda clearly positioned their phones as their fav accessory in the Sex and The City Movie. You can’t watch TV or read the paper without seeing the latest story, phone comparison or advertisement for the best deal on these new phones.  So what are the elite carrying this summer?

Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Armani are just a few of the top designers who have recently put out a branded phone. With general prices around $5,000 USD and essential functionality including touch screens and cameras, these are starting to pop up all over Hollywood, Milan and Paris. But I’d rather showcase the crème da la crème; the ones you are most likely not seeing because only a select few can pay the price.

So let’s start at the very top with Christian Dior’s $26,000 USD Crocodile Skin “Lady Dior” Mobile Phone. Yes, you’re reading correctly, and no it’s not a typo of a couple extra zeros:

Plush crocodile skin and a colossal 640 Swarovski crystals, totaling 3,251K, make this phone a beauty.  Designed in partnership with Modelabs, the clamshell fashion phone has a 2.6” touch screen with a QVGA resolution and a 2 Megapixels camera.

Too expensive for your taste? Then allow me to introduce the $14,000 USD African Blackwood and white diamonds Cell Phones by Gresso, a Russian company that recently stunned the marketplace with the release of their new phones:

These phones are made of incredible materials such as titanium, 42K sapphire crystal glass for the display, 200-year-old African blackwood for the panels, and 18K gold and 2.53K diamond coated keys. The African blackwood and diamonds make no two phones exactly the same, or as Gizmodo puts it, each one is unique like a snowflake.

If you’re anything like me, which is someone who accidently drops, throws, and often loses their cell phone, the thought of losing or destroying one at this price would make my stomach turn. Yet the idea of touching diamonds every time I dial a number is quite intriguing…

How much is too much to spend on a cell phone? Looking forward to your comments and thoughts.

Spending most of my childhood at the cool kids table in the cafeteria and on the jock side of the playground, I remember those kids with pocket protectors and calculators who just didn’t quite fit in. You know the ones who would faint to even talk to the girls and would discuss Dungeons & Dragons at length? Whether you called them geeks, nerds or dorks, we all knew or were these people.

Certainly, times have changed. Who knew geek would turn so chic? It’s hard these days not to find technology as this season’s hottest accessories in fashion throughout the world. Flipping through my recent copy of Vogue, I noticed a great read called “Let’s Get Digital,” which is also getting some good coverage on Geek Sugar.

The article promises to tease readers with not only some of this season’s must-have “tech-cessories,” like the Blackberry Titanium Curve and the Dell XPS One Product (Red), but shows them paired up with some sought-after accessories like the YSL mercury embossed-crocodile shopper bag and Gucci white patent leather shoes. If being a geek means I get to wear these hot accessories to complement my technology, COUNT ME IN.

As for my “Tech-cessory & Accessory” pick of the week:

Dell Inspiron 1420 in Espresso Brown

Gucci Messenger Bag in Beige/Ebony with Brown Leather Trim

Computer Couture Heaven, indeed.

Move over D&D Geeks…the era of the Chic Geek has arrived.

With the summer travel season almost here and the price of gas almost out of sight, it looks like most of us are facing the prospects of either traveling more or sitting at home trying to save gas. 

Mike Gunderloy over at Web Worker Daily shared this great online tool called FuelFrog, which enables you to chart the price per gallon, miles since your last fill up and gallons used. 

Sure, calculating such things isn’t rocket science, but now you don’t have to worry about writing down your mileage on a piece of paper or even printing out your receipt (we’re all about helping the environment).  Here comes the really cool part:

FuelFrog is Twitter enabled so, after you tell FuelFrog your Twitter username, you can text @fuelfrog with your fuel data (miles, price, gallons) like this: @fuelfrog 342 3.239 10.293.  To help you recall the order that you’re supposed to send it – just remember the shorthand for miles, price and gallons is MPG. 

My Mile Marker is a similar Web site with even more features like projected miles, multiple vehicles and projected cost.  This site is also mobile ready and has Twitter cabability.   

A few notes on geotagging your photos…something that seems to be taking off, especially with new GPS tracking technology, the online photo sites and the increasingly interesting mapping services, like Google maps and Microsoft’s Live search maps.

Geotagging is one way to bring a little more life to photos from your travels – actually identifying where photos were taken and then plotting them together on the map… sort of more exciting than those satellite shots, where everything thing is small and topographical. In a sense, it lets you create a virtual trail of breadcrumbs to remember and showcase your journey, pinpointing exactly where your picture was taken. Uncornered Market has a great three-part blog series on how this works.

Flickr has a feed for photos that have been geotagged. Here is a map from Flickr of where people are shooting. Do any of yours appear here?

A service called Faceroller has also been released that works like this: You take a photo with your cell phone, name it, the service geo-locates your phone, and then you can upload your picture to Facebook or Flickr. Here’s a post on Jappit.com all about it.

Have you tried this? What do you think about it?