Levelstar used embedded Linux to create a PDA (personal digital assistant) for visually impaired users. The "Icon" has a custom hardware design with built-in 30GB hard drive, WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB, and comes with a full complement of "life managing software," much of it written from scratch for blind users.

Vinux is a remastered version of the popular Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx distribution optimised for the needs of blind and partially sighted users.. It provides three screen readers, two full-screen magnifiers, global font-size and colour changing facilities

Video and audio support will soon be built directly into Firefox, by way of the free Vorbis and Theora codecs, and Mozilla is using the opportunity to advance multimedia accessibility for hearing-impaired and seeing-impaired users.

Last week I interviewed Tony Baechler, an active member of the Blinux mailing list, to check how things are going in 2010 for Linux and vision-impaired users: "the Linux features I personally like the most are of course the cost and the fact that it's so much more stable and faster than Windows. I don't have to plan on a daily reboot!"

Haier America is shipping a WiFi-enabled portable media player (PMP) based on Linux. The "Ibiza Rhapsody" has a 30GB hard drive, and is designed to work with the Rhapsody digital music service, AOL Video, and other digital content services.

A simple Python program to simplify control of the AcerHK radio's - Wifi and Bluetooth. It enables users to turn on / off the Bluetooth and Wifi Radios. It depends on the AcerHK driver to function.

Surveys suggest that up to 90% of home computer users do not back up their data. That is a pretty frightening statistic bearing in mind how valuable and precious users' files are. Computer users who do not backup their files are at risk of losing all of their personal and irreplaceable documents. The hard drive in a PC can malfunction at any time, sometimes without any warning at all.

A file manager is software which provides a user interface to assist in the organisation of files. It helps users with their daily work in managing their files on a hard drive or other storage device. With terabyte hard disks becoming prevalent, file managers represent an essential tool in managing file systems.

PHP 5 CMS Framework is a new book from Packt, which will take users through the creation of a working architecture for a PHP 5-based content management system. Written by Martin Brampton, this book includes extensive discussion of the design issues, and how to overcome them in the framework.