carpal

A 100-a-day habit isn't good for you. Everyone knows that. It's just hard, sometimes, to explain it to kids who think it's so cool.

Cigarettes? Lord, no, those things smell. We're talking texting.

According to ABC News, 16-year-old Annie Levitz from Mundelein, Ill., began to sense a little disharmony in her hands. They would feel tingly, numb, or merely hurt like hell. Had she been practicing her free throws in preparation for March Madness? Had she been attempting to become Mundelein's Chopin? If only. Levitz had merely been texting her friends up to 100 times a day.

Finally, she went to the doctor, who diagnosed her not with text dependency, but with carpal tunnel syndrome.… Read more

Keyboards typically don't get the attention they deserve, but perhaps they should. According to Smartfish Technologies and a recent study by the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 28 million Americans suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome or some other repetitive stress injury due to repeated use of computer keyboards.

Smartfish Technologies recognizes the need for a more ergonomic solution and developed the Pro:Motion family of products, starting with the Automatic Moving Keyboard. The researchers at Smartfish found that the static nature of the most commonly used keyboards are the main cause of carpal tunnel, so they partnered … Read more

If you're the type who has to peel yourself off your chair at quitting time, you might want to take this well-intentioned ergonomic helper for a spin. Workplace Angel is the apple a day that may help keep the repetitive-stress away. On-screen reminders pop up at set intervals, gently nudging you to take short or long breaks and suggesting stretches to relieve mounting tension. You can keep time with an animated 3D helper who demonstrates the proper execution of exercises.

Workplace Angel is a decent-looking program that requires some foresight (you are prompted to select reminder times before that … Read more

Remember when carpal tunnel syndrome was looking to be the big bad wolf that would blow down the IT industry with a gust of wrist injuries?

While some people have certainly and unfortunately been afflicted with it, it has not become the epidemic that so many predicted.

An Associated Press article on Sunday looks into what happened with the repetitive stress injury washout:

With the personal-computing boom of the 1990s came thousands of repetitive stress injuries or repetitive strain injuries. RSI became the hip medical acronym of the keyboard era, with subset carpal tunnel syndrome the diagnosis of the day.… Read more

For those of you who are MacBook Pro users, you too may have felt the pain from the somewhat oddly placed keyboard. From day one I thought it was too far away from the bottom of the machine. And while thin, the MBP doesn't have the ergonomic profile that you get with a Thinkpad. Enter the MacBook Air and you will see immediately that your wrists get to relax a bit more and don't strain nearly as hard to stay on the keyboard.

A week into the MB Air and I can honestly say that I have almost … Read more

In the end-of-'06 wrap-up madness, there are a whole lot of people talking about Web 2.0, YouTube, social media, connected-home technology, the Wii and its corresponding Wiinjuries...the list goes on. But there's been almost no mention of the rash of completely useless USB-powered devices that infested the gadget market in 2006 with a viciousness that can only be compared to bubonic plague in a medieval village or head lice in a kindergarten classroom. I mean, they were everywhere. They're so ubiquitous, in fact, that I've decided I'm not going to touch 'em in '… Read more