Cate Vincent, a grandmother on vacation in Florida, invented a handle for iPads after her iPad slipped and fell on her face while she was using it to read in bed. After wiping up the blood, she grabbed a yellow plastic file folder and a pair of pinking shears and created a holder for her iPad which meant she could now use Facetime, take photos, read books, all without having it slip out of her hands. ”It makes my fantastic iPad even better,” she says.
“The next morning I took my yellow plastic holder to my neighbor three blocks away. He’s a leather worker and before lunch I was actually holding a beautiful, soft, leather iPad handle! That was 17 days ago. We’ve sent them all over the country, the word spread so fast.”
She told how the problem with the new ‘hot’ iPads is solved by the leather actually absorbing the heat, and making the new iPads easier to hold. ”My daughter even tested it with a thermometer and found a 12 degree difference!” she said. The neighbors now call her Granny Techie since she and Tim, the leather crafter, started a production line for the handmade Original Leather Handle For iPad and wants to get them into student’s and teacher’s hands in schools and universities. ”And just think,” she said, “of all the folks sitting on trains and planes for hours and being able to read books on their iPads without fumbling, or dropping them, as I did.”
When her grandchildren told her she should have a website, she spent an afternoon reading how to publish a website and then fumbled her way through the set up, and published it. ”I have my own website,” she said with a grin, “grandesign.co That’s .co not .com. Dot com cost $3000. Mine only cost $12.”
