Technologies to connect socially: Seven profiles of products, programs and providers by Tammy Ditmore

In 1998, Jack York's friend Leslie Sweeney talked him into donating computers to an assisted-living community in California. There, York was startled to discover how "disconnected and lonely" the residents were and disheartened because he knew conventional technology couldn't help much. So Leslie, Jack and his brother Tom launched It's Never 2 Late (iN2L) in 1999 with the idea that people deserve interaction no matter how old they are. York says they spent a decade or so trying to "figure out what we were doing." Eventually, iN2L learned how to integrate hardware, software, videos, music and personal components into an adaptive computer system now used in more than 2,500 senior living communities in the United States and other countries.