Below you will find the list of available articles in the first series of Sound Computing. You get all these articles and more, up to fifty, at least 18 hours of content, for $9.00. You can subscribe by requesting an e-mail invoice from dean at topdotenterprises.com, or you can subscribe by sending $9.00 to that same address via PayPal.
Here below are the articles for Sound Computing, Series 1. You get access to all of them no matter when you subscribe. Articles are listed, with any pertinent links, in reverse chronological order, so the newest will always be on top.
We demonstrate the ability to input text and control the computer using Windows Vista Speech Recognition in conjunction with the System Access screen reader. We find that Speech Recognition has a macro feature which doesn't seem to appear in the documentation.
1.5 hours of keyboard suggestions for a variety of situations.
filedir is a very powerful and accessible file manager. In this hour-long presentation, we discuss many of its potential advantages.
We discuss some techniques you may not have thought of to use your portable device to improve on pencil and paper for keeping score in games.
Stephen Baum is a fascinating person, who discusses his product with a high degree of honesty. Even veteran users of this program will probably learn a thing or two here, as will those contemplating purchases.
We look at two helpful ways to select text in Word: Extend Select Mode, which is a part of the program, and some very helpful macros you can easily create to make text selection effortless.
You can build your own online "radio" station using two sites, both somewhat accessible. (unfortunately, Pandora only works in the US!) It is ad-free now but ads are coming.
For those of you who would like to be able to download content from multiple web sites at once for reading in a Book Port or notetaker, or on a computer away from the Internet, this is for you.
the folks at High Criteria continue to improve total Recorder. We look at features new in version 6 as well as a couple features I've gotten to know since the last installment of this on-going tutorial.
Rss is the new way for keeping up on news and information, but some of us still like e-mail. with the two tools I discuss here, you can keep up with your rss feeds from the comfort of your e-mail program.
We look at Talking boolbox from Marvelsoft, a program with definite potential for those who can't afford, don't need, or are intimidated by screen readers, and perhaps useful to learners and some screen reader users as well.
Public Radio fan is the gold mine of public radio podcasts and links to program information Podcast Pickle is one searchable and browsable podcast directory Download Larry Skutchan's podcast on getting started with podcasting Download Mary Emerson's podcast on the Juice scheduler
In the third part of our Total Recorder course, we learn both how to record in real time using the standard or professional version and how to take advantage of the schedule feature found exclusively in the professional version.
There is some wisdom not found in the Book Port manual, gleaned from personal experience and the mailing list. I summarize it in this article
Here we briefly discuss the differences between these two portable devices. Book Port from American Printing House Book Courier, from Springer Design
Here is some personal experience and recommendations of many users of fm transmitters to broadcast their computer's output to a radio elswewhere on the property
The Veronica 5oMW Transmitter Home of the CCrane Transmitter The MobileBlackBox V5000 Guy Mallard, who offers to custom-build transmitters
Here I discuss four sources for lightweight and powerful Windows laptops.
Matt Diemert, my preferred vendor for solid affordable lightweight computers Assistive Technology Center
In our second major article on Total Recorder, we do some editing and learn lots of keystrokes.
I use Window-Eyes and set a user window to read the elapsed time of a recording and correct a couple Total Recorder prompts.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Screen Readers: Article 15
In this first of a two-part series, we get a glimpse of what it is like to use voice input to communicate with the computer rather than the keyboard.
Total Recorder Introduction and Setup; Article 14
We learn some of the advantages of
TotalRecorder and learn how best to set it up.
In case you need them, here is the registry patch to fix access problems with JFW and the registry patch to fix access problems with window-Eyes.
The Speech and Sounds Manager may be sort of a luxury item, but you can use it to make computing more pleasant and efficient.
Send is a handy free utility that lets you send keystrokes to running programs, now or later. We learn about it and apply it to solve a problem scheduling a recording with TotalRecorder.Send, the free utility we discuss in the article Read me file for the Send program The Radio Caroline page we practice on; the goal is to make Send open the Ogg Vorbis link
We get a practical lesson in Notetab regular expressions and use them to make braille books more effectively viewable on a portable braille device.
Chris Perillo has come up with an ingenious idea for a search engine, mainly useful for users of portable devices, but also interesting for desktop users. We demonstrate it here.
Here I discuss my findings, integrating them with the results of the portable device survey.
In this first of a two part series on the current state of portable devices for the blind, we go over the responses to the recent portable device questionnaire.
Here we compare Window-Eyes and JFW's treatments of listviews and talk about how to get the most out of each screen reader.
The Winamp Pacemaker Plug-in Home Page
This is a three-part, 90-minute tutorial on the use of Replay Radio to capture Internet audio. It was prepared by Petrakigianos Giasou. It is very thorough and deliberate, making it ideal for new or uncertain JAWS users. You can download a demo of Replay Radio here.
Here I discuss the good and bad news regarding downloadable audio books and electronic books in public libraries.
TinySpell is one of my favorite computer discoveries. You can download it here.
Here are some thoughts, as clear and accurate as I could make them, concerning the advantages of the two major screen readers when using Microsoft Word.
Do you wish you could bend your computer's keyboard to your will, putting keys where you want them to be? Keytweak is the tool you want. It's free and effective. It's a little trycky to use at first, hence the value of this article, which should get you up and running quickly.