Top tech tidbits Text Archive This was the first issue of tttt to be produced, and should give you an idea of what you'll get when you subscribe. Future issues look much like this one; despite my prediction below, they're all about this length. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, December 16, 2004 In this first issue of TTTT, we'll catch up a little on recent news, so this issue might be busier than most. Jonathan Mosen doesn't get to do as much general technology reviewing as he once did, but he did review the new Google desktop search program, quite favorably. http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?player=2&audioid=Pf8af5d43dc2dce27c993eaa48f4e6685ZV56QlREYmJy&buffer=5&autoplay=1&fcolor=CCFF33&bcolor=FFFFFF&size=20 The folks at the International Braille and Technology Center of the U.S. NFB have created a Gift Guide 2004, published in the November Braille Monitor. http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm04/bm0411/bm041110.htm Kathy Ann Murgha is offering 25% off her adaptive technology textbooks purchased during this holiday time. http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com The public beta process has begun for Window-Eyes version 5.0. This version promises improved access to Microsoft Word, access to the popular web browser Mozilla, a better color dictionary and a more sensible laptop keyboard layout, anong other improvements. For information or to try it: http://www.gwmicro.com/index.php?showStory=11. For an audio demonstration conducted by one of the testers, on For the People: http://gwmicro.com/audio/a-d-11-28-04.mp3 the November, 2004 issue of AccessWorld contains a review of the two systems seeking to make mobile phones accessible to the blind: http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw050604 Users of the Pac Mate can now benefit from scripts designed to make the AIM instant messaging client more accessible. Get the scripts at http://www.pacmategear.com/files/scripts/AimScripts.zip. Scripts are also available for the Olive Tree Bible program, at http://www.pacmategear.com/files/scripts/OliveTreeScriptsV10.zip A series entitled Talking Turkey about Household Appliances and Consumer Electronics begins in the December issue of the Braille Monitor with a discussion of the pitfalls of buying usable stoves and ovens: http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm04/bm0412/bm041205.htm. The same issue contains a discussion of accessible to Microsoft products by Curtis Chong: http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm04/bm0412/bm041206.htm Moving Mountains Technology is making their easy-to-use Diary 2005 available for free download at http://www.moving-mountains.com/ A talking dictionary is available from the UK for the cost of shipping: http://www.rwfts.com/ The makers of the Freedom Box have released a public beta of System Access, a low-cost, new and transportable way to gain access to conducting basic Windows tasks without a screen reader. To try it, go to http://freedombox.info. The Access to Assistive Technology for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 has passed, strengthening existing ATAP's which are a leading source of funding for adaptive technology in the U.S. http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw060109&Special=33 ACBRadio conducted extensive and historic live broadcasts from the World Blind Union convention in Capetown, South Africa. This material is now available on demand, at http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=30&MMN_position=41:29 In a recent discussion on one list of the best places to buy compact flash cards, recommendations included http://www.buy.com and http://www.dealram.com/ Finally, JAWS for Windows 6.0 was released on Wednesday afternoon. This version provides Remote Access for Citrix and Terminal Services, new abilities to customize display of hard-to-read web controls, as well as pdf and Word forms, a demo of Freedom Scientific's daisy reader, and many more enhancements. http://www.hj.com/fs_products/software_jaws60intro.asp That's the news for this week. Feel fre to forward intact copies of this newsletter, so others can subscribe. To subscribe, send a blank message to tttt-join@topdotenterprises.com and reply to the confirmatory message. Aspiring subscribers can also go to http://topdotenterprises.com/mailman/listinfo/tttt_topdotenterprises.com To leave the list, send a blank message to tttt-leave@topdotenterprises.com and reply to the confirmatory message. If you have a news item, handy web page or piece of software you want to recommend, concerning adaptive technology, technology as it relates to the blind, or Internet audio, send it to me for inclusion next time. List archives are available to members at http://topdotenterprises.com/mailman/private/tttt_topdotenterprises.com/ Inclusion of information in tttt does not imply any endorsement of products or services mentioned, or even that the content of the announcement is accurate. (Often, I do not verify the accuracy of the announcements.) Having said this, most are accurate and useful. TTTT is a free service of Top Dot Enterprises, Copyright (c) 2004, 2005, Top Dot Enterprises. Dean Martineau Top Dot Enterprises 2219 Rucker Ave #204 Everett WA 98201 (425) 876-4406 dean@topdotenterprises.com http://www.topdotenterprises.com Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, December 23, 2004 Welcome and joyous holidays to the 309 subscribers who are receiving this rirst issue of TTTT to be sent out to the list. Speaking of our name, it consists of four T's even though screen readers may only read three of them because of the repeat filter. There is more news than I expected for this week before Christmas: Adobe has released version 7.0 of the Adobe Reader, for Windows 2000/XP. This version promises better performance of pdf documents when read with screen readers. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html#reader70full Fred Langa, http:/ www.langa.com, passed on this link for a great article about virtual memory in Windows xp: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm Jamal Mazrui has assembled the documentation that comes with JAWS version 6.0, along with the latest documentation on the scripting language, into a collection of text files, available from http://www.empowermentzone.com/jfw60doc.zip Mike's Radio World is a worldwide directory of online broadcasts that is periodically updated: http://www.mikesradioworld.com In recent discussions of accessible portable mp3 players, positive mention was made of the Sandisk Companion, http://www.sandisk.com/ and of the players and recorders rendered accessible by the Rockbox open-source jukebox firmware, http://www.rockbox.org/ A mailing list to discuss Rockbox is available at http://cool.haxx.se/mailman/listinfo/rockbox Kevin Doucet points out that If you have JFW a computer and a midi interface you can purchase scripts which make the Kurzweil K2000, K2500 or K2600 keyboards much more accessible and enjoyable with speach. Read more at: http://www.keysounds.com/kdr.html Easy Cd Da Extractor is a cd ripping program popular among many blind users. Steve Pattison points out that an update is available from www.poikosoft.com. Freedom Scientific has released MAGic version 9.2, a free upgrade for owners of version 9.0. http://www.hj.com/fs_products/software_MAG92.asp GW Micro announced Beta 2 of Version 5 of the screen reader Window-Eyes on Tuesday. They promise even better support for Microsoft Word and many fixes. It is available from http://www.gwmicro.com/beta Kathy Ann Murtha is offering a ten-hour seminar for trainers on teaching Microsoft Word 2003 over the weekend of January 15-16, 2005. http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/catalog/courses/TeachingWord.html American Printing House announces Money Talks, an accessible, bank account management software package promiising a wealth of sought-after features, now available for field testing. To learn more, write to Terrie Terlau at tterlau@aph.org, or visit http://www.aph.org/beta. The makers of the Freedom Box are selling their Key to Freedom, which allows subscribers to run Freedom Box on any computer with a USB port, for $150, twenty-five per cent off. http://www.freedombox.info OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) offers a variety of audio programs in January and February. Individual programs will be announced here as their dates approach, but if you want to look ahead, go to http://www.opal-online.org/progschrono.htm If you want to put the new JAWS custom label function to the test, here's a practical application. As I was preparing the JAWS 6 update for the audio course on JFW and the web, http://www.topdotenterprises.com/rww-info.htm, I took two frustrating web pages and added custom labels to them. One is a bookseller that sells Baha'i and Virtues Project materials that I wanted to access, the other, a site for a Belgian monastery requested on a mailing list. The former was illegible using JAWS or Window-Eyes, but quite legible when I tested it with the Freedom Box. The latter offers sounds of the monks chanting while you browse the page, which didn't compensate for the fact that the links were unusable. To see the power of this feature, first visit either or both: http://store.yahoo.com/imagesintlinc/ or http://www.monasterechevetogne.com/ (choose English if a list of language options appears.) Feel the frustration. Now download tryit.zip by choosing this link. Be aware of where on your computer your downloads go: http://www.topdotenterprises.com/tryit.zip Open the Settings Packager. Hit Control-O to open a file, navigate to tryit.zip and choose it. Once it is open, tab to the list of two web pages whose settings are contained in the file. Select one or both of them, tab to the import button and press space. You can now close settings packager and revisit the problem web pages to see the difference in usability. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, December 30, 2004 A happy and prosperous New Year to all those who use the Gregorian calendar! Freedom Scientific has released version 7.02 of the OpenBook scanning and reading program. this version promises improved OCR accuracy and many bug fixes. http://www.hj.com/fs_products/software_OB702.asp A couple web pages of possible use: Jackie McCraw sent along the link to Ash Grove Audio Book Exchange: http://www.ashgroveaudiobook.com/ And I noticed that the Online Books Page continues to be updated frequently with new finds: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ For a long time now, Will Smith has been taking some of the daily and weekly publications available on the web, turning them into textfiles, and sending them free by e-mail to blind users. to get the list of publications, you can send a blank message to willstitles@topdotenterprises.com, or write to Will directly at willsmith@iglou.com. The Iowa Department for the Blind is applying for a National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) grant that will fund a project to develop training kits for nonvisual access technology to be used by blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind individuals. They seek letters of support for the grant. For information or to receive a sample support letter, write to Curtis Chong at chong.curtis@blind.state.ia.us. Eric Damery of Freedom Scientific wrote to point out that people might be unaware of the power of the new skim reading feature in JFW 6.0. I was; thanks to him, I am no longer. If you want to read what he has to say, send a blank message to skimread@topdotenterprises.com. The PDF-Access Working Group will hold its second meeting at the National Federation of the Blind headquarters in Baltimore, Jan. 11-12. remote conferencing is being established for those who cannot physically attend. Those interested can write to gpisocky@adobe.com or follow the web site http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=24488 . Experimentation is under way to use MobileSpeak, the screen reader for mobile phones, in conjunction with a camera to provide light and color information to the blind. You can read about this at http://www.CodeFactory.com. Pranav Lal passed this on: Alan Cantor has updated his FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document on Windows keyboard access. While partly an add for his booklet on the same subject, it contains useful information, and is free: http://www.cantoraccess.com/keyaccess/keyaccessfaq.htm CDex is a free cd-ripping program used by many. I, among others, have been baffled by its method for naming files, and indeed by trying to understand and change where it puts them. Thomas Stivers wrote a coherent answer to these questions, and you can get it by sending a blank message to cdex-help@topdotenterprises.com. JAWS scripts are available for Paltalk Messenger, a free chat program, by going to the downloads area at http://support.paltalk.com. Jim Snobarger sells high-quality JAWS scripts to enhance access to Sound Forge, a very powerful sound editor. He has recently updated the scripts for both Sound Forge versions 6 and 7 to script version 6.31, promising new features and corrections. http://personal.adiis.net/snowman/scripts.html. This and numerous other announcements each week came via Steve Pattison: OcuSource calls itself the Vision Impairment Industry Portal. They are conducting a magnifier giveaway sweepstakes between now and February 13. http://www.ocusource.com Freeware: Do you want to easily change settings for your computer's volume control, using different combinations of recording and playback settings for different tasks? Do you share your computer with others and find your volume changed or even muted when you try to use it? If so, QuickMix is a solution. http://www.ptpart.co.uk/quickmix/ Winamp is a very popular computer audio player among blind users. Version 5.08 is now available. You can get it, along with other handy software, at http://www.whitestick.co.uk/download.html. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, January 6, 2005 The flow of news picks up now that the winter holidays in the Northern hemisphere are passed: Main Menu is the weekly technology program on ACB Radio. Unfortunately, the web and ftp archives aren't updated too often lately, but the final program for 2004 is available. It is a 90-minute recording of a panel discussion regarding Intetnet accessibility held at the ICAN Conference in Capetown, South Africa. Download it at ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/mm20041222.mp3. All Windows users need to know the methods offered by Windows for selecting text in a document. But some of us still have fond memories of the old days, when you could press a key, move unhindered to a second point in the document, then hit a second key, at which point all the text between those two points was selected. Thanks to a couple ingenious macros, anybody can have this capability in any recent version of Word. For step-by-step instructions for adding this capability to your copy of Word, send a blank message to select@topdotenterprises.com. The first Wednesday of every month, Talkingcommunities.com presents An Accessible World Symposium, a free online audio event where major players in the disability field present their solutions to access problems. The next live event will presumably be held on February 2 starting at 9:00 A.M. Pacific time, 17:00 GMRT. In the meantime, archives of the last several seminars, covering a variety of topics, are available at http://www.talkingcommunities.com/aaw.html. Project Assist with Windows from the State of Iowa announces the release of two new tutorials for braille-only users: The Microsoft Windows XP with Window-Eyes 4.5 and the ALVA Satellite 570, and The Microsoft Windows XP with JAWS 5.0 and the Braille Lite M40 Tutorial for Beginners. The tutorials are available in electronic. audio and embossed braille formats. For information, visit http://www.blind.state.ia.us/assist/order-info.ht or e-mail assist@blind.state.ia.us. Via David Poehlman: An article on audibly playable pc games, and other interesting material, is found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4112725.stm. Just as sighted people take lots of pictures when they're on holiday, Jonathan Mosen took some audio snapshots using Power Dictaphone on his Nokia 6600. To hear the results: http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?player=2&audioid=Pdc1f14b86ce871d78abde28b35403b5eZV56QlREYmF2&buffer=5&autoplay=1&fcolor=CCFF33&bcolor=FFFFFF&size=20. You can follow his blog, containing both text and audio postings, at http://www.mosenexplosion.com. Following up on last week's info about color identifiers, a screen-reader-independent color identifier, and much more besides, can be found at http://www.seeingwithsound.com. Darrell Shandrow has started the Blind Access Blog, where he will write articles concerning access challenges and others can read them and also join the discussion. http://nu7i.blogspot.com. Gw Micro, makers of the screen reader Window-Eyes, has implemented a "lease to buy" option, and is testing version 5.0 of the product. Erik Deckers discusses this in an interview on Soundprints, http://home.mindspring.com/~mbmccarty/soundprints.mp3. The link will probably work until Monday, and the interview starts about twelve minutes into the program. George Bell reminds us that if you ever delete a file in windows xp without sending it to the recycle bin, and then want to get it back, you may be able to do so with a free utility. http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/ For those trying to figure out what adaptive technology to buy, Kelly Pierce wrote a series of articles to guide them in the decision-making process. Free registration is required to read them; they're found at http://www.esight.org/ Spyware Doctor comes highly recommended for removing and protecting against malware, which can wreak terrible havoc with your computer. the freeware version, http://www.pctools.com/downloads/sdsetup.exe, just removes, while the shareware version, http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor/?action=purchase, $29.95 for one computer, $49.95 for two, provides real-time protection Here is a link to download scripts which may improve performance of JFW 6.0 with MSN 6.2. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_support/BulletinView.cfm?QC=849 The Jernigan Institute of the National Federation of the Blind seeks participants in a survey concerning performance of blind and visually impaired students in science and math. For more information, http://www.aph.org/edresearch/nfbsurvey.html. Optelec has reduced the price of its Braille Voyager displays. Now the 40-cell unit costs $3,495, and the 70-cell costs $5,995. For more information, http://www.optelec.com. Skype is a very popular program among blind and sighted users for carrying on conversations over the net. Version 1.1.0.61 is now out, and can be downloaded from www.skype.com. JAWS scripts for Skype can be had at www.panix.com/~ccn/projects/jfw/skype.php. The American Printing House has sold a speech compressor, which allowed you to run a cassette at double speed and compress the speech to make the voice sound more normal. These units formerly sold for over $100, but they're being closed out, and while they last, you can buy one for $30. You may need to call to get this price; U.S. and Canada residents can call toll-free 800-223-1839; others, 502-895-2405, or visit http://www.aph.org. Kim Komando, http://www.komando.com, reminds us of a great site where you can get boot disks for all sorts of operating systems: http://www.bootdisk.com. Kim also wrote a piece about how to transfer data between two computers, perhaps your old one and your new one. To read her article, send a blank message to datatransfer@topdotenterprises.com. Will Pearson wrote a brief coherent note on what is required for Java programs to work with JAWS. To read it, send a blank message to javajaws@topdotenterprises.com. We'll end with three items of particular interest in the U.S. I will happily post items uniquely relevant to residents of other countries if I receive them: Users of the Pak Mate Pocket pc device can now download a free Bookshare unpack utility so that they can open books from the Bookshare service without a pc. http://www.hj.com/fs_products/PACmate_BookShare_Unpack.asp. In the course of helping a friend find low-cost dial-up access in the U.S., I asked on a mailing list and got several answers. to read them, send a blank message to dialup@topdotenterprises.com. According to this New York Times article, for which free registration is required to read, people in California may be eligible for compensation under the Microsoft settlement: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/technology/05soft.html?th Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, January 13 this isn't a buy-sell newsletter, but since it's my newsletter, I can get away with this: I'm selling a Braille Lite 40 in good condition and with a 90-day maintenance warranty for $1,500; credit card payments preferred. Contact me if interested. Now, on with the news! The National Cristina Foundation, http://www.cristina.org/ collects used computer equipment for donation to people with disabilities and at-risk students. The January issue of AccessWorld contains, among other articles, a comparative evaluation of the BrailleNote PK and the BrailleSense, http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw060103, A review of the Muvo mp3 player, http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw060108, part one of a review of the Mountbatten Brailler, http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw060106, and an account by a high school student of his use of the Pac Mate, http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw060104. Darrell Shandro has written an article for beginning users of Bookshare describing how to find and download materials from the site. Read it at http://www.shandrow.com/tutorials/bookshare.html. It is possible to install Windows xp unattended. You can download the "kit" here: http://www.jfwlite.com/WinXPUnattendedSetupKit.zip, and get a thorough list of all the options for the process at http://unattended.msfn.org/xp/reference.htm. Jack Lowe posted his own .sif file (minus personal info,) and you can read it by sending a blank message to unattended@topdotenterprises.com. The Associated Blind has created a new blog for discussion of disability-related employment issues under the eSight network. Visit http://www.tabinc.org/sim/. The LGVX 4500 is a fairly accessible mobile phone from Verizon. Verizon provides accessible manuals for the phone, but these can be hard to come by. Doris Fisher has an electronic manual that she has enhanced with information about the key layout. If you want her manual, write to her at doryfish@pacbell.net. Main Menu. the weekly technology program on ACBRadio, resumes next week after its customary January break. It airs on Wednesdays at 1:00 GMT, hence Tuesdays at 8:00 Eastern or 5:00 Pacific in North America, Wednesday at noon in Melbourne, and then is repeated around the clock for the next 24 hours. The program thrives on submissions from users, and people wishing to submit reviews or for other questions, e-mail Dave Williams at mainmenu@acbradio.org.When it's on, you can hear the program at http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=8&MMN_position=14:14. Continuing the recent trend, Freedom Scientific has lowered the price of their Pac Mate braille displays, reducing the price of the 40-cell unit by 20% and the 20-cell unit by 30%. The price of the Pac Mate units with 40-cell displays has also been reduced by $200. http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Aman Singer answered a question about accessibility of the IPOD and offered alternatives. To read his message, send a blank message to ipod@topdotenterprises.com. You can hear a demonstration of a person using Trekker gps to navigate the streets of Montreal by going to http://www.visuaide.com/trekker_audio.wmv. Online games are now available for members of the Freedom Box online community. Check out http://www.freedombox.info. Talking Communities has created TCscreen. , TCscreen is an application that will allow you to record audio and video right from your computer. You can get more information and download a demo at http://www.talkingcommunities.com/tcscreen/. We mentioned Bootdisk last week. They put out an excellent newsletter, covering topics discussed in their online forums. to subscribe, go to http://www.bootdisk.com/bootlist.htm. Kathy Ann Murtha has added online discussion forums to her web site. http://accesstechnologyinstitute.com/forum/. A recent list discussion highlighted the challenges faced by blind folks wanting to pursue genealogy research. A couple web sites where help can be solicited are http://www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html and http://www.raogk.org/. In addition, Kathy Parkinson is willing, "within reason" to do lookups lf census data for interested blind folks. Write to her at wraithp@charter.net. OPAL, Online Programming for all Libraries, offers the following audio programs: Orientation for Participants at 19:00 GMT on Tuesday, January 18: http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1 ; The Meting of the Minds Online Book Discussion Group discusses the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton on Wednesday, January 19 at 01:00 GMT: http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1 ; the Library of Congress presents a program about presidential inaugurations on Wednesday, January 19 at 19:00 GMT: http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1. the U.S. tv news program 60 Minutes recently had a feature on Google, the popular search service whose registration process is inaccessible to us. Read a transcript at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories. To read Wednesday's Wall Street Journal article about the ultimate end of open-reel tape, send a blank message to reelgone@topdotenterprises.com. Jonathan Mosen conducts an audio demonstration of RSS, an exciting technology that brings your favourite news web sites and blogs to you: http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?player=2&audioid=P84829fce335ac18b2ce20e3199f6b00aZV56QlREYmFx&buffer=5&autoplay=1&fcolor=CCFF33&bcolor=FFFFFF&size=20. Jim Snobarger has a free tool for those who write JAWS scripts that helps script difficult programs. It's called HotSpotClicker, and it has recently been updated. Read more at http://personal.adiis.net/snowman/HotSpot.html. Fred Langa, www.langa.com, has produced an article about year-end steps to take to keep your computer running happily for the upcoming year. The article, with lots of supplemental links, is at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=55800698 Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, January 20, 2005 Top PowerPoint Audio Course, the next course offering from Top Dot Enterprises, is due for release by February 19. The anticipated six-hour audio course for users of JAWS for Windows and PowerPoint xp and 2003 will be available in downloadable, cd-mp3 and cassette formats for prices ranging from $29 to $49. Nearly an hour of audio content has been added to the audio course JAWS for windows and the Real World Web. Updates include a demonstration of new web features in JFW version 6.0 and a more elaborate demonstration of online bill-paying, this time using Washington Mutual as the example. Information about this now fourteen-hour course, available for as little as $34, can be had by sending a blank message to rww-info@topdotenterprises.com. The Media Access Group at WGBH offers several update newsletters concerning audio-described movies in theaters and on video, as well as on web access and educational access. Get the list and subscribe at http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/mag/getinvolved/newsletter-sign-up.html. Gw Micro has released window-Eyes 5.0 and launched a marvelous lease-to-own plan, allowing people to buy the program in installments. http://www.gwmicro.com. Agenda 2005, a very simple 2005 calendar in Word format can be had at http://www.jfwlite.com/Agenda%202005.zip Two technology-related articles are to be found in the January, 2005 issue of the Braille Monitor: An Overview of Accessible Technology: Where are we now and What does the Future Hold? at http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0501/bm050102.htm, and For the Blind, a Welcoming Web,a reprint from Business Week Online concerning web accessibility, at http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0501/bm050109.htm. John Mattioli was helpful and knowledgeable, and prior to his death from cancer, worked as a software engineer with Kurzweil. I found an informative post he wrote a while back on the use of scroll bars in Windows. To get it, send a blank message to scroll@topdotenterprises.com. Michael McCarty sends along a link to his page, World of Audio, which contains 561 links to radio and tv station streams and other fascinating places to visit, some of which I had not seen before: http://www.worldofaudio.net/. Microsoft falls short of its publicly-touted commitment to accessibility with Microsoft Outlook Web Access. Basic features of this system are usable by blind folks, but not such 'premium' features as the calendar and scheduler. Darrell Shandrow discussed this problem in the January 14 post to his blog, http://nu7i.blogspot.com/. Main Menu, ACBRadio's weekly technology program, returns from break. The program airs on Wednesdays at 01:00 GMT, noon in Melbourne, Tuesdays at 8:00 P.M. Eastern time, 5:00 Pacific, and is then rebroadcast every two hours throughout the 24-hour period. The ftp and web sites of the Main Menu archive has been updated. Here are links to some mp3 files you can download or hear: A two-part interview with Stephen Baum of Kurzweil Educational Systems discussing Kurzweil 9.0, at ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/mainmenu/mm20041110.mp3 and ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/mainmenu/mm20041117.mp3 ; Happenings at Dolphin Computer Systems, makers of Hal, Supernova and other products, at ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/mainmenu/mm20041215.mp3 ; Window-Eyes 5.0, at ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/mainmenu/mm20041201.mp3 ; The Assistive Technology Center, at ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/mainmenu/mm20041124.mp3 ; Interviews with non-North American exhibitors at the World Blind Union Conference: http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm197.m3u. Much discussion has taken place both concerning Microsoft's new AntiSpyware program in general (most reviews have been quite favorable,) and its usability by blind users (unanimously deemed difficult or impossible to access at present.) Now we have an exchange with Microsoft staff that promises access to the program by the time it is officially released. To read it, send a blank message to giant-access@topdotenterprises.com. Kathy Ann Murtha has announced release of her PowerPoint textbook through her Access Technology Institute. The cdd, which costs $100, includes print versions of the textbook in various formats, audio files of demonstrations, a shortcut key reference and subscription to a support mailing list. To learn more, call the new phone number of ATI, -679-4161, or go to http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/catalog/courses/PowerPoint.html. Anapod Explorer is a program, free trial available, which purports to make transfer of files to and from an IPod very easy: http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/getanapod.php. Dolphin Computer Access announces that the version 6.03 of their programs are now available in Spanish. http://www.dolphinusa.com/ or http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk/. http://www.icanworkthisthing.com/ is a site containing accessible manuals for various devices. Affordable portable speech-output devices are becoming available from two companies. VisuAide produces Maestro, a modified PocketPc device. You can hear a demonstration of it at 1:00 GMT Friday 21 January, hence Thursday at 8:00 Eastern time or Friday at noon in Melbourne, at http://www.for-the-people.com/ (free membership in For the People required.) Meanwhile, Optelec is introducing the EasyLink, a $1,595 PocketPc device at the ATIA conference this week. To read the company's publicity brochure, which isn't even on their web site yet, send a blank message to easylink@topdotenterprises.com. Speaking of VisuAide, on Wednesday their merger with PulseData was announced. The new company is called the HumanWare Group. another product line which isn't quite available yet but shows promise comes from Tactile Dynamics, which has new braille display technology allowing for more affordable multi-line braille displays. For information about their technology and forthcoming products, send a message to comments@wyfiwyg.com, and put trbd as the subject. Jonathan Mosen conducted a 70-minute, quite favorable audio review of Freedombox 2.0 with System Access, at http://www.freedombox.info/fb2_review.ram. And speaking of Jonathan Mosen, it's worth tracking his blog, which often contains technology-related information: www.mosenexplosion.com. Read about yet another Internet pitfall, as the Panix.com domain was purloined, by sending a blank message to purloin@topdotenterprises.com. Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL) offers three programs this week: Introducing to Searching for and Finding Information on the Internet, Monday 24 January at 19:00 GMT, Tuesday 25 January at 16:00 GMT, and Wednesday 26 January at 21:00 GMT; Accessible Portable Playback Devices, Thursday 27 January at 19:00 GMT; diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis in the elderly, Friday 28 January at 16:30 GMT. To attend any of these programs, go to http://www.tcconference.com/lib/?auditorium&nopass_field=1 and enter your name. Optelec announces a reduction in the price of its ClearView CCTV units for enhancement of reading for people with low vision. http://www.optelec.com/. There is an e-mail list for discussing use of Verizon's accessible mobile phone, the LGVX 4500. To join, send a blank message to blinduserslgvx4500-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. John Wilson sells a set of two 90-minute tapes for computer beginners, among other instructional tapes. He has updated this package with material on Windows xp. Nis web site containing information about all his tutorials is http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, January 27, 2005 Don Coco has found a very accessible and powerful sound editor, Wave Pad, http://nch.com.au/index.html. to read a short message he wrote about it, send a blank message to wavepad@topdotenterprises.com. The Microsoft Word XP with JAWS 5.0 and the ALVA Satellite 570 tutorial from Project Assist with windows is now ready. To order this braille-related tutorial, go to http://www.blind.state.ia.us/assist/order-info.htm. Last week's audio demonstration of the Maestro Pocket Pc device can be downloaded from http://www.peepstalk.com/presentations/Maestro%20Presentation.mp3. Fred Langa, ( www.langa.com,) has written an article about how to set up a new pc safely and solidly: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57701147. Fred also recommends a site with extensive information about windows xp: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm. Another Langa List newsletter provided this link to a page where a person writes for novices on how to convert records and tapes to cd: http://www.sticksite.com/tape2cd/ As this is a slow week for exciting news, I'm delving into the archives of Amy Ruell's list for useful tidbits. Steve Britt wrote a concise messave on how to use Mailwasher, a spam-fighting tool available from http://www.mailwasher.net/. To get his explanation, send a blank message to mailwasher@topdotenterprises.com. A few free audio books and book exerpts can be had by visiting http://literalsystems.org/audio/doku.php. OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) offers three technology-related programs this week. On Monday 31 January at 19:00 or Tuesday 1 February at 16:00 GMT: Accessible Portable Playback Devices; Tuesday 1 February at 19:00 GMT: Introduction to the Moderation Functions of the I-Vocalize Program; Wednesday 2 February at 21:00 GMT and Thursday, 3 February, at 19:00 GMT: Getting the Most from your PDA. Melbourne is 11 hours after GMT, Eastern time is five hours before, and Pacific time is eight hours before. To attend any of these programs, visit http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1. There is also an archive of past programs, including last week's web searching presentation and an earlier dissemination of this week's session for moderators among many others, at http://www.opal-online.org/archive.htm. Listen to ghis week's edition of the Main Menu technology show, a multi-segment edition described on the web site as follows: "From the wBU General Assembly Christopher Friend, Special Projects Consultant with Sight Savers International, introduces Helen Brasier who speaks on behalf of the International Federation of Libraries Associations and Steven King who sits on the board of the daisy consortium. We hear about Daisy for All projects in India and Asia and Dick Tucker tells us about the work of the Force Foundation. Finally, We hear about plans for Vision 2005 which is aming to be the largest conference ever held on blindness." http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm198.m3u. Will Pearson sent out information about the purpose and accessiblilty of a Microsoft initiative called Windows Genuine Advantage. To read it, send a blank message to wga@topdotenterprises.com. The Carroll Center for the Blind offers Carrol Tech, a new affordable source for online courses in Microsoft Office applications with speech and large print access. For information, http://www.carrolltech.org/classes/open.php. A simple way to select text has been devised for the NoteTab family of editors, one of which is free. By this means, a user can mark a spot, move using normal navigation to another spot anywhere in the document, then select all the text between the mark and the new position. To find out about this, send a blank message to notetabselect@topdotenterprises.com. For information about VoiceOver, the new screen reader for the Apple Macintosh due out in the middle of this year, send a blank message to voiceover@topdotenterprises.com. KeySoft 6.1 for the BrailleNote family is nearly out, and the HumanWare Group has a website for all things related to this update, including schedules and features, at http://www.pulsedata.com/6_1. Martin Courcelles tells us about http://www.speechtechmag.com/, a web site with news about all things related to speech, including mainstream speech developments. Martin also passed along a novelty link, http://www.speegle.co.uk/, a speaking search engine. A recent Kim Komando Cool Site of the Day was an online spellchecker/math converter/translator site, http://spellcheck.net/. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, February 3, 2005 Introducing the mother of all autoresponders: As we produce this newsletter each week, we're accumulating a growing collection of informational text files. Now, you can get a complete list of these by sending a blank message to masterlist@topdotenterprises.com. I'll try to update this monthly and in any event, I'll announce when it is updated. An unfavorable article concerning Google's privacy policy can be had by sending a blank e-mail message to googlepriv@topdotenterprises.com http://www.webgrid.co.uk/ is a well-maintained source for much freeware. Reginald George sent along a short excerpt of a review of the IPod Sghuffle showing, among other things, that it is totally accessible. To read it, send a blank message to shuffleworks@topdotenterprises.com. Jamie Pauls' AccessWatch system is growing. The system features reviews by blind users of off-the-shelf programs. A good number of reviews are on the site, and they want more. to read or contribute, go to http://www.accesswatch.info/review.php. Thanks to Rick Roderick for pointing out that RAIN, the Radio and Internet Newsletter, comes out free each day from http://www.kurthanson.com/. Thanks to them I found www.ccuradio.com, an online radio service with a good variety of music formats (six different flavors of celtic music among many others!) the unique thing about this service is that its imbedded player can be controlled with JAWS and mostly with Window-Eyes. (I could change volumes with both screen readers, but only figured out how to skip songs with JAWS.) The service lets you screen out artists whose music you don't want to hear. Other imbedded players aren't this easy to use! If you're in North America or if you don't but have access to low-cost international long distance phone service, you may already know about Tellme, the free information service at 800-555-8355 (800-555-tell.) If you go to the News Center and then say Technology, you can listen to the daily broadcast of Chiptalk, a one-minute daily broadcast on technology. All links mentioned in the broadcasts can be found at www.chiptalk.com. A short e-mail exchange confirming that one person finds SpySweeper to be accessible with WindowEyes can be read by sending a blank message to spysweeper@topdotenterprises.com. As more and more people use portable gizmos like the IPod, the phenomenon of podcasting is growing too. Not specifically related to the IPod! A thorough article from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting. National Public Radio ran two stories on podcasting this week; the summary and link to the audio for the All Things Considered story is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4472935, while audio from a Day to Day feature is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4473787. Two technology-related programs happen this week at OPAL, Online Programming for All Libraries. Getting the Most from your PDA runs today at 17:00 GMT and Monday 7 February at 19:00 GMT; a previous airing is already listed in the archive among other programs at http://www.opal-online.org/archivetraining.htm, and The Froogle Online Shopper runs Tuesday 8 February at 16:00, Wednesday 9 February at 21:00 and Thursday 10 February at 18:00 GMT. Eastern time is five hours before GMT, Pacific time is eight hours before, and Melbourne is 11 hours after. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, February 10, 2005 We can now purchase Window-Eyes and other Gw Micro products online at http://www.gwmicro.com. Also, new Window-Eyes purchasers or upgraders who live in the U.S. and are not already members of the Bookshare service can get $25 off their subscription to Bookshare. There is now a mailing list to discuss accessing the web using browsers other than Internet Explorer. To join, send a message to webwithout-ie-request@freelists.org, and put the word subscribe in the subject. Alan Cantor presents a two-part workshop, Gears for your PC: More Speed and Less Sweat with Macros Windows Macro 2-part Clinic, on Thursdays 17 February and 1 March March at 18:00 GMT. Registering for the free class will also get you links to the recording in case you can't be there for the live version. Learn more about the class at http://www.cantoraccess.com/upcoming.htm#easimacros2005, and register at http://easi.cc/forms/macro.htm. A lot of blind folks used to use Apple II computers, and some apparently still do. Jason Smith sends along news of his website devoted to talking Apple computers, at http://www.bluegrasspals.com/blindapple. RWF Software has updated its talking calculator program, available for about 3 pounds 50 or 6 U.S. Dollars. For information, go to http://www.rwfts.com/ Don Barrett recommends the http://www.hrblock.com/ site for filing U.S. income taxes, as an accessible site. Meanwhile, Michael Barber finds WebTurboTax, which costs some money, to be accessible: http://www.webturbotax.com/ I'm a sucker for number and word logic games, so I wasted some time playing Cryple, a free little game where each of the digits from 1-0 is represented by a letter, and it's up to you to deduce which letter stands for which digit based on aritimetic problems. the game works with JFW and Window-Eyes. I've prepared a 15-minute audio file explaining it, to justify my wasting time playing it. You can get the audio file at http://www.topdotenterprises.com/cryple.mp3, (you might want to right-click and choose Save Target As if your intention is to download the audio file,) and the game from http://www.topdotenterprises.com/cryple.exe. Jonathan Mosen reviewed the voice-mail service which is now being tested by the popular Skype chat client: http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?player=2&audioid=P554ba7ce13e919d29e9bb7475d283d48ZV56QlREYmF9&buffer=5&autoplay=1&fcolor=CCFF33&bcolor=FFFFFF&size=20. The good online radio service I mentioned last week probably didn't work for you, since I mistyped the link. It is www.accuradio.com. Living proof of why it is best to copy and paste! the OPAL program on the Froogle Online Shopper is already in the archives at http://www.opal-online.org/archivetraining.htm. You can attend a live version of this training today at 19:00 GMT. A program on Finding Scholarly Information on the Internet will be presented three times: Monday 14 February at 19:00 GMT, Tuesday 15 February at 16:00 GMT, and Wednesday 16 February at 21:00 GMT. To attend live sessions, go to http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1. Both JFW and window-Eyes enable us to view our misspelled words as we read through a document, but this doesn't really approach the information received by sighted users, who can be warned instantly if the spell checker doesn't recognize a word. One free program I know that gives us that functionality is TinySpell, which puts itself in the system tray and beeps when something you type, in any application, isn't in its dictionary. You can download the program at http://www.megspace.com/computers/tinyspell/tisp13.zip or view the home page http://www.megspace.com/computers/tinyspell/ If you try it and would find a free audio tutorial helpful, let me know. Free classes in Window-Eyes will be available online for 12 students. the next class will take place Thursday 17 February at 02:00 GMT. Free membership in For-The-People is required. To check availability, write to Jennifer Thomas at jen@nc.rr.com. Audio Enriched Links now works with JFW 6.0! This handy free JAWS add-on lets you look into links on the web which may not speak properly to find out what the link is really about before visiting it. Under some circumstances, AEL drastically improves access to difficult web pages. You can get Version 1.42, which works with both JFW versions 5.x and 6, at http://www.cs.unc.edu/~parente/ael. Peter Parente invites feedback and suggestions at mailto:parente@cs.unc.edu. http://www.whatifsports.com allows visitors to simulate games between any two teams from history in all popular American sports and generate box scores and game recaps. http://www.sportsjuice.com streams lots of minor league and amateur American and Canadian sports events. One enterprising, and perhaps too idle, gentleman has simulated an 80-team baseball tournament, featuring his versions of the 80 greatest teams of all time, and is then broadcasting the resulting games via sportsjuice. The City of Brotherly Love might (or might not) be abuzz when, beginning Saturday 12 February at 01:00 GMT, he broadcasts the game between the 1980 Phillies and the 1993 Phillies. Two search engines that are accessible and could replace Google for some searches are http://www.answers.com and http://search.msn.com/ MSN allows for searching Encarta for free, and answers.com searches dictionaries and encyclopedias as well as the web. And seconds before this newsletter was to be e-mailed, news came in that Dolphin Systems has released version 6.5 of their screen reader and magnification programs. New features include fractional magnification, pdf document reading, PowerPoint support, keyboard customization, line view mode, more power with Internet Explorer, and keyboard layouts for other screen readers. For more information, visit http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk/ or www.dolphinusa.com Remember that in relation to GMT, North American Central time is six hours earlier, Johannesburg is two hours later, and Perth Australia is eight hours later. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, February 17, 2005 Do you read braille books on a braille display? If so, you know that braille pages, 40-character lines, and volumes are not really necessary any more. I've been working (obsessing!) on a NoteTab clip to remove most of these annoyances from books produced by the U.S. National Library Service for the Blind. I had hoped to post this by today but needless to say, it is proving to be not as simple as I expected. Still, progress continues to be made. If you would like to test or use this clip when I have it to a point of usability, drop me a note and I'll send it to you. I don't anticipate providing much instruction in the use of NoteTab with the clip. Or, if anybody has a solution to the small but interesting problem of making braille books more readable with braille displays, and would like to share it, write as well. We haven't mentioned The Internet Tourbus here yet. This is one of the most venerable Internet newsletters. Every week, you receive two advertiser-supported issues with good information on new Internet resources, Internet security and other timely topics. On the web site www.tourbus.com you can subscribe, view the current issue and see the archives of all past issues for years before 2005. The 2004 archive was uploaded not long ago and is a good source of information in itself, since almost all of it is still current. Users of FreedomBox, including those trying out the system, can take part in a technical workshop on Friday, 18 February at 02:00 GMT in the tech room of the chat area of the system to discuss feature requests and learn what is planned for the FreedomBox browser and System Access over the next few months. Thanks to Howard Kaufman: Eto Engineering specializes in selling accessible mobile phones to the blind. their site contains good information for anybody wishing to learn more about accessible mobile phone options. http://www.etoengineering.com/vision.htm For links to daily schedules of audio-described tv programming available on U.S. cable and broadcast television, go to http://www.tv-now.com/dvs/index.html. A user recommends Look'n Stop as an accessible firewall; he has used it successfully with Window-Eyes 5.0: http://www.looknstop.com/En/faq.htm. A free eighteen-week course on e-book publishing starts on Friday, 18 January at 01:00 GMT, for members of For-The-People. The first session is open to all, while subsequent sessions require a password which will be provided upon enrollment. For more information, write to Jennifer Thomas at . HumanWare announces that new purchasers of any of the BrailleNote family of products during February will receive a free WiFi card. They also announce the release of firmware Version 3 of the Victor Reader Classic digital talking book players. to learn about all of this, go to www.humanware.com. It seems Microsoft has released their old DOS operating system to the public domain, and somebody has made improvements in it. This could provide some low-cost computer access to some people. To learn about the new DOS, go to http://newdos.yginfo.net/msdos71/ Michael Damien has written JAWS scripts for a few sound-editing programs and also a package called JFWTechnical, a tool to help writers of JFW scripts. Check this out at http://www.kulgan.net/mick/programming/jfwscripts/. To calculate GMT, Mountain time is seven hours earlier, and Wellington, New Zealand is 13 hours later. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, February 24, 2005 Jim Fettgather tested the IPod Shuffle and determined that it is much less accessible than I announced previously. You cannot use windows Explorer to copy music to it; you must use ITunes. You can use Windows Explorer or My Computer to copy files as you can to any thumb drive, but in order to use the unit to play music, you need ITunes. The shareware ITunes alternative, Anapod Explorer, is supposedly being updated to support the Shuffle. Speaking of thumb drives, there's an amazing one called MultiPod, which can serve as voice recorder, digital camera, webcam and video recorder. Read the article from today's New York Times by sending a blank message to multipod@topdotenterprises.com. My perusal of the online manual suggests that the product is probably usable, with some study, by a blind person. A while back we had a discussion about low-cost Internet access in North america. A resource which wasn't mentioned at that time is http://www.access-4-free.com/ which gives 10 hours of free access per month, then charges $1 per hour up to a maximum of $10. You get no ads, and they have lots of access numbers. A perspective on accessibility to the two U.S. satellite radio providers is found in The Voice of the Nation's Blind from the NFB, at http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/61/satellite-radio. Two other technology-related articles in that publication: A Personal Assessment of the BookPort, http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/109/book-port-a-personal-assessment, and an overview of the Maestro, http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/106/maestro-an-overview-of-visuaides-new-accessible-pda. Consumer tips and microwave recipes are the most recent content additions to the FreedomBox Network, www.freedombox.info. A review of Trend Micro Internet Security 2005 from the accessibility standpoint is found at http://www.accesswatch.info/reviewdisplay.php?pid=0000000036. Jamie has also added an audio demonstration of how to submit a review to AccessWatch, at http://www.accesswatch.info/accesswatchreview.m3u. An announcement appeared on Hotmail today stating that new Hotmail or MSN accounts will no longer be accessible via Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, and presumably any POP3 e-mail client. Existing accounts can still be accessed via POP3, but Microsoft is promoting its Microsoft Office Outlook Live e-mail service. Two Seattle area radio stations could be of interest to people worldwide. KBCS has recently added a broadband stream as well as a dial-up one. They play a wide variety of jazz, folk and world music. The homepage is http://kbcs.fm/. KSER also pays a wide variety of music. Fans of novelty music such as is found on the Dr. Demento Show will appreciate Music with Moskowitz, a two-hour program on Saturdays at 19:00 GMT. You can e-mail requests to mailto:madmosk@msn.com?subject=Musical Requests. The home page for KSER is http://www.kser.org/. Several audio programs in wide use by blind folks came out with updates recently. Winamp, the popular audio player, is up to version 5.8E, and one place to grab it is http://www.mrimpau.com/winamp508e_full.exe. Nero Burning ROM, a popular cd-burning program, is up to version 6.6.08; check the home page at http://www.nero.com/ (One user reported that this version improved accessibility.) Total Recorder, from www.highcriteria.com, my favorite program for recording Internet audio streams, reached version 5.1. Finally, the popular sound editor GoldWave is now at version 5.10, from www.goldwave.com. to read a lengthy article from the February 19, 2005 New York Times concerning the phenomenon of PodCasting, send a blank message to tiredoftivo@topdotenterprises.com. Speaking of blogs, David Facheux, who runs an audio blog, will give an audio presentation on blogs for OPAL on Wednesday 2 March at 01:00 GMT, http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1 One of the upcoming online audio clinics offered by EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) will be a day of presentations from the upcoming major CSUN technology conference. These presentations will take place throughout the day on March 17 beginning at 16:00 GMT. to read what will take place and to register, go to the main Clinics page, http://easi.cc/clinic.htm. One user reports that she has bought e-books from http://www.wiley.com/ and is able to read them successfully with Adobe Reader version 7. Two programs have been added to the Main Menu archive. An interview with the Huge Print Press streams at http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm200.m3u, and a discussion of blogging using blogger.com streams at http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm200.m3u. Jamal Mazrui has converted the documentation for several programming languages to plain text and has made zip files of these collections available. to read a list of what he has and how to get these free downloads, send a blank message to jamalsfiles@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, March 3, 2005 Tom Fowle provided information on two hardware braille-style keyboards you can buy to connect to a pc for braille keyboard input. To read the message, send a blank message to brlkeyboard@topdotenterprises.com. Two standard games are now usable with the Pac Mate: Battleship and Jawbreaker. For information, go to http://www.pacmategear.com/. MarvelSoft has released Talking Toolbox, a package that includes e-mail client, addressbook calendar, calculator, word processor and cd player. For $75, it is designed to make computers easy to use and accessible to new users of all ages. For information, go to http://www.marvelsoft.com/. The daisy format is becoming popular for the creation of electronic books. There was recently a mailing list thread on how to create daisy books; to read it, send a blank message to daisycreate@topdotenterprises.com. Stephen Manes writes technology columns for Forbes Magazine. To read his assessment of the Dragon Naturally Speaking program for voice input in its current version 8, send a blank message to manesondns@topdotenterprises.com. For recording audio streams from the Internet for later listening, some users recommend ReplayRadio from http://www.replay-radio.com/. The latest edition of the Main Menu technology program to appear in the archives features an interview with Mike Calvo of Seratech, makers of the Freedom Box: http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm201.m3u. Speaking of the Freedom Box, they now allow two computers per one account with a small additional charge: www.freedombox.info. Richard Seltzer has for some time been selling cd's and dvd's filled with text books. All the material he sells is freely available on the net, but he organizes it and reformats some books to make them easier to read. His collection is constantly growing. He also makes his own writings and other text available from his page, http://www.samizdat.com/. Once stories have aired on many U.S. National Public Radio programs, they are available indefinitely in the archive. An item during 26 February's Weekend Edition featured the DVS recording of the film Ray and a discussion of Descriptive Video Services. You can listen to the feature and see some related links at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4513781. Miranda is a popular instant messaging client, and JFW scripts for it are available at http://jbauer.port5.com/. Owners of Index braille embossers can download version 4.10 of the free braille translation program WinBraille from http://www.indexbraille.com/downloads/index.htm Stephen Manes from Forbes has written a Ten Point Plan to Protect Your Computer. To read it, send a blank message to 10pointplan@topdotenterprises.com. Easy CD DA Extractor is a cd ripping and audio file organizing tool popular among many blind folks, though not free. Version 8.0.2 is now available at http://www.poikosoft.com/. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, March 10, 2005 As subscribers, you know you can grab Tidbits issues from the archive, but the process is rather cumbersome, so I've decided to make quarterly files available. To get the collection of the first thirteen issues, over which time our readership has trippled, send a blank message to q1@topdotenterprises.com. I've also updated the master list of all the autoresponders you can send for; to get that, send a blank message to masterlist@topdotenterprises.com. Speaking of items like the one above, I like to use autoresponders. That's the word for these e-mail accounts that send you back an article. They're the ultimate in simplicity. Two tips: Since they're auto-responders, you don't need to put a subject line or anything in the body; the system doesn't care and doesn't read the message or the subject, it only cares about the address. And if you use ZeroSpam filtering service, they won't work. A company called Issist has released a beta of IZoom version 1, a free screen magnifier for Windows xp. Learn more and get it from http://www.issist.com/. The March, 2005 issue of the free magazine AccessWorld features, among other articles, a review of the IPod, a tour of Audible.com, a review of two flat-panel cctv's, and an update on accessible cell phones. Get it at http://www.afb.org/accessworld. Beth Hatch reports that users of the U.S. cable internet service Comcast have a better alternative when trying to access web mail and other information from the home page. Screen reader users may want to go to http://www.comcast.net/lite. The FreedomBox Network now includes an option to receive tv listings in your local time zone for a large number of cable networks. www.freedombox.info. Kathy Ann Murtha of Access Technology Institute has produced a limited-edition dvd of all her textbooks. The dvd includes updates as they appear, but only 40 will be made, and it costs $300. To see if it's still available, go to http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/catalog/courses/dvd.html A poster recommends the programs at http://www.processtext.com/index.html for performing many types of conversion from one file format to another. HumanWare Group announces that the latest version of the Maestro portable pocket pc device now supports two off-the-shelf infrared keyboards. Read about this at http://www.visuaide.com/news_keyboards.html The Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference at CSUN comes up soon, and you can look through the extensive list of presentations and read abstracts at http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2005/proceedings/csun05.htm. Kelly Ford wrote a short note explaining how to configure Mocrosoft Office Outlook 2003 for best results with adaptive technology. You can read it by sending a blank message to mso2003config@topdotenterprises.com. A user recommends a site for hearing music from the 50's through the 70's: http://www.goldradio.net/. ScanSoft announces that a public beta of version 2.0 of Talks accessibility software is available. This version adds access to the web browser on Nokia Series 6 handsets and GPS navigation with Wayfinder (primarily useful in Europe at present.) Technical notes for the beta are found at ftp://ftp.audiolife.de/technical_notes_199_9.doc. A recent discussion thread on pc-audio discusses using the free Cdex cd ripping program to convert wav diles to mp3. Read it by sending a blank message to cdex-convert@topdotenterprises.com. In response to a search for a way to locate all the mp3 files on a computer, Kelly Pierce recommends MAC, Mpeg Audio Collection. Get this free program from http://mac.sourceforge.net/. For those whose needs are greater, Kevin Lloyd recommends Audigen from Red Chair Software. Darrell Shandrow is trying to spur a grassroots campaign to encourage Google to provide a visual alternative to their visual verification scheme. Find relevant information at his Blind Access Journal, http://www.nu7i.blogspot.com/. Optilec announces that it is now partnering with Technologies for Lifelong Independence (TLI) to sell bundles of Nokia phones with TMobile service and the MobileSpeak access software from Code Factory. To learn more, go to TLI's web site, http://www.independtech.com. Reginald George sent along a rather technical article about one person's discovery of how to track pc's on the net. Get it by sending a blank message to tracking@topdotenterprises.com. In a recent discussion of how to normalize mp3's, to make sure the sound level is constant, two users recommend Mp3 Gain, freeware from http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/, as doing this better than utilities found in other programs. In the constant quest to make Ipod and IPod Shuffle more accessible, a user mentioned XPlay, a $29.95 add-on from http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/ which supports the Shuffle. I wrote a post explaining how to follow a hyperlink in a Word document. Obviously, you can't press Enter! To read it, send a blank message to linksinword@topdotenterprises.com. Venerable and powerful St. Louis radio station KMOX, whose format is news-talk, will begin streaming on the Internet on Monday at http://www.kmox.com/. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, March 17, 2005 This week, when the CSUN conference takes place, is one of four main times throughout the year access technology companies target for news releases. Some of our news results from those efforts. We have two audio feeds to choose from for information from CSUN. OcuSource and Talking Communities are combining to provide interviews from the exhibit hall today, Friday and Saturday. For information, http://www.ocusource.com/ocusource/index.cfm?page=csunlive. Marlaina Lieberg is sending numerous audio reports of activities for ACBRadio; many are online now and more are sure to come, at http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=35&MMN_position=49:49. Optelec announces that they plan to begin shipping MyLink in the fourth quarter of 2005. this will be a series of products combining off-the-shelf portable information management with universal wireless connectivity, giving the user both on-board PDA functionality and limitless opportunities to connect to a variety of wireless devices. The series of devices will use Pocket Hal screen reader and a mini-cell braille display from Optelec. In an interesting announcement, GW Micro, maker of the Window-Eyes screen reader, have announced that they will market and sell the Braille Sense, a portable braille unit made in Korea which allows for multitasking, connectivity and word processing. Learn more about the device at http://www.braillesense.com/. John Wilson announces a 70,000+ word tutorial, "Accessing the Internet from the Keyboard" Volume 2, for those wishing to get into the more exciting and challenging aspects of the Net. Among other topics this tutorial contains long sections on using RealPlayer version 10, using Skype for Internet telephony, using MSN Messenger, and online banking. Get all details at http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard. The HumanWare Group has made two announcements of products to come. They say they'll begin shipping a new Daisy book reader/cd/mp3 player, the Wave, in June. Read the release at http://www.visuaide.com/news_wave_en.html. In may, they plan to ship an integrated package consisting of the Trekker gps system and the Maestro pda. Read about this at http://www.visuaide.com/news_trekker_maestro_en.html. Ironically, this week of future product announcements also saw the final end of TeleSensory, once a major player in the adaptive technology field, which closed its doors for financial reasons. Freedom Scientific has streamlined its website (available through many Urls, but my favorite is www.hj.com,) and also announced the release of MAGic version 9.3, a free upgrade for owners of version 9.x. Read about this at http://www.hj.com/fs_products/software_MAG930.asp. Radio Reading Services, found throughout the U.S. and in some other countries, are services for the blind where newspapers, magazines and books are read on a schedule, usually by volunteers and usually over closed-circuit systems. A good number now broadcast via the Internet. Some broadcasts require registration, not usually difficult to do, and some do not. One that does not is the Iowa Radio and Information Service (I.R.I.S.) On Saturday at 14:00 and Sunday at 06:00 GMT, they broadcast Chips and Bytes, a program from In Touch Network in New York where articles from current computer magazines are read. their web site is http://www.iowaradioreading.org/. Find information about all the Radio Reading Services you can hear online at http://www.iaais.org/hearservices.html. A tip from the Optelec newsletter informs us about Teleflip, a free service that lets you send text messages to any U.S.-based mobile phone number via e-mail. You write e-mail to [phonenumber]@teleflip.com, and the user gets a text message. www.teleflip.com. The AccessWatch Review System version 2.0 now lets users receive e-mail alerts when new reviews are added. There are audio tutorials, and submitting a review is easier. the site is at http://www.accesswatch.info/review.php. Jim Snowbarger has released a major upgrade to his free HotSpotClicker JAWS scripts, which allow you to define places on the screen to be clicked with the press of a hot key. Very useful for those hard to adapt applications. For more information, visit: personal.adiis.net/snowman/HotSpotClicker.html. The easiest way to access KMOX radio's internet stream, and many others, is through links provided by Bill Sparks at www.billsparks.org. The March, 2005 issue of The Braille Monitor contains two technology-related articles. Why I Bought a PAC Mate, http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0503/bm050309.htm, and Clarification from Curtis Chong's E-mail Basket, http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0503/bm050310.htm The link to Darrell Shandrow's Blind Access Journal from last week's newsletter may be inaccurate; use http://www.blindaccessjournal.com/. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, March 24, 2005 Top PowerPoint Audio Course will be available during the coming week. To learn about this most affordable course for users of PowerPoint xp and 2003 with JFW 5 or 6, available for as lissle as $19, send a blank message to tpac@topdotenterprises.com. Sound Computing Magazine will be relaunched in April! Subscribers who pay $9 for this online publication will receive 50 audio articles: product comparisons and evaluations, mini-tutorials and reviews. The first article to appear will be a head-to-head comparison between JFW 6.0 and Window-Eyes 5.0 in providing access to Microsoft Word. To learn more, send a blank message to sc@topdotenterprises.com. Shaun Everiss points out that Adobe has released version 7.01 of their Acrobat pdf creation tool and, more pertinent to most of us, of Adobe Reader. http://ardownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/7x/7.0/enu/AdbeRdr70_enu_full.exe. ScanSoft has announced the release of the "screen reader" for mobile phones, Talks Version 2. Read about it at http://www.scansoft.com/news/pressreleases/20050315_talks.asp. This year more than ever, we from around the world who didn't get to the large CSUN conference can experience much of it via the net. Five presentations and their accompanying papers are found on the EASI site at http://easi.cc/csun2005.htm. A presentation which billed itself as a comparison between Pac Mate and BrailleNote, but which is really an enthusiastic piece by a Pac Mate owner, can be heard at ftp://ftp.freedomscientific.com/users/hj/private/WebFiles/media/BrailleNote-PACMate-ComparisonMP3.exe. Marlaina Lieberg made great recordings and held great conversations, available for the listening on ACBRadio at http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=35&MMN_position=49:49. Lou Pipschultz of OcuSource and the team from Talking Communities combined to make several hours of interviews from the exhibit room available, archived at http://www.ocusource.com/ocusource/index.cfm?page=csunlive. Finally, a presentation about the computing option JSay, using JAWS and Dragon Naturally Speaking, can be heard at http://www.tandt-consultancy.com/j-say.html. Gw Micro has posted a Frequently Asked Questions document and a pre-release version of the manual for the Braille Sense portable device. Read them at http://www.gwmicro.com/braillesense. A new issue of the long-running Audyssey Gaming Magazine for the Blind is available. All issues can be read at http://www.angelfire.com/music4/duffstuff/audyssey.html, and the current issue is at http://www.angelfire.com/music4/duffstuff/aud43.txt. You can read a short e-mail thread about games for a new gamer by sending a blank message to gamethoughts@topdotenterprises.com. Wired magazine recently had an article about gaming by the blind, entitled The Blind Fragging the Blind, available at http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,66879,00.html. Version 1.2.0.37 of the popular voice chat program Skype can be found at http://www.skype.com/. Information about the Navigator, a GPS device from Poland, is now available in English at http://www.migraf.pl/. An article about the dangers of unprotected computing, and another one about about the growing danger of worms lurking in files sent via instant message programs, can both be had by sending a blank message to whyfirewall@topdotenterprises.com. Accessibility evaluations of Spybot Search and Destroy Version 1.3, Bible Gateway, Dictionary.com and JSay Standard and Professional have been added to the AccessWatch site. Read these and more at http://www.accesswatch.info/. Martin Courcelles recommends SciTe for anybody looking for an accessible and versatile programmer's editor. http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html. Jim Snobarger has created JFW scripts for the new version 8.0 of the Sound Forge audio editor. Read about and purchase the scripts at http://personal.adiis.net/snowman/forge80.html. OPAL presents an audio presentation, Introduction to Tumble ebooks and digital audio books on Wednesday March 30 at 17:00 GMT, http://www.tcconference.com/lib?auditorium&nopass_field=1. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, March 31, 2005 Top Dot Enterprises now accepts PayPal for payments for subscriptions, audio courses and training, to dean@topdotenterprises.com. Reviews of Encyclopedia Britanica 2005 Online Edition and XPlay 2.1.2.0 have been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info. Karen Kenworthy distributes several small freeware programs and puts out a weekly newsletter, Karen's Power Tools Newsletter, in which she discusses updates to them. The March 24 issue contains what she learned from Michael W. Lawler of Gw Micro concerning the right tab controls for programmers to use for screen readers to access them. As a result, she has updated several of her programs to make them more screen-reader friendly. You can read the newsletter issue by sending a blank message to karenware@topdotenterprises.com, and visit her page to subscribe to the newsletter or get the programs at www.karenware.com. The ACBRadio web site contains an article about how to use the popular free audio player Winamp with screen readers: http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=36&MMN_position=50:17 Fred Langa has written an article on how to use two little-used windows features, My Briefcase and Offline Files: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159905095. A frequent question posed by new users is: What is a good program for burning cd's. One fairly consistent answer is Nero, from http://www.nero.com/. A Window-Eyes user recently recommended B's Recorder, for which a demo is not available, from http://www.bhacorp.com/. If you already have Adobe Reader version 7 and want to get the latest patch, you can get it from http://ardownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/7x/7.0.1/misc/Acro-Reader_701_Update.exe. In the OPAL archives, you can listen to a round-table discussion about digital audio books at http://www.opal-online.org/DABdiscussion200503.wma, and the introduction to Tumble E-books and digital audio books, http://www.midtb.org/tumbleintro20050323.wma. The issue of Main Menu which will air on Thursday 7 April at 01:00 GMT will be two-hour special in honor of the fifth anniversary of the program. Check out the various listening options at www.acbradio.org, and remember that in much of North America, where daylight time takes effect this weekend but GMT doesn't move, ACBRadio programs will begin an hour later than they have for the last half-year. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 7, 2005 Alva has produced a version of their MPO5500 specifically designed for the deaf-blind. Read about it at http://www.alvampo.com/. Version 1.1 of iZoom, the recently-launched free screen magnifier program has been released. Investigate at http://www.issist.com/. From recent issues of the Bootdisk newsletter come links to some useful KnowledgeBase articles from Microsoft: How To Customize the Windows Explorer Views in Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307856; You Cannot Open New Internet Explorer Window or Nothing Happens After You Click a Link: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=281679; How to Troubleshoot Issues with Reading CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD Discs: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=321641; How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310560; HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316434. And a great language site, http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html. The whole site can also be had, through a link at the bottom, as a giant text file ideal for use in notetakers old and new. mp3DirectCut is a small tool for editing mpeg audio directly. You can remove parts, change the volume, split files or copy regions to new files. All without the need to decompress your mp3 into pcm/wav. This saves work, encoding time and disk space. And there is no quality loss through any re-compressions. Version 2 beta is available at http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/mp3DirectCut/1010041409/1. Audio help files in zip format are at http://home.comcast.net/~musicmaker365/mp3directcut_help.zip. Alasdair King of the University of Manchester in the UK has produced WebbIE, a free talking web browser. He has also produced three other small programs: Accessible BBC Radio allows you to choose any current bbc broadcast from a list and listen to it with RealPlayer. Accessible Listen Again lets you choose archived broadcasts from Radio 4 from a list and listen. All this can of course be accomplished from the web, but this is an easier way. Also, Accessible RSS is an rss reader. Find out about, and download, all these at http://www.webbie.org.uk/download.htm#accessibleradio. The Firefox browser is becoming quite popular. Computer science students at the University of Texas developed some JAWS scripts for it. Unfortunately, development stopped at the end of the university term, but they are available at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/s2s/latest/jaws1/home/index.shtml. Gw Micro states that window-Eyes will support Firefox in its next release and when the next version of Firefox comes out, in the next few months. A review of QWS has been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/. Following up on last week's game information, Bill Boules reminds us about Chillingham, from BaviSoft, http://www.bavisoft.com/.. Another reader mentioned poker and crazy eight's, free for the first month, $7 per month thereafter, with simultaneous chat: http://www.allinplay.com/ Project Assist with windows of the Iowa Department for the Blind is offering a train the Trainer workshop for assistive technology trainers in the U.S.. Download an application for the free training at http://www.blind.state.ia.us/assist The presentations made during the April 6 Accessible World seminar are already in archives. Presentations were The Better Business Bureau, The Many Facets of OcuSource, Freedom Scientific Braille Displays, and Innovative Rehabilitative Technology. Listen, and check out previous months' programs at http://www.talkingcommunities.com/index2.htm. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 14, 2005 This week's Main Menu reported that Window-Eyes now supports the latest version of the instant message client, MSN Messenger Version 7. However, JAWS won't support it, and JAWS users are advised not to try using it, until JFW 7.0 comes out sometime in the summer. Fred Langa's latest article for Information Week is entitled "Test and Tune your Online Connection," and offers tips and testing sites for users with dial-up, dsl, cable and t1 connections. According to the press release at http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/voiceover/, the long-awaited Mac OSX Tigre, the new Apple operating system that promises a free and fully-functioning screen reader will be released on 29 April. In an acquisition which we hope goes better than the last one, Kurzweil Educational Systems, makers of reading systems for the blind and learning disabled, has been acquired by Cambium Learning, an education company with a strong commitment to creating useful educational materials for all people. Kurzweil will remain an independent company under this umbrella. John Wilson announces that he has updated his Microsoft Excel 97-2003 and Microsoft Word 97-2003 From the Keyboard tutorials to incorporate commands for JFW 6, Window-Eyes 5, and HAL 6.5. Learn about these and all his tutorials at http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard. JAWS for Windows version 6.1 is out. The program offers better support for foreign languages, support for Pac Mate Desktop with which Pac Mate users will be able to operate their computer remotely once the next version of the Pac Mate firmware is released, and various other enhancements. Find out about it at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws610fea.asp. The foreign language support stems from the fact that JFW now supports Unicode. Information about this can be found at http://www.unicode.org/, and the site for looking up Unicode characters, so you can modify how they are treated with speech or braille, is http://www.unicode.org/charts. John Tisinger tells of a site for those who love oldies: http://www.treasureislandoldies.com/. We have talked about Podcasting a few times, but never from the perspective of a blind user. Now Debbie Krafts has written about it and described how she accesses the huge and growing amount of downloadable audio material you can get this way. To read what she wrote, send a blank message to kpc@topdotenterprises.com. Fred Langa recommends a large page at http://members.bellatlantic.net/~mrscary/winupfaq.htm because it contains a huge list of tips related to the windows Update process. When Gw Micro was developing Window-Eyes version 5.0, they uncovered various problems with Microsoft Office which impeded accessibility. Microsoft developed some "hot fixes" to solve these problems. Now, these "hot fixes" are incorporated into the standard security and update process for Office users, so there is no longer a need to download special hot fixes. The dlownloads are available at http://office.microsoft.com/. Miranda is a multi-messaging program, allowing users to access accounts on MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, IRC and ICQ with one program. Get it from http://www.miranda-im.org/, and get JFW scripts for it at http://jbauer.port5.com/. As part of a recent discussion of what to do when the computer locks up and screen readers don't work, Vic Pereira wrote a brief piece from the standpoint of the Window-Eyes user. The w in his example refers to Window-Eyes. You can read it by sending a blank message to lockups@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 21, 2005 Welcome on this, the beginning of the most important festival of the Baha'i year! Do you ever wish you could change your keyboard layout, perhaps creating a start menu key on a laptop that has none, or simply move keys into more sensible places? Keytweak is a great free tool to achieve this. Its use is not elementary, but the 20-minute article in Sound Computing will get you started effectively. You can get this and 49 other audio articles by subscribing to Sound Computing for $9.00 to learn more, send a blank message to sc@topsotenterprises.com, or visit http://www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm. Dave Porter presents Burn-it Rip-it, How to Create your own Cd Library, archived at Talking Communities, http://www.talkingcommunities.com/edu/archives/burit-ripit-2.htm. Jim Snobarger has released JAWS scripts for the sound editor Sound Forge version 8.0. http://personal.adiis.net/snowman/forge80.html. EASI presents Maximizing Accessibility in Academic and Public Libraries, today, 21 April at 20:00 GMT. The event will be archived, so register or read more at http://easi.cc/clinic.htm. they will also hold a four-part series on library accessibility which will cost $95 during the month of June. the same people that bring us Accessible RSS now offer Accessible Podcaster, an easy program for collecting podcasts. http://www.webbie.org.uk/download/AccessiblePodcasterInstaller.exe. A user reports that it is possible to remove spyware manually. Go to http://www.safersite.com/ and type in the spyware you want to remove and you will receive directions on how to proceed. BlindSoftware.com has released their Talking Clock featuring clock, big ben chimes, atomic clock sync program and reminder system. It costs $14.95 from http://www.blindsoftware.com/program_detail.asp?id=33. Reviews of Real Alternative version 1.35, MSN Messenger 7.0, Audacity version 1.2.3, Complete Cleanup version 4.8.1 and Hoekey version 1.13 have been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/. Jamie has announced that the person submitting the 100th review will receive a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com. You can hear the ACBRadio coverage of Window-Eyes at the recent CSUN conference by going to the Gw Micro audio page, http://www.gwmicro.com/audio. Optelec announces that EasyLink, a pda with a wireless keyboard, is now shipping. http://www.optelec.com. They also announce that in May, they will begin shipping a Pen Drive from Dolphin, which will enable users of any of Dolphin's access products, such as HAL or SuperNova to temporarily install their screen reader on any computer. Freedom Scientific encountered some glitches with its release of JFW version 6.10, so they released an updated version on April 15, which installs over the other one. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws610fea.asp The Web Accessibility Toolbar, provided by the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) team at the National Information and Library Service (NILS) , Australia, lets users render web pages more accessible and helps developers create accessible pages. Read about it and download it at http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar/. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 28, 2005 Two messages to readers: I'm headed out of the country for three weeks. I expect to have e-mail, so barring big problems, you'll get newsletters on Thursdays. However, for several reasons, I'm going to leave all the mailing lists at home. Hence, if you're on a mailing list, and somebody gives a good answer to a question, or you get a useful piece of information, please forward it to dean@topdotenterprises.com. Subscribers will appreciate it! Second, there is at least one ISP that blocks this newsletter. If you know somebody who has mentioned not getting these every Thursday, have them contact me. In the same vein, if you tried to get some material from an auto-responder and it didn't work, contact me about that as well. More reviews of off-the-shelf software have been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/. This week's additions include TinySpell version 1.3, 7zip version 3.1.3, System Security Suite version 1.04, Complete Cleanup 4.8, Bible Seeker version 2.1, Miranda IM version 0.3.3, BSC Talking Clock version 1.0, and Freedom Chat version 1.6. Jeff Bishop has started an e-mail list to discuss podcasting, both how to broadcast and how to find and gather podcasts. To join, write to BlindCasting-subscribe@jeffbishop.com. ACBRadio has launched the ACBRadio Replay Service, which lets you listen to the programming for ACBRadio Mainstream for any of the previous seven days. Main Menu, the technology show, is aired on Wednesdays, so to listen to the current week's edition, go to the Replay link off the Mainstream page at http://www.acbradio.org/ and choose to replay Wednesday. The IPod Shuffle Database Builder is an opensource project that eliminates the need to use the ITunes software, which is marginally accessible, with the IPod Shuffle. Read about it at http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/. Speakup version 2.0, a screen reader for Linux, is available at http://linux-speakup.org/. Gw Micro announced their Lease to Own program for window-Eyes previously, but apparently it is really available now. Purchasers pay $50 for the first month, then $100 for additional months until they have paid $950 or $1150 depending on how many upgrades they want to purchase. More information about this innovation is at http://www.gwmicro.com/lto. EASI Publishes Information Technology and Disability. Here is a link to Volume X of the journal: http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itd10.htm. One of the subjects of that volume is accessible electronic voting, and EASI will have a free web conference which will include three authors from the Journal articles. The conference will take place on Thursday, 12 May at a time which was not announced. If you register, you can either attend live or access the recording later. http://easi.cc/forms/voting.htm. http://www.publicradiofan.com offers a wealth of links of public radio programs from around the world, sorted in many ways. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, May 26, 2005 I'm home, with some temporary limitations due to health problems in the family. I have the impression that few if anybody received Tidbits issue 21 from May 5. I'll paste it at the bottom of this message. Some list member contracted a worm and as a result, since that person had many auto-responder messages stored on their hard drive, lotsof messages appearing to come from various Top Dot Enterprises addresses went out to lots of other places, with many resulting bounces for me. I do mean lots of bounces!, very annoying when you pay per minute for dial-up access as I did on this trip. ! One reader was somehow apparently affected; I hope others weren't! I will be in Flint Michigan from June 5-17, so if you need affordable training or computer set-up services, let me know. Onward! Ann Morris points out an addictive game to play on the web, 20Q, from http://www.20q.net/ From Tourbus, we learn about a useful search engine, Exalead, which has search functionality not found in more common search tools. With it, you can do proximity searching, use phonetic or approximate spelling, use word truncation, and, for real advanced users, regular expression searching. http://www.exalead.com/ A review of GMud version 32 has been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/. The May 2005 issue of AccessWorld contains a report on the CSUN Conference, a review of Pac Mate, a discussion of how to customize windows for low vision users, a discussion of the merger of HumanWare and PulseData and reviews of two more mobile phone products. http://www.afb.org/aw/main.asp. A clear article about pdf files and how to use them, Pdf Survival Guide, is found in Voice of the Nation's Blind, http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/135/pdf-survival-guide We in the U.S. are losing some of our low-cost options for Internet access, but some still remain, outlined at www.emailaddresses.com/email_internet.htm. Freedom Scientific announces the release of a Universal Remote Control program for the Pac Mate, FS Commander. It lets users control all their remotes with one accessible system. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/PACmate_FSCommander.asp. The Education technology Group at the Chronicle of Higher Education has launched a free service, the Wired Campus Blog, at http://wiredcampus.chronicle.com/. You can subscribe to an e-mail version at http://chronicle.com/infotech/newsletter/newsletter.htm, and an RSS feed is at http://wiredcampus.chronicle.com/index.rdf. What Works in the Real World will be a conference aimed primarily at RehabilitationTeachers, and will take place in Las Vegas from July 5-7. For information,e-mail B.T. Kimbrough at bkimbrough@colled.msstate.edu. The April 2005 Braille Monitor contains an e-mail exchange between Chrtis Chong and a Microsoft staff member regarding present and future accessibility: http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0505/bm050508.htm. If you live in the U.S., you can join Bookshare, and can receive some recently-added technology-related books, including Windows Xp, the Missing Manual, Outlook 2003 Personal Trainer, and more. Now, the repeat of the May 5 issue, the only one produced during my trip: Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, May 5, 2005 NO NEWSLETTER NEXT WEEK. Internet access isn't too great where I am now, and next week, it will vary from scare and expensive to non-existent. ACBRadio has launched a beta of their Podcast feed, allowing hyou to easily download prpgrams to an mp3 player and otherwise listen to them away from the computer. You'll need a program designed to grab podcasts, such as IPodder, http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/download/index.php, or the simpler Accessible IPodder we mentioned last week, http://www.webbie.org.uk/download/AccessiblePodcasterInstaller.exe, add the link to ACBRadio Replay to the program's feeds and you can always grab the latest ACBRadio shows. The feed to add is http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=replay. A British audio magazine, SoundAround, is available at http://www.soundaround.org/. Skype , the highly popular voice chat program, comes out with frequent new versions and i do not always announce them. The latest is version 1.2.04.0. Thanks to Shaun Everiss for this news. Jake Joehl passes along thenews that BlindSoftware has released version 1.1 of their Talking Clock, featuring better support for third-party voices. They now distribute the Cepstral voices, which they consider to be the highest quality SAPI voices available. Check out the demo at http://www.blindsoftware.com/cepstral.asp. From a recent Bootlist: Having problems with programs that won't automatically open maximized? Try AutSizer, http://www.southbaypc.com/AutoSizer/ And also: Participants in the forum there are unanimous that having your anti-virus program scan e-mail is actually redundant, since it will recognize viruses in attachments anyway, and sometimes e-mail scanning can cause difficulties. The Norton site affirms that e-mail scanning is unnecessary: http://tinyurl.com/8tbzu. And from an earlier issue, I was reminded about a tool called Regmon. It sits in the background and monitors changes to the Windows registry so that you can manually reverse them, or know what is going on behind the scenes: http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/regmon.shtml Fred Langa wrote a balanced article on the popular Firefox browser, a browser that will probably become increasingly accessible to the blind, at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160900911. From Tourbus: An Australian web site has the ambitious plan to list all the brain teasers that have ever been created. Apparently, they're coming close: http://www.braingle.com/. And Ken Leebo has created a Blog, Blogging about Blogs, which purports to discuss and direct readers to blogs that are worth reading: http://bloggingaboutblogs.blogspot.com/. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, June 2, 2005 Alasdair King has renamed his Accessible Podcaster and added features. Accessible Podcatcher now features subscription functionality so that desired programs can be automatically downloaded. http://www.webbie.org.uk/accessiblepodcatcher/index.htm. Spybot Search & Destroy version 1.4 is now available and one place where you can download it from is at http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Spybot_Search_and_Destroy/1043809773/1. An accessible and large listing of podcasts is found at the Digital Podcast Directory, http://www.digitalpodcast.com/. The Microsoft Glossary for Business Users is a handy technical reference. Note that it may load slowly because it contains over 2,700 links. http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/glossary.mspx?pf=true. Reviews of Corel WordPerfect 12, Cloudmark Safety Bar for Outlook Express version 1.7.2 and Yahoo Messenger version 6 have been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/. A recent tech podcast called The Make contains a review of a promising mp3 player that includes an fm tuner that announces the frequencies and also a digital recorder: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/review_super_ta_1.html#more. Beyond Sight of Colorado has jumped on the Dolphin bandwagon and is offering two days of training on Dolphin products in September: http://www.beyondsight.com/. From the BootList: If you have entries in your Windows XP Add/remove list for programs you have already ninstalled, here are a couple websites with suggestions for eliminating them: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/AddRemove.htm, and http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314481. New desktops and laptops often come loaded with unwanted software and with recovery data stored in a second partition. These arrangements limit access to disk space you paid for and make the system less flexible to use. Fred Langa has written an article on how to take control of such systems: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163105444. Sony, the inventor of the good old 3.5-inch floppy disk, has announced that it will stop manufacturing them. The commercial site http://www.amazingmultimedia.net/ features information on how to clean up, digitize and restore records and open-reel tapes under the sections Restoration Notes and Tips and Tricks. I don't mention every new version of Skype, the popular voice-chat program, but they occur frequently. Skype version 1.3.0.48 beta is now available and you can download it from www.skype.com and also at http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Skype_for_Windows/1062684717/1. You can hear the HumanWare Audio Newsletter, whose latest issue is May, 2005, starting at http://www.pulsedata.com/About/market_news_US.asp. Acording to this article, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4603539.stm, Microsoft will increase the use of xml in its next version of Office. The next big time for adaptive technology announcements will be late June/July, when the large consumer conferences take place in the US and Sight Village takes place in the UK. In a recent Main Menu interview, Mike Calvo said that the summer version of Freedom Box will give users some unique mouse functionality. On the May 25 entry on his blog, The Mosen Explosion, http://www.mosenexplosion.com/, Jonathan Mosen gives the HumanWare side of the question, which is better, the BrailleNote or the Pac Mate. In the May 10 entry, he discusses accessing Podcasts with the BrailleNote. He is also interviewed on this week's Main Menu to offer the HumanWare side of the comparison between Pac Mate and Braille Note. Main Menu will be available throughout the week via ACBRadio Replay from Wednesday. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, June 9, 2005 If you wonder which screen reader, JAWS or Window-Eyes, performs better with Microsoft Word, the answer, (not a simple one,) is to be found in article 2 of Sound Computing. Subscribers already have it, and if you are not yet a subscriber, you can get that article and 49 others for the nominal sum of $9.00. To learn more, send a blank message to sc@topdotenterprises.com, or visit www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm. Dolphin Systems has been touting its new Pen Drive which allows users to easily use their Dolphin product on any computer. Doug Geoffray from Gw Micro discussed his perception of difficulties with this concept in general and also some ways in which Window-Eyes accomplishes the same thing in a listserv post. You can read his thoughts by sending a blank message to pendrive@topdotenterprises.com. This month's Accessible World symposium, sponsored by Talking Communities and Ocusource, consists of 30 hours of presentations over three days. Most of today's events will be concluded by the time you receive this, but events continue from 18:00 Friday 10 June through 00:30 on Saturday 11 June (including a demonstration of the braille Sense, of Plextalk and of Bookport,) and from 15:00-22:30 Saturday 11 June. (including presentations of Book Courrier and JSay.) All programs will be archived, and door prizes will be given. For more information and to take part, go to www.ocusource.com/expo/expo.cfm Podcasting Do It Yourself Guide is a commercial book available from Amazon.com (and probably elsewhere.) It can be had as an Adobe pdf file from those sources for $13.50, and reports are that the book can be read effectively using Adobe Reader. The Url to order the book from Amazon is www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0009VD2OQ/ref=lpr_g_1/102-246. In response to a question of which rss readers work best with Window-Eyes, (and presumably with other screen readers,) suggestions included Bloglines at www.bloglines.com/, Sharp Reader from www.sharpreader.com/ and Newsgator Online Services at www.newsgator.com/ngs/default.aspx While we're talking about podcasting, Mika Pyyhkala has written a thorough listserv post on how to get started in it. You can read it by sending a blank message to start-podcasting@topdotenterprises.com. Makers of an open-source screen reader which will bear the name Screenful are seeking several developers and documentation writers. (one wonders what will happen to the project if they don't find them!) If interested, write to screen_reader@users.sourceforge.net. Reviews of AT&T Global Network Client, English version 5.05.1, Bloodrose Talker Gmud version gmud 32, Retrospect version 6.5 and True Image version 8 have been added to the growing database of reviews at AccessWatch, www.accesswatch.info. Fred Langa's latest newsletter offers two web sites with information about slimming down Windows xp: www.hollow-refuge.net/Bold/viewtopic.php?t=229 and www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51202853. Version 2.1 of JSay Professional, the package that assists JAWS users to use Dragon Naturally Speaking for inputting text and controlling the computer by voice, has been released. This version supports JFW version 6.1 and Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8.1 SR1. The lead U.S. and Canada dealer is Next Generation Technologies, www.ngtvoice.com/products/software/jsay/ Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, June 16, 2005 It always helps when I give the proper addresses rather than relying on my memory. The auto-responder article on starting podcasting can be found at start-podcasting@topdotenterprises.com. Here are four podcasts that give up-to-date information on adaptive technology. The feed addresses given are designed to be given to a podcast aggregator program like IPodder or Accessible Podcatcher so you can get the new episodes automatically: Larry Skutchan from American Printing House for the Blind provides an informative podcast including demonstrations and instructions of APH products and thoughts on what is to come. The feed is found at www.aph.org/tech/bct.xml. Don Coco produces a weekly podcast called Blindtech in which he demonstrates and teaches various software. The feed is found at http://feeds.feedburner.com/djc. You can subscribe to an rss feed of the show notes at http://livejournal.com/users/djc1/rss, or read them at http://livejournal.com/users/djc1. JeffBishop produces The Desert Skies program on ACBRadio, and now also produces The Desert Skies podcast. The podcast covers technology news with a bent toward podcasting, especially news regarding IPodder. The feed is found at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDesertSkies. Also note that the beta versions of IPodder, largely thanks to Jeff, are progressively more accessible than the official released version. You can always get the latest one, and read about development, on his blog page, www.jeffbishop.com. Robert Cole produced a 12-part tutorial on using Mp3 Direct Cut. It is only available as a podcast. You can subscribe to it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/RobsPlace. EASI presents a free web conference, The Collaborative Road to Maine State Web Accessibility on Thursday, 23 June at 19:00 gmt. Sign up for the live performance and to gain access to the archive at http://easi.cc/clinic.htm. At least two mailing lists exist for those wishing to discuss web authoring from a blindness perspective. You can subscribe to blindwebbers by sending a blank message to blindwebbers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, and you can subscribe to the nfb-web list by sending a blank message to nfb-web-join@nfbnet.org. the New York Public Library has joined some other libraries in making a collection of books available for digital download. www.nypl.org. Version 2.2 of Freedom Box offers many new features and big fixes including cd burning, the ability to aggregate rss feeds and to create and play podcasts, ability to create a simple personal web page, ability to mark places in audio files and increased file transfer capabilities. www.freedombox.info. www.macvisionaries.com is a commercial web site dedicated to supporting the transfer of blind users to using VoiceOver, the screen reading capability built into the core of Apple Macintosh OS 10.4. Probably their main offering is a busy mailing list to support VoiceOver users, with tutorials on VoiceOver promised for the near future. You can join the discuss list from that site or by sending a blank message to discuss-join@macvisionaries.com. Subscribers to Sound Computing will soon receive the third article of the series, a short tutorial on using TinySpell. You can get 50 audio articles for $9.00, and can learn about the service at www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm, or by sending a blank message to sc@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, June 23, 2005 I'm sending this issue to subscribers individually, so I believe nearly everybody will receive it. More people are failing to receive the newsletter when it is sent through its normal channel. A lot of people didn't get the June 16 issue, so I'll put it at the bottom of this mailing. I'll probably add web availability to the options people will have for receiving the newsletter. Stay tuned! Companies are starting to publicize their offerings for the U.S. consumer conventions. HumanWare promises a new mystery product which they will unveil at the conventions, but which we presumably won't really be able to buy yet! Episode 12 of the Desert Skies Podcast features a panel discussion about the current state of accessibility to the Macintosh. You don't need to be a subscriber to listen to the program. This and others in the series are available for download from http://www.jeffbishop.net/ Dave Goodwin has launched a pre-release test version of VIP Consumer, a web site designed to help consumers review and discuss accessibility of consumer products. http://www.vipconsumer.com/ The National Library for the Blind in the United Kingdom has launched An online discussion forum on access technology, alongside other new forums on public libraries, books and tactile formats: http://forums.nlb-online.org/ There's an rss reader for use in Linux, Snownews, from http://kiza.dcore.de/software/snownews/ Steve Pattison identifies a web site containing reviews of products designed to identify and remove spyware: http://www.adwarereport.com/ Version 1.4 of Accessible Podcatcher is available: http://www.webbie.org.uk/ The final release of iPodder version 2.1 is available. Accessibility to the program has been improving throughout the test cycle, and this release is much more accessible than the previous release version. One place to get it is http://www.jeffbishop.net/ Reviews of mercora IM radio version 3.1.8.0, All Image version 1.0.1, iPodder version 2.1 and DivX Create version 6 have been added to the database of AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/ EASI offers a $350 course, Assistive Computer Technology on a Shoestring the EASI Way. Read about it at http://easi.cc/workshops/ltech.htm You can rename form fields in Word forms using Window-Eyes version 5, even if the form is password-protected. Read the procedure by sending a blank message to weforms@topdotenterprises.com. To read an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about the trend for libraries to offer downloadable audio books, send a blank message to philabooks@topdotenterprises.com. Keep in mind that for all matters regarding books, items may be limited to the country where the books are published because of international copyright laws. Passwords that used to be safe from computer password-cracking software may no longer be so because of advances in this software. Fred Langa has written an article about how to make really secure passwords at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=164303537 Eligible readers in the U.S. who are members of www.bookshare.org can acquire high-quality copies of several newly-available technology books, including books on pc and mac hardware, Windows Xp, and web design. Kelly's Corner is a web site entitled Troubleshooting Windows XP, Tweaks and Fixes for Windows XP. It contains hundred of registry fixes and utilities. http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm With this issue, we've completed our second quarter of Tidbits, so I'll put q2 up as an auto-responder file. You can get issues 14-26 of Tidbits by sending a blank message to q2@topdotenterprises.com. The first thirteen issues are available as q1@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, June 30, 2005 This copy of Tidbits is being sent from the mailman list to which you are subscribed.. Starting this week, you have four choices for receiving Tidbits. The first choice is the usual Mailman list, the list you subscribed to. For some of you, that choice works impeccably, but for others it does not. Increasingly, newsletters are blocked by ISP's working to fight spam, and often the intended recipient is not aware of this blockage. So, for those who do not consistently receive Tidbits via e-mail, or who want another option, you now have three of them. First, All issues heretofore will be posted to the Tidbits web site, http://www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm Second, if you want to receive an e-mail announcement when the newest Tidbits has been posted to the web, visit the Tidbits web site and fill out the Page Monitor form. You'll receive a short announcement alerting you that the page has changed. This free page monitoring service does not generate spam for you and spam filters do not tend to block the announcements. Third, Tidbits now has an rss feed. Paste this link into your rss reader to be notified when a new issue is on the web page: http://www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.xml Note that I sent last week's Tidbits myself, bypassing the Mailman list. This issue will go out twice, once from my system and once from Mailman, with the two copies labeled so you can distinguish them. this extra e-mail will enable you to know if you are receiving the Mailman messages or not. Remember that the name of the newsletter contains four t's, but most screen readers will only pronounce three. To join, send a blank message to tttt-join@topdotenterprises.com. To leave, send a blank message to tttt-leave@topdotenterprises.com. Whenever you see a worthy news item, mailing list post, or piece of technical information that might help others, send it along to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Any questions about any of this? Just ask! Now to the news, abundant since summer consumer group convention time is upon us in the U.S. Freedom Scientific has posted the announcement of the Pac Mate 3.0 firmware upgrade. This $115 upgrade adds automatic braille scrolling, the ability to lock the keyboard so you can read without losing your place if a vehicle bumps, improved support for pocket AIM for messaging, and the ability to use Pac Mate desktop to operate a desktop computer running JAWS from the Pac Mate. The Pocket AIM support increases communication options for the deaf-blind, and they plan other deaf-blind communication device options by the end of the year. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/DL_PACmate_30_Update.asp The "mystery product" frum HumanWare is the next generation BrailleNote, the BrailleNote mPower. People will indeed be able to buy a unit now and have it ship in July. It features much more internal memory, usb connectivity, the ability to listen to streaming audio, stereo speakers, and built-in bluetooth. Hear an audio demonstration at http://www.humanware.com/. The mPower was the subject of this week's Main Menu on ACBRadio, and the broadcast remains available through ACBRadio Radio Replay throughout the week. Read the press release at http://www.humanware.com/About/news/press280605.asp Kurzweil announces the release later this summer of Kurzweil 1000 version 10.0. This version will allow for the creation of audio daisy books and better recognition thanks to the inclusion of ScanSoft OCR version 12.6. http://www.kurzweiledu.com/ The latest weekly article in the Gw Micro Did you Know series discusses the Window-Eyes 5.0 color dictionary. The Did You Know articles are now available as a podcast: http://www.gwmicro.com/podcast BITS, the Blind Information Technology Specialists chapter of American Councl of the Blind, will be podcasting their convention sessions. The feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/bitsaudioblog Chris Skarstad plans to make technology-related podcasts from the ACB convention. His feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/toonheadsrants Now for ITunes: Woody Anna Dresner has written a book for National Braille Press, The iPod Experience: Gaining Access to the iPod Shuffle. The book is available in digital or hard-copy braille for $6.00 from http://www.nbp.org/IPOD.html Anna was interviewed by Jeff Bishop for The Desert Skies podcast, and the interview can be downloaded at http://libsyn.com/media/jeffbis/tds20050629-14.mp3 Brian Hartgen is in the process of preparing free JfW scripts for iTunes, particularly designed to facilitate transfer of Audible files and music to and from the iPod Shuffle. Write to him to learn of the availability of his scripts at brian@hartgen.org Chris Skarstad wrote a detailed message on making iTunes work. He called it I Conquered the iPod Shuffle. You can read it by sending a blank message to iconquered@topdotenterprises.com iTunes 4.9 came out Tuesday and is said to contain considerable accessibility improvement for JAWS users. Premier Access Technology announces the release of Text Cloner 7.0, its $99.95 optical character recognition program, featuring a choice to scan text in high-speed mode (which skips tables and graphics) and can recognize five or six pages a minute on a low-cost scanner, and detail scan mode. http://www.readingmadeeasy.com/ Ian Humphreys, owner of Spoonbill Software, has taken to writing freeware accessible games for the blind. So far, he has versions of Freecell and cribbage with some other games in process. Games have received very positive reviews. Visit the page at http://www.omninet.net.au/~irhumph/blindgamers.htm Petro Giasou has created a mailing list for JAWS users to discuss use of Replay Radio, a program for recording Internet radio and capturing podcasts. To subscribe, send a blank message to replay-radio-jaws-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can read articles from Pc Magazine and Pc World reviewing anti-spyware programs by sending a blank message to junespyware@topdotenterprises.com VIP Conduite, Inc. has created a new audio chat site for the blind. Read about the organization and its plans at http://www.vipconduit.com/ A review of Milog version 8.2.2 has been added to the database at AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/ Reminder: I provide adaptive technology training and computer setup at affordable prices throughout most of Washington and Oregon, and elsewhere by special arrangement. In addition, I expect to be in Fargo and St. Louis later in the North American summer. Contact me if I can be of any assistance. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, July 7, 2005 Audio coverage of technology and other matters from the American Council of the Blind convention continues non-stop at www.acbradio.org. Extensive daily coverage of the National Federation of the Blind convention was to be posted at http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/148/vnb-presents-2005-nfb-national-convention-same-day-coverage but the page, and the entire Voice of the Nation's Blind page has been down whenever I've tried to reach it. In Blind Cool Tech, Larry Skutchan takes listeners on a sound seeing tour of the NFB convention exhibits, particularly the Accessible Home Showcase which features various accessible household appliances: http://www.aph.org/tech/bct/NFB2005Exhibits.mp3. He also shares a presentation where the director and staff of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped discuss the plans for conversion to digital technology: http://www.aph.org/tech/bct/EverythingDigitalWithNLS2005.mp3. Larry has recorded other events at or surrounding the convention. The Blind Cool Tech web site is http://www.aph.org/tech/bct.htm and you can subscribe to the podcast at by adding http://www.aph.org/tech/bct.xml to your podcatcher. AI Squared, www.aisquared.com, is showing ZoomText Version 9, which among other enhancements features incremental magnification from 2x to 3x, magnification as high as 36x, and a system for making very large text display smoothly and crisply. Assistive Technology Center has two of their own products. The DocuEdge Scanning System is a very small scanner which can scan up to 100 pages into its memory for later transfer to a computer. The $249 or $449 package comes with transfer software and cables and OmniPage optical character recognition software. They also sell a line of laptops, the AdvantEdge laptops, which come with no-questions-asked warranties. http://www.atechcenter.net/ After months of promising these products, Freedom Scientific is now shipping both StreeTalker, a gps system which adds speech and braille access to Destinator, a gps program for Pocket Pc, and FS Reader, a daisy software package with versions available both for pc and Pac Mate. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/PressRoom/en/2005/nr_StreetTalk-FSReader-6-30-2005.asp Gw Micro has been showing the upcoming Window-Eyes version 5.5, which will feature vastly-improved access to Microsoft Access and complete access to the Firefox web browser. Duxbury Systems is syipping version 10.5 SR1 of the Duxbury Braille Translator for Windows. This version includes quick ways to generate braille from Microsoft Word documents, JAWS scripts for use with the program, the ability to import braille music documents produced by the GoodFeel translator, standard windows dialog boxes, and more. http://www.duxsys.com/news.asp The Sendero Group is in the final month of testing version 3.0 of its Braille Note GPS system. The system includes a database of 12 million points of interest and enhanced manual route creation capabilities. http://www.senderogroup.com/ Moving away from news and discoveries from the consumer conventions: Subscribers to Sound Computing will receive a new article: Accessing Audio and Electronic Books from Public Libraries. This and 49other audio articles are available to subscribers for a $9.00 subscription. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm AdAware Scripts 1.0, JAWS scripts for the AdAware spyware removal package, are available free from http://www.accessibleprograms.com/ Clarion USA announces the PcMate, a video magnifier that connects to a computer via usb so that a laptop screen becomes a cctv. It features split screen, distance viewing, color select and can even "Capture" an image to be saved as a file on your hard drive. http://www.clarityusa.com/ Steve Holmes has created free Window-Eyes set files for iTunes. He reports that the program has glitches even with these set files, but that the glitches can generally be overcome and he will answer questions. http://www.holmesgrown.com/window-eyes/itunes.zip A driver now exists to allow JAWS users to use the Braille Note or Voice Note as a speech synthesizer. http://www.humanware.com/Products/Notetakers/braillenote_downloads.asp Katherine Schneider has started a mailing list for those wishing to discuss logic and word puzzles. To subscribe write a blank message to blind-puzzlers-subscribe@smartgroups.com Reviews of Microsoft ActiveSync version 3.7.1, Money Talks version 1.0, Winfax version 10, FTP Explorer version 1.0, Absolute FTP version 2.2.10 have been added to the AccessWatch database at http://www.accesswatch.info/ A recent thread on the gw-info mailing list highlighted two ways to get accessible television program listings in the U.S. To read about them, send a blank message to tvlistings@topdotenterprises.com. (When I say blank, I mean it: all text in subject lines and message body is ignored by the auto-responders!) A talking e-mail system has been started in New Zealand. http://www.springdoo.com/ Aaron Howel tells of a fairly speech-friendly free registry cleaner and system optimizer called Crap Cleaner, available from http://www.ccleaner.com/ American Printing House for the Blind will hold a series of eight webcasts concerning different aspects of the Bookport, their portable audio book reading device. The webcasts will last around a half hour each, will take place on Tuesdays in Morth America, and are free to attend with prior registration by e-mail. To learn more, go to http://www.aph.org/advisory/webcast.html I've launched my own podcast: Baha'i Perspectives. You can listen to or download the programs at http://bahai-perspectives.info and subscribe to the feed at http://bahai-perspectives.info/fp.xml. My thoughts, prayers and condolences go to the people in London and the U.K. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, July 14, 2005 Breaking News: Thursday will come early next week, maybe not at all! I'm leaving town and the Internet Wednesday afternoon, so if there's a newsletter, it will appear before then. I'm looking at selling a PAC Mate QX420, (QWERTY keyboard with 20-cell braille display.) The unit is new and under warranty until September. Running version 3.0. Asking $2,800 or best offer. Reply if interested. It's the news crash after the U.S. consumer conventions: The entire contents of The Smith-Kettlewell Technical File are now available by FTP. The Smith-Kettlewell Technical File is A QUARTERLY TECHNICAL JOURNAL FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED READERS It contains, among other articles, a seven part series on soldering techniques, and an extensive series on basic electronics construction methods which culminates in building a series of practical test instruments. also included are numerous articles on specific integrated circuits and other solid state devices. To find this journal, go to this case-sensitive site: ftp.ski.org/pub/Rehab/Fowle Contact Tom Fowle at fowle@ski.org if you have difficulties accessing the site. The July issue of AccessWorld is available at http://www.afb.org/accessworld. It contains reviews of the Focus braille displays and Maestro pda, a guide to customizing the mouse for users with low vision and other articles. AI Squared is making ZoomText 9.0 available as a public beta for all to try and evaluate. Get it at http://www.aisquared.com/Products/zt9/Z9FreeTrial.cfm This article discusses the problem faced by blind computer users when companies such as Google and Yahoo implement graphical security procedures to ensure that a human and not a robot is logging on: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3518741. The US National Federation of the Blind passed a resolution against the use of these procedures. Google has publicly announced that it will have an accessible alternative in one to two months. Hurricane seasons have unfortunately been quite active in recent years. Here is a web site with hurricane tracking information for any current storm, including audio tracking: http://www.hurricanecity.com/ There will be an audio seminar on podcasting on Saturday 16 July from 14:30-17:00 GMT, given by Dave Porter from Chicago. The Url to join live is http://www.talkingcommunities.com/edu and archives will be available. A follow-up session will take place on Friday 22 July at 22:00 GMT. The BootList offers this link to troubleshooting Usb problems in Windows xp: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310575 his week's additions to Blind Cool Tech include demonstrations of Talking Word Puzzles and of the K Sonar mobility aid. http://www.aph.org/tech/bct.htm. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Wednesday, July 20, 2005 I told you Thursday would be early this week! (I will be away from the net for four days starting late Wednesday stateside, hence the early delivery of Tidbits this week.) In response to a reader request, the links in Tidbits will appear on lines by themselves for easy copying in the web and rss versions. Subscribers to the Sound Computing service can now access a 90-minute tutorial on Replay Radio, prepared by Petrakigianos Giasou. This tutorial is especially suited for new or uncertain JAWS users. It is very thorough. This and 49 other articles, tutorials and reviews are available as part of the $9.00 subscription to Sound Computing. For information, send a blank message to sc@topdotenterprises.com or visitwww.topdotenterprises.com/sc.htm At Sight Village, the main technology exhibition in the UK, Serotek will unveil Key to Freedom 2.2, a small usb drive for Windows 2000 and xp that allows the owner to put Freedom Box on any system, leaves no trace of itself requires no sighted assistance, and even provides the user with storage space for downloading files from the Internet, local computer, and even home -- right onto the device itself. The unit will begin shipping in August for $595; if you lose yours, you can replace it for $200. For more information, www.freedombox.info For the People, http://for-the-people.com/ will offer two technology classes. The first one may already be full: Taming the Beast: Tackling Outlook Express will be offered Mondays or Wednesdays starting 27 July at 18:00 GMT. To learn more and check availability, write to asktiger@bellsouth.net They will also hold classes on the JAWS scripts for their audio chat client, Chatterbox. These take place Friday 22 July at 00:00 or Saturday 23 July at 18:00 gmt. Free membership in the group is required for participation. A Wired article entitled ITunes Mints Podcasting Stars is found at http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,68185,00.html Version5.094 of the popular audio player Winamp version is now available and one easy place where you can download it from is at www.whitestick.co.uk/download.html. A company call Kurzweil Technologies showed a pocket-sized reading machine at the US National Federation of the Blind convention. The unit, which they claim will be available in 2006, is supposed to be able to read print on signs, packages and electronic displays as well as standard books. If you want to buy music from a particular artist, you can go to http://www.mp3.com/ and find links to the online music stores that carry that artist's music. Recent additions to the Did you Know series from Gw Micro include The Braille Sense and Multitasking and Using the Spell-check hotkeys in Window-Eyes. These are available as podcasts, or as text from http://www.gwmicro.com/support Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, July 28, 2005 EASI offered a free hour-long web conference on the DO-IT program's NSF grant to promote advancement of people with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and math. You can listen to the conference and learn about two other free conferences coming up, as well as some for-fee events, at http://easi.cc/summer05 Jeff Bishop continues to produce and improve The Desert Skies, a weekly podcast whose individual programs are also downloadable from his site http://www.jeffbishop.net/ In the show notes for the 21 July podcast, found on the site, are several technology and adaptive technology news items worth reading. On his periodic blog, The Mosen Explosion, http://www.mosenexplosion.com/ Jonathan Mosen used his mPower to record an interview with Martin Roberts, also of HumanWare, at the close of the Sight Village exhibition in the UK. Listen at http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=P806f2e8a0066903a80af559e1fcb7825ZV56QlREYmd0&buffer=5&fc=CCFF33&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&autoplay=1&gateway=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.audioblog.com%2Fplaylist&player=ap02 Australian tax payers can again use E-Tax 2005 to prepare tax returns; it is accessible with both JAWS and Window-Eyes. http://www.ato.gov.au"/ Beth Hatch wrote a brief explanation of the difference between a network hub and a switch, and provided a source for additional information. You can read her message by sending a blank message to hub&switch@topdotenterprises.com this site has a lot of information about the growing threat of identity theft: http://www.idtheftcenter.org/ Gregg Kearney has produced a Daisy talking book of the manual for the VoiceOver screen reader for the Macintosh. Download the zip file at http://kearney.servehttp.com/test/VOICEOVER.zip Talkr is a service which converts text blogs into audio ones using synthetic speech. http://www.talkr.com/ A web usability firm, Webcredible, has produced some coherent guidelines for web developers on making sites really usable. You can read them by sending a blank message to webcredible@topdotenterprises.com A review of the accessibility of Itunes version 4.9 has been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/ The TeDub project is working to give blind folks access to a variety of digitized technical drawings and maps. Learn about the project at http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/ Michael Feir has written an article entitled Adware and Spyware: Nuisance to Sighted and Mennace to Blind. You can read it by sending a blank message to feir@topdotenterprises.com. Kirk McElhearn has written an article, Old Time Radio for Your iPod: Free OTR May Improve Podcasts. You can get it by sending a blank message to oldradiopodcasts@topdotenterprises.com In his Blind Access Journal, http://journal.shandrow.com/ among much other content, Darrell Shandrow is sharing his learnings on using the StreetTalker gps system with PAC Mate and the Destinator software for Pocket Pc. Here you can listen to his first adventure with the system, http://www.audioblog.com/export/P7d9b8183ff2417a5df0fbb4531cb67abZVFwRVREYmF2.mp3 And he also provides a live installation tutorial http://www.shandrow.com/audio/podcast/destinator_streettalk.mp3 The first beta of the upcoming uperating system Windows Vista is out, and you can read an article about it from ZDNet by sending a blank message to vistabeta@topdotenterprises.com Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, August 4, 2005 Did you all enjoy the auto-responder on the differences between hubs and switches? Good; very gratifying. Now, perhaps you'd enjoy it even more if you could actualy read it! One [perceptive reader pointed out that the and & sign isn't allowed in e-mail addresses, so that item couldn't go through e-mail as created. So if you want to know the differences between a hub and a switch, write a blank message to the corrected address hubswitch@topdotenterprises.com. Two recent podcasts have reviewed the Iriver IFP-799T digital recorder. Larry Skutchan reviewed it in BlindCoolTech, http://www.aph.org/tech/bct.htm and Shane Jackson reviewed it in his podcast, to which you can subscribe by adding http://feeds.feedburner.com/Shaneslivejournal to your podcatcher. Gregg Kearney has written a free cross-platform program to build Daisy books from either text or audio files. Read about DaisyMaker at https://home.wmcnet.org/services/daisymaker/ The latest edition of the Freedom Scientific Newsletter can be read at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/current_newsletter.asp The latest edition of Gw Micro's Did You Know series of support articles concerns reading tables in Word. http://www.gwmicro.com/support Saqib Shaikh has written a description of what he can and cannot do with the current version of VoiceOver for the Macintosh. You can read it by sending a blank message to vo-08-05@topdotenterprises.com. Appended to the message is Gregg Kearney's list of currently accessible applications with the mac. There is a list of blind podcasters at http://www.whitestick.co.uk/podcasts.html Another review of the first beta of windows Vista, this time from CNet, can be read by sending a blank message to cnetvista@topdotenterprises.com. The makers of the Freedom Box have added free spam filters and anti-virus protection for their subscribers. www.freedombox.info You can read the article Secrets to good Hard Drive Hygiene from the New York Times by sending a blank message to hard-drive-hygiene@topdotenterprises.com Sendero Group is now shipping BrailleNote GPS Version 3.3, whose imminent existence was announced earlier but with the wrong version number. The database is now much larger and contains some 12 million "points of interest," and the manual route creation software has been enhanced. http://www.senderogroup.com/ Amateur radio operators and those potentially interested in the hobby can get information and read or listen to newsletters from the Courage Center at http://www.handiham.org/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, August 11, 2005 Remember, if you or somebody you know stops receiving the e-mail edition of Tidbits, your ISP has probably decided that it looks a lot like spam and begun filtering it out. Do not despair, just go to the Tidbits web site and download the issues from there, or subscribe to the rss feed. www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm Jamal Mazrui makes available two free programs. JAWS Script Exchange is designed to assist and promote the sharing of script files among users of the JAWS. http://www.empowermentzone.com/jsxsetup.exe PDF2TXT 2.0 is for converting files in Portable Document Format (.pdf extension) to plain text(.txt extension). The program lets you convert multiple files in a single, batch operation, either from a GUI dialog or a console-mode command line. http://www.empowermentzone.com/p2tsetup.exe Gw Micro is making available training materials in Flash, with audio and video content, fully usable by blind and sighted folks. http://www.gwmicro.com/support/tutorial An accessibility evaluation of Goldwave Version 5.10 has been added to AccessWatch http://www.accesswatch.info/ AbleData, a long-time resource, contains listings of disability-related products and other adaptive technology information, maintained under a contract with the US National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research http://www.abledata.com/ Byte Into It is a computer show from Melbourne, available in streaming audio or as a podcast: http://www.rrr.org.au/onair.php?pid=24 AMIS is an open-source Daisy player intended to bring Daisy content to all, especially those in third world countries. A pre-release candidate version of the player is available for testing at http://amis.sf.net/ Astronaut Steve Robinson was the first podcaster from space. Listen to his broadcast at http://www1.nasa.gov/mp3/124708main_sts114_robinson_podcast.mp3 Recent additions to Darrell Shandrow's Blind Access Journal http://journal.shandrow.com/ include discussions of PAC Mate woes, comparisons of two gps receivers, a tutorial on installing Street Talk the PAC Mate gps program, a demonstrate of the Street Talk gps solution, and a tutorial on configuring PAC Mate to work with a Nokia mobile phone. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, August 18, 2005 If you change e-mail addresses, and you want to keep getting Tidbits at the new address, once the new one is in place, just send a blank message to tttt-join@topdotenterprises.com to subscribe to Tidbits there. From the old one, you can write to tttt-leave@topdotenterprises.com. In most cases, I won't change addresses for Tidbits manually for you since it is easy for everybody to do, but write if there's a problem. If you change e-mail addresses, once the new one is in place, just send a blank message to tttt-join@topdotenterprises.com to subscribe to Tidbits there. From the old one, you can write to tttt-leave@topdotenterprises.com. In most cases, I won't change addresses for Tidbits manually. Version 10 of the OCR program Kurzweil 1000 is now shipping, featuring new NewSpeech voices, the ability to create Daisy files and a newer version of the ScanSoft OCR engine among other enhancements. www.kurzweiledu.com If you use either web development software or a text editor to create web pages, along with adaptive technology, you may be invited to test a new web development package. If interested, send e-mail to joeclark@joeclark.org If you are encountering difficulties setting up an account on Google because of the inaccessible visual verification procedure they use, you can write to accounts-support@google.com. Darrell Shandrow in his Blind Access Journal http://journal.shandrow.com/ calls our attention to a Blogger survey which may give us the chance to emphasize our need to accessible alternatives to visual verification: http://services.google.com/feedback/blogger/5820579 Users of Acrobat Reader 7.02 can now install version 7.03, available from http://www.softwarepatch.com/graphics/acrobatupdate703html or update from within Acrobat Reader. Code Factory has released a public beta of Mobile Speak Pocket, a screen reader for devices running Windows Mobile 2003. The official page is at http://www.codefactory.es/mobile_speak_pocket/mspeak_pocket.htm and a developing user community is at http://www.mspusers.com/ The July Braille Monitor contains an insightful article comparing the PAC Mate and the BrailleNote. http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0507/bm050710.htm While this article contains good information, it is of necessity out of date since it appeared before the BrailleNote mPower became available. Watch here for news of the Sound Computing up-to-date comparison. Speaking of Sound Computing, subscribers can now read an article entitled Fast Listening with Software, detailing how you can use free software to speed up spoken-word audio files. this and 49 other audio articles are gradually becoming available for the single-digit price of $9.00 US. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm HumanWare has released KeySoft version 6.01 for the BrailleNote PK. http://www.humanware.com/Products/Notetakers/braillenote_downloads.asp Reviews of Spyware Blaster version 3.4 and Winamp version 5.093 have been added to AccessWatch, http://www.accesswatch.info/ The latest Bootlist refers us a handy site on computer networking, with lots of other subjects covered elsewhere at the site: http://www.onecomputerguy.com/networking.htm Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, August 25, 2005 Sound Computing will shortly feature a head-to-head comparison of portable devices, primarily PAC Mate and Braille Note mPower. As part of the comparison, it would be enlightening to get users' perspectives, whether you use PAC Mate, one ofthe Braille Note family or some other portable device. I invite you to answer a free-form questionnaire regarding your experience with portable devices, or to simply write me a letter about those experiences and your evaluation. The questionnaire can be had by sending a blank message to thoughts@topdotenterprises.com. This week, subscribers to Sound Computing will be able to learn the latest about Google Desktop Search, a tool which puts Windows Find to shame. This and 49 other audio articles, evaluations and mini-tutorials can be had for the price of $9.00 US total. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm or via blank message to sc@topdotenterprises.com. Biblseekr is considered by some to be the most accessible Bible search program. Some new versions of the Bible have recently been added to its options. http://www.bibleseeker.org/ A new mailing list to discuss use of the Macintosh by the blind has been started. The list is macfortheblind, and you subscribe by sending a blank message to mac4theblind-request@freelists.org You can find an assortment of US federal, state and local government podcasts at http://freegovinfo.info/node/174 For-The People, http://for-the-people.com is offering to its members an introductory course on Windows. You can find out about the class from John Harris kc8klx@zoominternet.net Andy from the UK has posted some quality instructions for using The affordable sound editing program Goldwave to split large files, and also a list of Goldwave keyboard shortcuts. You can read his post by sending a blank message to goldwave-tips@topdotenterprises.com Carrolltech is offering its full line of instructor-led and self-paced classes on using JAWS or Window-Eyes with popular applications starting in September. Self-paced classes typically cost $100.00 for individuals. http://carrolltech.org This summer, EASI did 3 hour-long Web conferences on the topic of making science, technology, engineering, and math more accessible to students with disabilities. Listen to them at http://easi.cc/summer05/ The fall schedule of EASI web conferences at http://easi.cc/clinic.htm Learn about EASI's for-fee workshops in September at http://easi.cc/workshop.htm Jamal Mazrui is writing JAWS scripts to create speech-friendly and powerful alternatives to Windows programs. Beta scripts for Notetalk http://www.empowermentzone.com/ntb49scr.exe scripts which enhance the functionality of the $20 Notetab Pro editor www.notetab.com and also EJ (Explorer plus JAWS http://www.empowermentzone.com/ep62scr.exe scripts which enhance the performance of the $40.00 ExplorerPlus http://www.sendphotos.com/Products/ExplorerPlus/ Radio station WFMU offers three interesting podcasts, one offering interesting radio airchecks and the others offering recordings from the old days of the phonograph. http://www.wfmu.org/ Various programs from the American NBC television network, including the nightly news, are available as podcasts. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8132577/ Fred Langa's worthwhile newsletter http://langa.com directs us to two interesting articles on potential liability for unauthorized access to wireless networks: "Wi-Fi Liability: Potential Legal Risks in Accessing and Operating Wireless Internet" is a scholarly legal paper available from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=692881 And "Assessing Liability? Trespass on (Municipal) Wi-Fi Networks," a more colloquial take on the issue, is available here: http://blog.pff.org/archives/2005/06/assessing_liabi.html Fred has compiled a listing of four dozen of his readers' favorite tools for converting, burning and ripping sound files, along with comments on why the tools are effective. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=166401664 In addition to his informative podcasts, Jeff Bishop provides links to much of the week's technology news as show notes. Find all this at http://www.jeffbishop.net/ One alternative for an accessible digital recorder/player is the Archos line of products. In conjunction with the Rockbox firmware upgrade, these units become quite accessible. They are not made any longer, but now there may be some hope for finding some units in good condition. A reader reported that he has had good success working with a company called NewMp3Technology, and that in response to his question, Mike Freeman from thiscompany may be able to sell some units in good working condition. Check out the organization http://www.newmp3technology.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, September 1, 2005 As we talk about adaptive technology, tens of thousands of people suffer displacement, injury and loss on the U.S. gulf coast. Google Talk is a new voice talk program from Google. Aman Singer has written a post on its accessibility. Get it by sending a blank message to singer-googletalk@topdotenterprises.com Matthew Webb is a student doing a study on web accessibility for the blind. He seeks blind computer users to participate in the study. For information, go to http://www.mathewwebb.f2s.com/study/ Freedom Scientific has released version 9.5 of the screen magnification program MAGic. Read about the release at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_MAG950.asp The September-October issue of the Freedom Scientific Newsletter is now available, with introductory rumblings about JFW version 7.0, an enthusiastic endorsement of the PAC Mate and other articles. Read it at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/current_newsletter.asp Apple's VoiceOver screen reader has not received universally positive review, and another unfavorable review will appear in the September issue of AccessWorld. Ian Blackburn disagrees with these assessments, and has written his own review. You can read it by sending a blank message to vo-positive@topdotenterprises.com Version 5.5 of window-Eyes is coming, and Gw Micro plans to release a public beta of this version on September 6. In anticipation of this event, they are publishing a daily teaser about the new features of the program, focusing on firstrate access to the Firefox web browser and to Microsoft Excel. You can read all installments of the series at http://www.gwmicro.com/beta Speaking of the Firefox browser, access to it is rumored to be part of JFW 7, whose features are yet to be made public. In the meantime, users of JFW version 6 can already access firefox to some extent, as described in a recent listserv post. You can read it by sending a blank message to firefox-jfw6@topdotenterprises.com Brian Hartgen has started a new mailing list, blindipod, for discussing all aspects of IPods and portable media devices as used by the blind. To join, send a blank message to blindipod-request@freelists.org You can get information about EASI's free and fee-based clinics in September by visiting http://easi.cc/clinic.htm window-Eyes set files for the Skype voice chat program are available at http://ariesthekid.no-ip.org/skype.zip A nice site providing ongoing podcasting news and a well-organized podcast directory is at http://www.podcastingnews.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, September 8, 2005 When I get back to a high-speed connection in a few days, I'll be uploading a Sound Computing article concerning how to access list Views with both Window-Eyes 5.0 and JFW 6.2. Also, what is becoming a two-part series on the current state of portable devices for blind folks will begin with a discussion of the results of my recent notetaker survey. A $9.00 subscription gives you access to these and 48 other audio articles, some already produced, most coming over the next few months. http://www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm An accessibility review of ML iPod version 1.21 has been added to the database of AccessWatch http://www.accesswatch.info/ The public beta of Window-Eyes 5.5 is now available for all to test and evaluate, with its improved access to Microsoft Excel, access to the popular Firefox web browser and other features. http://www.gwmicro.com/beta The program archives for ACBRadio's technology show, Main Menu, have been updated to contain material through August 31. http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=19 This week's Main Menu program, available for the rest of the week as part of the download at http://www.acbradio.org/archives/replay/wednesday.m3u contains a review of the IRiver 799 and 899 digital player/recorder, which is very popular among blind users. VipConduit offers classes to its members for an annual membership of US $20.00. Available archived classes include a tutorial on Winamp,cd burning under windows xp, and windows basics classes among others. http://www.vipconduit.com/ Paul Edwards wrote an article for the Braille Forum concerning VoiceOver for the Macintosh. It is available at http://home.adelphia.net/~bmss/vo/bfvo-sept2005.html An article entitled Podcasting, a New Technology in search of Viable Business Models, can be read at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_9/crofts/index.html Here is a non-profit organization that loans audio books on cassette or cd and pays the return postage. The collection grows through donations. I don't know how much of the world can benefit from this. http://www.talkingpages.org/ HumanWare's newsletter, News for Educators, fall edition, is now available from http://www.humanware.com/about/documents/EducationNewsletter8-2005.doc The best way to keep up with the latest news in general technology, with some excellent adaptive technology focus as well, continues to be Jeff Bishop's The Desert Skies podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast by adding this link to your podcatcher http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDesertSkies You can download this week's broadcast here http://www.archive.org/download/JeffBishopTheDesertSkiesPodcastEpisode22/tds2005090822.mp3 and you can find links to the numerous technology news stories at http://www.jeffbishop.net/ Among the tidbits I picked up from The Desert Skies: US National Public Radio now has a web site that lists 130 podcasts available from them or their affiliate stations: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php You can listen to a five-minute preview of all the presentations coming up through OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) by clicking http://www.opal-online.org/preview200509.htm Check here for a podcast blog of past OPAL events http://opalpodcast.blogspot.com/ AiSquared has released ZoomText version 9.0, with more flexible and improved magnification and also higher-quality speech. A trial version is at http://www.aisquared.com/Products/zt9/Z9FreeTrial.cfm Freedom Scientific plans to release JFW 7.0 during the last week of September. If you're looking for programs to catalog cd's, movies and books, one list poster recommended programs from http://www.wensoftware.com/ If you're looking for a program to extract audio from dvd's, this subject came up on one mailing list recently. One recommendation was Dvd Audio Extractor, from http://www.castudio.org/ and another, IM2, from http://www.imtoo.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, September 15, 2005 Dr. Jonathan Lazar gave a speech at this year's US National Federation of the Blind convention entitled "What Frustrates Screen Reader Users." You can listen to the speech here; http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/asx/DrJonathanLazar.asx The September 2005 issue of AccessWorld is out, including a review of Apple's VoiceOver, how to buy a CCTV, an interview with Curtis Chong, tips for trainers and more http://www.afb.org/aw/main.asp Computers to Help People is making available a free xml-to-braille translator which can translate files exported from Microsoft Word, and some Daisy files, into contracted braille. Visit the What's New section of this site for the archive: http://www.chpi.org/ FreedomBox 2.2.1, which fixes bugs and enhances the capabilities of the FreedomBox browser, is available. www.freedombox.info An article a bout planned features in Internet Explorer version 7 is found at http://www.techweb.com/wire/170703182 Jamal Mazrui has released Windig, an open-source program which "digs" for technical information about the currently running program. The utility generates lists of hotkeys and menu options as well as technical information useful to those wishing to adapt the program for adaptive technology. http://www.empowermentzone.com/wdsetup.exe An article discussing Microsoft's plans to expand its windows Vista testing is found at http://news.com.com/Microsoft+expands+Vista+testing/2100-1016_3-5862654.html Version 1.110 of MobileSpeak, one of the screen readers for mobile phones, is now available from CodeFactory http://www.codefactory.es/ CodeFactory also announces version 1.0.2 of MobileSpeakPocket for PocketPc, providing improved web browsing. http://www.codefactory.es/mobile_speak_pocket/msp_downloads.htm Iowa's Project ASSIST With Windows is currently accepting applications for US residents for the ASSIST Online program. ASSIST Online is a distance learning program that offers free online courses which will prepare you for the Microsoft Office Specialist certification exams for Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Word. The Microsoft Word class for new students begins October 3. We must receive completed applications no later than September 22, 2005. For further information, and to download an application, please point your browser to HTTP://www.blind.state.ia.us/assist/assistonline.htm. The Fred's Head Database, named in honor of Fred Gissoni, is a service of American Printing House for the Blind offering practical tips for solving daily difficulties posed by blindness. Now you can read a blog of Fred's Head submissions or receive them as a podcast. Visit http://www.fredsheadcompanion.blogspot.com/ Brian Hartgen has created free Window-Eyes set files for iTunes version 5.0 You can get them at http://www.hartgen.org/blindipod.html Larry Skutchan continues to produce frequent informative podcasts in the Blind Cool Tech series, now available from http://www.blindcooltech.com/ As part of the series, Curtis and Karen Delzer created a podcast to demonstrate the Verizon LGVX4650 phone. Jonathan Mosen has resumed production of his Mosen Explosion radio program, a four-hour program every Friday. The program contains music, technology, health and general-interest information. It is available as a large download or a large podcast. In addition, Jonathan is making available the program segments as individual downloads. From last week, you can download an interview with DougGeoffray of Gw Micro discussing Window-Eyes version 5.5, an interview with Jeff Bishop discussing the latest technology news, and other segments. http://www.mosenexplosion.com/ Jim Snobarger has released version 7.01 of Hotspot Clicker, a free utility which allows the JAWS user and scripter to click on any spot on a screen based on any of several criteria. The program is designed to increase accessibility to hard-to-script programs and give increased keyboard functionality even to those that are now somewhat usable by the JAWS user. http://personal.adiis.net/snowman/HotSpotClicker.html As mentioned last week, the archive for the ACBRadio MainMenu program has been further updated. In addition, MainMenu is available as a podcast without having to download other programming from Wednesday. Add this link to your podcatcher: http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=mainmenu Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits forThursday, September 22, 2005 Richards' Vending and Supply in the U.S. announces a wrap-around magnifier to enlarge the display on cordless and mobile phones by 2x or 4x. For more information, e-mail Bruce Richards at mailto:golfcages@hotmail.com Christian has created some basic Window-Eyes set files for the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client. You can get them by writing to him at christian08@gmail.com Ian Humphreys now has four versions of solitaire and cribbage in his series of free self-voicing games for the blind. Two other games are under development. He asks potential users to e-mail him a request for the games so that he can inform you of updates and new games. All the information is available at http://www.omninet.net.au/~irhumph/blindgamers.htm#LIST Humanware is shipping, at least in Canada and presumably elsewhere, their new Daisy player announced at CSUN, the Victor Reader Wave. www.humanware.com A recent CNET article suggested that the Mozilla web browser is more susceptible to security flaws than Internet Explorer, but most hackers still target Internet Explorer. http://news.com.com/Symantec+Mozilla+browsers+more+vulnerable+than+IE/2100-1 According to a story in Speech Technology Magazine, Motorola has entered into an agreement with Phoenix Speech Group to provide DECTalk speech in some of its upcoming phones, initially the Motorola i355, to make phone features accessible to the blind. This is a Nextel phone. The manual for VoiceOver, the screen reader for the Macintosh, is now freely available on Apple's web site, http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover The current issue of The Voice of the Nation's Blind from the US National Federation of the Blind contains an update on the activities of the Federation's Access Team. the article contains some useful tidbits about the technology under discussion. http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/166/access-team-update Map files for the Dolphin computer screen reader and magnifier have been released for MSN Messenger 7. http://www.dolphincomputeraccess.com/ The BootList directs us to a Microsoft article on Windows Firewall http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/security/internet/sp2_wfintro.mspx It also gives us this link to information about the Microsoft Malicious File Removal Tool, which appears to be a handy utility: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/890830 Fred Langa has written an article about the current state of GPS equipment. Quality has increased as prices have decreased. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170701704 Jamal Mazrui continues to enhance the capabilities of Windig, having now added an additional category of msaa analysis to the program's capabilities to provide information about the running application. http://www.empowermentzone.com/wdsetup.exe Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, September 29, 2005 The second article describing the current state of affairs regarding portable computing devices for the blind is now available to Sound Computing subscribers. With this article in place, subscribers can access an hour of discussion designed to help potential buyers of devices like Braille Note, PAC Mate or some of the newer options coming onto the market make wise decisions. Subscribers get this article and 49 others for the total of only $9.00. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm Last week, we finished the third quarter of Tidbits issues, issues 27-39. The handy text file containing all thirteen issues is now available on the web site or via auto-responder; send a blank message to q3@topdotenterprises.com to get it. Accessibility reviews of Synchromagic version 4.3.0.7, WinRAR version 3.50, and Winamp version 5.1 have been added to the AccessWatch database, http://www.accesswatch.info/ The Blind Citizens Australia National Convention will be held this coming Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Perth, Western Australia. Convention activities will be streamed online. For the program and links to listen, go to http://www.bca.org.au/ Jim Noseworthy has made JAWS scripts available for the contacts editor of the Nokia Pc Suite software package. You can download them from ftp://ftp.compuconference.com/JFWNokia.exe Many computer users have fond memories of WordPerfect for DOS. It seems the program is being updated for use on Windows machines, and can still be acquired. Read all about the developments at http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/ Sean Randall's Technicalish podcast offers software reviews from a blindness perspective. Read about it, download individual programs or find the link to subscribe to the podcast at http://randylaptop.com/technicalish/index.php In a great development for braille readers with portable braille displays, National Braille Press is now set up so you can buy books and download them immediately. Find out about it at http://www.braille.com/ Alan Cantor will be teaching a four-part, $1t50 course entitled Wormholes through Windows: Enhancing the Usability and Accessibility of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Read the syllabus at http://easi.cc/forms/cantor-series.htm Freedom Scientific has announced the feature list for JAWS version 7.0 which may be released this week. Among the many new features are support for MSN Messenger 7.0 and 7.5, the ability to append items to the clipboard, quick access keys for reading Word documents, improved support for pdf documents, the ability to install JAWS from a jump drive, and many others. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws70fea.asp The Hadley School for the Blind, a well-known correspondence school for blind students worldwide, now has a set of message boards for staff, students and others to use for sharing. http://www.hadley.edu/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, October 6, 2005 It's still Thursday in my time zone! It's looking like North American autumn is the low time for news about adaptive technology. Remember, over a thousand people read this publication weekly, so they will appreciate it if you pass news tips my way for inclusion here. If you wrote to me during the last week or so of September and didn't get an answer, it's probably because I lost the message; I lost a goodly amount of e-mail. I love Eudora but it does have a couple flaws. . . . JAWS for windows 7.0 was released Monday. . Later in the week, versions of Both JAWS and MAGic were released that allow users to run the programs from a thumb drive, thus allowing greater portability. The site below also has a link to the updated html challenge pages. www.hj.com Jamal Mazrui has created a text version of all the JFW 7.0 documentation including the scripting manuals. Download it at http://www.empowermentzone.com/jfw70doc.zip A reader says that this site has games which are accessible to the blind as well as bulletin boards: http://www.zonebbs.com/ Screamer Radio is a program that lets you listen to Internet audio streams and also record them to your hard drive. It is reported to be free (though they'd love donations) and easy to use. http://www.screamer-radio.com/ Online Programs for All libraries (OPAL) offers a variety of audio programs, some related to technology, many not. Now you can hear audio previews of upcoming programs. http://www.opal-online.org/programs.htm National Braille Press has updated several of its handy braille reference cards listing keystrokes and configuration information for popular programs, and has also added one on the new features of Microsoft Office Word 2003. These booklets are available for $5.00 or $10.00 US depending on the booklet. http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/publications/index.html ABC Radio Australia will be streaming commentary of cricket matches live this summer. Find audio links at www.abc.net.au/cricket Optilec has reduced the price of its EasyLink braille bluetooth keyboard, which allows users to write using mobile phones and and PDA's. The keyboard for mobile phone use is $495, and for use with PDA's is $995. http://www.optelec.com/ The WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is currently studying ways to integrate accessible multimedia into both Digital Talking Books (DTBs) and e-books of various formats, through its Beyond the Text project. Complete information about this project can be found at http://ncam.wgbh.org/ebooks. The Center is seeking blind volunteers to test their undertakings. Testing would take no more than an hour, unless you live near Boston, in which case they are also seeking in-person testers who would receive an honorarium. For either type of testing, contact Geoff Freed, at geoff_freed@wgbh.org. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, October 13, 2005 We grieve for the suffering in South Asia from the recent earthquake. Gada.be is an innovative web search tool conceived by Chris Perillo. It returns its results as both rss feeds and links, and is ideal both for users of portable devices and desktops. I have done a demonstration of the service for Sound Computing. Subscribers, enjoy! Others, subscribe any time! Window-Eyes 5.5 Beta 2 is now available with bug fixes and some new features, including Support for Outlook 2003 Auto Complete Multiple Soundcards Supported with DECtalk Access 32 and Support for Windows XP Media Edition Media Center Application. http://www.gwmicro.com/beta Yahoo now has a podcast directory and search service. http://podcasts.yahoo.com/ If you haven't looked at lately, Larry Skutchan's BlindCoolTech podcast has grown considerably and now receives submissions from many users reviewing equipment, giving sound-seeing tours, and discussing their careers. You can subscribe to the podcast or download individual programs. www.blindcooltech.com Goalball One on One is a new game from the Audio Network which costs $25 US, 21.55 Euros or 14.99 pounds. An audio demonstration is available at http://www.yrguk.com/disk/welcome.htm For more information write to Bill at bill@yrguk.com Accessible and Usable PDF Documents: Techniques for Document Authors is a $150 four-part clinic provided by EASI. There is also a free overview on Thursday 20 October at 19:00 UTC, 14:00 Eastern. To learn more, http://easi.cc/forms/pdf-series.htm WBView is a $59.95 program designed for searching and reading books on the US NLS WebBraille system. version 2.0 of the program is out and it offers many features for users of the service. A fifteen-day trial version is available. http://www.wb-view.com/ Radio communication enthusiasts will want to know about The Radio Reference http://www.radioreference.com/index.php iZoomMouse is a magnification program that lets low vision users use a mouse effectively by magnifying a portion of the screen to the desired size. The web site for the program is http://www.sitex.com.ua/en/products/iZoomMouse SoundsGood.com is a new source for audio books, newspapers and broadcasts. Buyers can purchase individual items or an annual subscription for $19.95 which allows two downloads per month plus two free books, and some free titles are available. http://www.soundsgood.com/ John Wilson will be auctioning his line of From the Keyboard tutorials, so that the winner will have the full rights to sell the packages. the auction will be held on BlindTreasures http://www.blindtreasures.com/auction One of many programs designed to remove pops and crackles from vinyl records that you have converted to digital is depopper, available for $18 US with a free 30-day trial www.depopoer.com Australian readers will appreciate a visit to the Online Books Page, which, among many other digital books, contains some which are only available for download in Australia. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ If you want to extract the sound from a dvd movie, a free choice to achieve this is Dvd Decoder, from http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd_decrypter.cfm The National Braille Press reference card for Word 2003 mentioned last week is actually for Word 2002. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, October 20, 2005 Today is the 186th anniversary of the birth of the Bab, the Herald-Prphet of the Baha'i Faith, and a major Baha'i holy day. Allchars is a free program that makes it easy to type accented and special characters and to create keyboard macros. http://allchars.zwolnet.com/ ProduKey is a Product Key finder for software on your computer that also finds Microsoft Office keys. http://nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html An accessibility review of X Hour has been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ HumanWare's Audio Newsletter #3 is now available, and its contents are also available as text http://www.humanware.com/ For the People is a site that requires free membership. They now have a Linux lounge where people can share tips about using and accessing Linux. http://for-the-people.com/ MagniTalk is a new program providing voice control for the ZoomText speech and screen enlargement program. http://www.ngtvoice.com/products/software/magnitalk/ > The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group >(EOWG) has published 'Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your >Organization.' http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/ A self-voicing accessible chess game is available from http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/assist/et/projects/GameChest Version 5.3 of TotalRecorder has been released. http://www.highcriteria.com/ Some people report that older versions of the Winamp audio player work better than newer ones. Many old versions can be found at http://www.winampheaven.net/ Speaking of Winamp, you can get a plug-in for it that allows you to play windows Media format files and streams http://nunzioweb.com/daz/playlist_loader.html To show why I should never type Url's, the link for the pop and click removal program Depopper was mistyped last week. It is www.depopper.com Also, Matthew Bullis did a review and demonstration of the program in 2001 for MainMenu, available at www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm0504.mp3 Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, October 27, 2005 The list of short information files, auto-responders, that you can get by e-mail from topdotenterprises.com, has been updated. Remember, if you want any of these, just send a blank message to the address given. Don't bother writing anything in the subject or body. The masterlist can be had by sending a blank message to masterlist@topdotenterprises.com. Apple is looking for a software engineer to help with development of the VoiceOver screen reader. Send resume to Mariam@apple.com AVIS, a free Daisy reading program, has been rewritten in version 2.0. http://amis.sf.net/ And DaisyMaker is a set of Perl scripts to use to create Daisy audio books from text files. http://w3.wmcnet.org/daisymaker/dm3/ Another mailing list now exists for discussing matters related to JAWS. It is called jaws_users. To join, send a blank message to jaws_users-subscribe@yahoogroups.com And the October-November issue of the Freedom Scientific Newsletter is available www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/current_newsletter.asp Quantum Technology has announced the creation of a web site exclusively devoted to the Mountbatten braille writer and to braille literacy. It is at http://www.mountbattenbrailler.com/ Web Text Reader lets you look up a wealth of information on the net, and the programmer is said to be very accessible. A free demo is available at http://www.webtextreader.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits fur Thursday, November 3, 2005 For some odd reason, the Mailman software has begun unsubscribing people from the list. I re-subscribed several, and made a configuration change, whose effect I hope we see, to eliminate the problem. If you or a friend were summarily removed from the list, please re-subscribe, or write for help. The BoseWave Music System is a popular small stereo system operated by a credit-card sized remote. The company has produced braille remotes in two sizes, and for both the new version of the system and the older version, to improve accessibility. There is a new driver to enable JAWS users to use their Braille Note as a speech synthesizer. This driver is needed for those on Windows xp or 2000 running JFW version 7. http://www.humanware.com/Products/Notetakers/braillenote_downloads.asp EASI is broadcasting live from two national conferences: November 4 EAST conference on access to science and math http://easi.cc/forms/east.htm November 11 Accessing Higher ground in Boulder http://easi.cc/forms/ahg.htm On 14 November at 14:00 (time zone not specified) Norman Coombs will present a live web conference providing an overview of the current accessibility state of online learning. For this and other free and fee-based course info, go to http://easi.cc/clinic.htm The Plextalk PTR@ is a new portable multi-purpose digital recorder, successor to the PtR1. Michael Lang has prepared a review and test recording of the unit, at http://www.longus.info/ There are often several ways to accomplish the same task using Windows. An example of this phenomenon is the existence of two lesser-known ways to copy and move files and folders. You can read about them by sending a blank message to copyto@topdotenterprises.com. People often want to convert files from one audio format to another. Files in the RealAudio format are especially difficult to convert compared to those of other more open-source formats. There are various ways to accomplish the conversion; a free one is Rawavrecorder from http://www.rawavrecorder.homestead.com/ @Podder is a new free podcatcher client for the visually impaired, meaning those who have some vision and do not use screen readers. One initial report found that it does not work, but of course that can change. It is available at http://www.apodder.org/ My goof of the week last week was to call the free Daisy book reader Avis, whereas the correct name is AMIS. feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, November 10, 2005 The rss feed for Tidbits contained some errors. Thanks to a reader pointing out that it wasn't working, those errors have, I believe, been removed. This is a great way to keep up with Tidbits, especially if you are among the growing number who cannot receive the e-mail version. With the articles being added this week, thirteen audio articles are available to Sound Computing subscribers. They'll eventually have access to fifty in this series. If you'd like to know what is available at present, send a blank message to sc13@topdotenterprises.com. In article 11, we learn to use the Notetab regular expression engine to make braille documents that are better suited for display on a portable braille device. Window-Eyes version 5.5 has been officially released. It includes full support for the popular Firefox web browser and for Microsoft Excel, the ability to run Window-Eyes from a usb drive, a new menu design to make the program easier to learn, and smooth interaction with baloon tooltips among other features. http://www.gwmicro.com/window-eyes The current issue of The Voice of the Nation's Blind contains a review of the Braille Sense from Gw Micro. http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/175/braille-sense-a-comparative-evaluation You can read an article from Poker News entitled Blind Man's Bluff: Online Poker for the Blind at http://www.pokernews.com/news/2005/11/online-poker-blind.htm Scanner manufacturer Plustek has launched the Book Reader, advertised as the only reading peripheral device under $700 that is devoted entirely for book reading by the visually impaired. http://www.plustek.com/bat In Sound Computing, we'll be focusing a lot on TotalRecorder, a program that lets you record streaming audio for later listening. In article 12, we learn how to solve a problem which occurred when one user wanted to record a site that was hard to get to using TotalRecorder's browser. We'll learn to use a simple command-line tool called Send which has other potential uses. Feedster lets you search blogs, newsgroups and podcasts. http://podcasts.feedster.com/ EASI will broadcast three sessions from the Accessing Higher Ground conference on 11 November: Accessibility of Online Resources in Academic Libraries, Panel: Current Trends in Electronic Books, and Library e-Journal Accessibility - A Usability Study. Proceedings begin at 16:15 GMT. on that day, a link to the broadcasts will be found on the EASI home page, http://easi.cc/ If you register beforehand, you can receive a link to recordings: http://easi.cc/forms/ahg.htm The Digital Books for Visually Impaired Persons Blog has been launched to discuss how to get more material into digital formats http://shrikantdtb.blogspot.com/2005/11/digital-books-for-visually- OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries) has two educational programs coming up: On Thursday, 17 November at 01:00 GMT: Shopping Online: Click and Ship, provides tips and tricks for shopping as well as for avoiding pitfalls. Friday, 18 November at 19:00 GMT: The Mouse Pad Traveler: Using the Internet to Plan and Purchase Your Travels, will discuss techniques for planning travel on the net and for doing so safely. Archives will be available. http://www.opal-online.org/progschrono.htm To find the best current prices for memory and flash cards and memory sticks, a good place to visit is www.dealram.com Their affiliated site www.dealnews.com lets you receive alerts for deals for a variety of items and keeps running tabs on bargains. In Sound Computing Article 13, we look at the JAWS for windows Speech and Sound Manager and how it can make computer use more efficient and enjoyable. Version 5.11 of Goldwave, the inexpensive and popular sound editor, is now available, featuring some new features and some fixes. www.goldwave.com A mailing list subscriber asked where one can download sound effects, and one answer given was http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ The latest version of the popular voice chat program Skype, at http://www.skype.com/ is said to be accessible with JFW. This is version 1.4.0.84. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, November 17, 2005 The November issue of AccessWorld is now online, including a tribute to Dr. Russell Smith, information about pdf documents, two articles about online shopping, reviews of two stand-alone reading machines, a book freview, a review of Mobile Magnifier, and an article on blogs. http://www.afb.org/accessworld FaceToFace is a new program from Freedom Scientific that allows deaf-blind Pac Mate users to communicate in person with sighted folks, who use an IPac portable. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/PressRoom/en/2005/nr_FaceToFace-11-15-2005.asp Dolphin Systems has released Pocket HAL, a screen reader for the Pocket Pc operating system, supporting bluetooth keyboards and bluetooth braille displays. The introductory price is US $495. http://www.dolphincomputeraccess.com/news/2005/Pocket%20hal%20is%20coming1.htm EASI will conduct a free two-part webcast series on Daisy e-text books and players, on Tuesday 13 and Thursday 15 December. http://easi.cc/forms/beach.htm The nice folks at Apple computer decided that the name iPodder for the popular program used by many to collect podcasts could infringe on their property rights, so the makers of the open-source podcatcher have changed its name to Juice Receiver. Get the newly-named program here; http://www.tdspodcast.com/ The PodcasterNews Network has been launched. This allows people to build a customized audio news feed of exactly the topics that interest them. http://www.podcasternews.com/ Speaking of podcasts. the US National Public Radio has launched fourteen new ones, doubling their production, with more to be added. http://www.npr.org/podcasts/ Doug Wakefield, long-time technology trainer and advocate for accessibility, has started a blog entitled Technology Accessibility Issues. http://dougwakefield.net/discussions The November, 2005 issue of The Braille Monitor contains an article, Recommended Non-Visual Access Products for Blind Seniors. http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm05/bm0510/bm051012.htm Version 10 of the popular archive management program winzip is available. http://www.winzip.com/ One of the activities of the VIP Conduite voice chat community is the Accessible Devices forum, held on Sundays at 19:00 GMT, where participants look for, discuss and guide others to accessible devices. http://www.vipconduit.com/ There are many options for converting from one unit of measure or weight to another. One free one is Convert. http://www.joshmadison.com/software/convert/ An Accessible World Symposium: Holiday Stocking Stuffers and > Exciting Gift Ideas For Everyone, Including Those With Special Needs will be a free online event to take place on Saturday, 26 November, at either 17:00 or 18:00 GMT (the press release gives both times!) To get more information about the session, where various companies selling interesting equipment will discuss their products, write to Pat Price, > pat@talkingcommunities.com To attend the event, visit http://www.talkingcommunities.com/pat you can read an article detailing Darrell Shandrow's efforts to promote accessibility, particularly at the recently-concluded Portable Media Expo. http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7000987957 Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top tech tidbits for Thursday, November 24, 2005 Happy thanksgiving to all the U.S. citizens and residents who are celebrating today. AI Squared now offeres Extended Service Plans for its screen magnifier and screen reader ZoomText. http://www.aisquared.com/ Doug Geoffray from Gw Micro reports that America Online has released AIM Triton, its new instnt messaging client. this program is not accessible to screen reader users at present. Gw Micro and AOL are working on window-Eyes accessibility. an accessibility review of Goldwave 5.11 has been added to the AccessWatch database. http://www.accesswatch.info/ Those who would like to produce their own blog might want to use the services of WordPress, since this service is quite accessible and does not use any visual verification procedures. http://www.wordpress.com/ this web site is a home for free online textbooks. Right now there aren't many there but they hope to gather more. http://www.textbookrevolution.org/ Robby, nickname Ace, has written scripts for the popular chat client mIRC to make it work with screen readers. you get the scripts from http://www.freedomchat.org/tirc and you can ask questions at ace@freedomchat.org HumanWare announces that the new version of Trekker, version 2.7, their global positioning system (GPS) for the blind now provides access to new wireless GPS receivers. http://www.humanware.ca/web/en/p_DA_Trekker.asp T&T Consultancy announces the release of JSay Professional version 3.0, which supports JAWS for windows version 7 and Dragon Naturally 'speaking Professional version 8.0 SR1. this package allows the JAWS user to control the computer by voice. http://ngtvoice.com/products/software/J-Say/ Version 7 of the popular e-mail client Eudora is now available, featuring improved support for Imap servers and a more powerful message search capability. :// www.eudora.com/ Librivox is a site where volunteers read public-domain books aloud and the resulting audio books are made available for free download as podcasts. http://librivox.org/ A humorous site containing absurd patents people have received is at http://www.patentlysilly.com/ Deafblindtecchies.com is a mailing list to discuss and support technology for the deaf-blind. to subscribe, e-mail DBTECHIES-subscribe-request@TR.WOU.EDU . Sun Microsystems is testing the next version of the Java Access Bridge for windows. you can test it at http://java.sun.com/developer/earlyAccess/accessbridge/ and if you don't have the necessary username and password, you can get them at http://developer.java.sun.com/servlet/RegistrationServlet From the Bootlist newsletter: Some Internet service providers brand their names into the title bar of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. To get rid of such intrusions, go to http://windowsxp.mvps.org/ie/ispunbrand.htm The BBC has produced a guide for persons with disabilities to get the most out of built-in accessibility features in their computers. the guide will be helpful to people with less serious vision impairments not already using access technology. http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/ BlueIRIS is a new radio information service for the blind from Lancashire, UK, providing at least four hours of programing a day, with plans to provide recorded books over the Internet. http://www.blueiris.info/ Enrichment Audio Resource Services offers free independent-living-related cassettes for people losing their vision. http://www.earsforeyes.org/ Browse Aloud is a talking web browser designed for people who do not have screen readers but want to hear web pages read aloud. http://www.browsealoud.com/downloads.asp?dl=bl Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, December 1, 2005 Users of JAWS versions 6 or 7 are invited to test a new tool designed to improve accessibility to mathematical and scientific instruction. http://eteach.engr.wisc.edu/mike/SampleSelf-assessment_files/StartHere.html Microsoft has released new versions of programming languages such as Visual Basic, Visual C, visual J and Visual Studio. they have also released "Express" versions of these tools which will be free for at least the next year and which contain tutorials for beginning programmers and sample code for each language. You can read about all this and get links to download the free tools for the next several days from the Karenware site www.karenware.com/current.asp Emacspeak version 23 is now available. This is a screen reader system for Linux whose creators write funny press releases. http://emacspeak.sf.net/ Soundy Mouse causes your mouse to generate sound as you move it around the screen. http://www.networkactiv.com/SoundyMouse.htmlhttp://www.networkactiv.com/SoundyMouse.html Version 1.5 of the popular firefox web browser, completely supported by window-Eyes and partially supported by JAWS, is available. One place to get it easily is http://gwmicro.com/support/firefox Larry Skutchan has done a couple podcasts for blindCoolTech on buying inexpensive mp3 players. http://www.blindcooltech.com/ OPAL will present "Podcasting, an Introduction," an introductory presentation on this phenomenon, thursday, 8 December at 19;00 GMT. archives will be available. http://67.19.231.218/v4/login.asp?r=67955673&p=0 Laplink is an ftp program which is now freely available. Richard Turner has put the program, some files needed for the instalation which users may not have, and his set files for window-Eyes versin 5.5 on his web site. http://www.turner42.com/ As part of his Wormcast podcast, Australiaan Scott Rutkowski has produced a demonstration of MobileSpeak Pocket, one of two screen readers that give access to the Pocket Pc environment. you can download this program here: http://libsyn.com/media/wormcast/msp.mp3 Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, December 8, 2005 A subscription to Sound Computing could be an ideal small Christmas gift. Fifty audio articles for $9.00. Articles 14 and 15 are now available. Article 15 begins a two-part series on using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 to comunicate with the computer rather than using the keyboard. We look at this from the blind user's perspective. HumanWare announces that Keysoft version 7 will be available for its line of VoiceNte and BrailleNote products sometime in mid-January. The release features a new database program, a text adventure game system, braile keyboard input for computers running JAWS, EloQuence speech and enhancements to the scientific calculator among other goodies. www.humanware.com Building Educational Success Through Technology (BEST) is a new monthly podcast seeking to information listeners about the use of adaptive technology in schools and colleges. http://bestpodcast.blogspot.com/ Article 14 of Sound Computing is a 35-minute guide to setting up TotalRecorder, one of my favorite programs. More articles on TotalRecorderill follow. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm The Seeing Ear is a U.K. Internet-based library. Membership is free to residents of the European Union. they are looking for blind users to test the site for accessibility. http://www.seeingear.org/ Accessibility reviews of MushClient version 3.69, AVG Antivirus Free Edition version 7.1 and Disk Checkup version 1.1 have been added to the AccessWatch database. http://www.accesswatch.info/ Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind located in Washington D.C. is in need of adaptive technology trainers for the blind and low vision in the D.C. area, and possibly nationwide. Please send resumes to: DHuff@CLB.Org Or call: (866) 668-4532 for more information. Dancing Dots announces version 3 of the Godfeel Braille Music Translator, which allows users to Quickly transcribe to braille from Finale, Sibelius and other popular music notation software used by band, orchestra and choir directors, independently create print and equivalent braille transcriptions for collaboration with sighted or blind teachers, colleagues or students and scan, read and write musical scores with the Lime notation editor via the new Lime Aloud JAWS- based features. http://www.dancingdots.com/goodfeel.htm In case you tried to investigate the Soundy Mouse last issue, the Url was mistyped. It should have been http://www.networkactiv.com/SoundyMouse.html Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. top Tech tidbits for Thursday, December 15, 2005 At the suggestion of a reader, I am changing my policy concerning redistributing material from Tidbits. You can copy individual Tidbits paragraphs to individuals and mailing lists, as long as you reference the tidbits web page, or subscription info, while you're at it. Freedom Scientific has updated its Html Challenge, a set of web pages demonstrating the capabilities of JAWS for windows version 7.0 with Internet Explorer. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/Surfs_Up/_Surfs_Up_Start_Here.htm the company has also launched a low-vision division, with the TOPAZ line of desktop video magnifiers. http://www.low-vision-help.com/index.html Version 5.12 of the popular audio player winamp is available, and one easy place to directly download it is http://www.mindspring.com/~mrimpau/winamp512_full.exe Not surprisingly, now that we have the phenomenon of podcasting, we have the danger of podjacking. Read a clear article about it at http://vegan.com/issues/2005/podjacking.htm Microsoft has released SNARF, Social Network and Relationship Finder, an add-on to Outlook xp and 2003 to help prioritize e-mail messages . http://www.softwarepatch.com/office/snarf.html An oft-overlooked feature of window-Eyes is its cursoring keys. A recent listserv message highlighted the use of this feature to add an Echo Characters and Words ability to the program. To read about it, send a blank message to we-echo@topdotenterprises.com. Speaking of window-Eyes, we break out the new microphone in article 16 of Sound Computing and briefly demonstrate how to add screen functionality to TotalRecorder for Window-Eyes users by adding a user window to read the duration of a recording and some field names to clarify ambiguous prompts. this and the other 49 articles in the series are yours for a total of $9.00. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm IniForm is a free utility Jamal Mazrui has developed that may be called by any programming language that can read and write .ini files, including JAWS scripts. It allows programmers to more easily build GUI forms. http://www.empowermentzone.com/ifsetup.exe Jonathan Mosen provides an audio review of the Rockbox firmware, which gives greatly improved access to some commercially available hard-drive mp3 players. http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=Pcad155e152666a68389dca4099d0bf47ZV56QlREY2B2&buffer=5&fc=CCFF33&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&autoplay=1&gateway=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.audioblog.com%2Fplaylist&player=ap21 AccessWorld is the free bimonthly web-based access technology publication of American Foundation for the Blind. In the months when AccessWorld is not published, they e-mail AccessWorld Extra, which offers reader discussion of a question they ask, a sneak peak at the upcoming issue of AccessWorld and some news items. http://www.afb.org/accessworld Nuance, the company which was known as ScanSoft, has announced Zooms, a magnifier for mobile phone screens, and version 2.5 of Talks, their screen reader for mobile phones. This and more is the subject of a two-hour Main Menu, aired December 7 and now in the ACBRadio archive. http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm238.m3u Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, December 22, 2005 the US Defense Department conducts the DARPA Grand Challenge, a competition to create a vehicle that can operate without a human being to drive it. Read about this year's results in the current issue of The Voice of the Nation's Blind, http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/179/darpa-grand-challenge Internet mailing lists can be an excellent way to learn and get support on many subjects, among them adaptive technology. Some mailing lists have new homes, and some others wil soon. One long-time listis access-l. Now, you join it by sending a blank messave to Access-l-subscribe@access-l.com. You can visit the list's home page at http://www.access-l.com/ Two more specialized lists are dectalk, for discussions of the synthesizer, including how to make music with it, and bindapple, for discussions of blind folks using the Apple II computers. Now, to join Dectalk, send a blank message to dectalk-subscribe@bluegrasspals.com, and to join BlindApple, send a blank message to blindapple-subscribe@bluegrasspals.com. For a long time, many mailing lists have been hosted on the listserver at St. Johns University. this was a valuable service, but now there are many options for hosting mailing lists, so St. Johns is choosing to devote their computers to other functions. There are some blindness-related lists which will doubtless be moving, so if you know of a new address for one of these lists, send it my way so I can tell everybody. the December-January edition of the Freedom Scientific Newsletter is available for reading at http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/current_newsletter.asp Issue 4 of the HumanWare Audio Newsletter, many of whose articles are also available as text, can be found at http://www.humanware.com/ Gw Micro announces an upgrade to the BrailleSense, their notetaker. the unit now supports reading DAISY 3.0 books, playing playlists of mp3 files and streaming some Windows Media Internet streams, using bluetooth for data transfer and braille display support, and other enhancements. http://www.gwmicro.com/ SUN has released version 2.0 of the Java Access Bridge. http://java.sun.com/products/accessbridge/ Clarity has released the Carrymate, a 10-pound (4.8-kg) video magnifier. http://clarityusa.com/carrymate.htnl A series of tech-related podcasts, reported by a tidbits reader, is found at http://www.gtconline.us/ EASI offers a certificate in Accessible Information Technology to those who successfully complete five of their month-long courses. Three courses start January 9. To read about them, find the appropriate heading on the page at http://easi.cc/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top tech tidbits for thursday, December 29, 20 05 Article 17 of Sound Computing is our second big article on Total Recorder, this time concentrating on playing and editing files. this and all the other articles in the 50-article series are yours for only $9.00. Payment via paypal, credit card or check. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm or write with questions. An accessibility evaluation of ZoneAlarm Version 6.1 has been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ A podcast of a lady reading public domain literature aloud, with a new reading every week, is found at http://publicdomainpodcast.blogspot.com/ A page containing information about all the podcasts available from the U.S. NBC television network is at http://podcast.msnbc.com/ Another page listing pocasts, some related to news and current events, is at http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Social-Sciences/Current-Events Talking about podcasting, a recent thread on an e-mail list discussed ways for people to learn about podcasting. the discussion can be had by sending a blank message to podhow@topdotenterprises.com. Article 18 of the Sound Computing series gives experience and advice for buying a lightweight laptop, discussing four sources for such computers. the Owasys 22C is a screenless mobile phone now available in the U.S. with features that allow a blind user to access much of the information available to sighted users of standard phones. You can learn about this $499 phone and listen to an audio demonstration of it by visiting http://screenlessphone.com/ More and more people are buying fm transmitters so they can broadcast their computer or portable device's output to a radio in the car or house. In article 19 of Sound Computing I do my best to put together the current wisdom on which of these devices work best. Nobody will be interested in every article in the Sound Computing series, but most everybody can find several that will be of benefit to them. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top tech tidbits for thursday, December 29, 20 05 Article 17 of Sound Computing is our second big article on Total Recorder, this time concentrating on playing and editing files. this and all the other articles in the 50-article series are yours for only $9.00. Payment via paypal, credit card or check. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm or write with questions. An accessibility evaluation of ZoneAlarm Version 6.1 has been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ A podcast of a lady reading public domain literature aloud, with a new reading every week, is found at http://publicdomainpodcast.blogspot.com/ A page containing information about all the podcasts available from the U.S. NBC television network is at http://podcast.msnbc.com/ Another page listing pocasts, some related to news and current events, is at http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Social-Sciences/Current-Events Talking about podcasting, a recent thread on an e-mail list discussed ways for people to learn about podcasting. the discussion can be had by sending a blank message to podhow@topdotenterprises.com. Article 18 of the Sound Computing series gives experience and advice for buying a lightweight laptop, discussing four sources for such computers. the Owasys 22C is a screenless mobile phone now available in the U.S. with features that allow a blind user to access much of the information available to sighted users of standard phones. You can learn about this $499 phone and listen to an audio demonstration of it by visiting http://screenlessphone.com/ More and more people are buying fm transmitters so they can broadcast their computer or portable device's output to a radio in the car or house. In article 19 of Sound Computign I do my best to put together the current wisdom on which of these devices work best. Nobody will be interested in every article in the Sound Computing series, but most everybody can find several that will be of benefit to them. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, January 5, 2006 the fourth quarter, issues 40-52, of Top tech tidbits have been collected into a handy text file just like the issues for the first three quarters. To get this one, send a blank message to q4@topdotenterprises.com. Use q1 q2 or q3 to get earlier collections. since it is as easy for you to search the archives as it is for me to do it, I will usually urge you to search them for old items rather than asking me about them. Most of the old items still have value, so the archives can be quite useful, especially if you haven't seen them before. Two technology-related articles appear in the January, 2006 issue ofThe Braille Monitor. Building a Global Library for People with Print Disabilities, text of a talk by Jim Fruchterman http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm06/bm0601/bm060106.htm and Access at the Point-of-Sale: The U.S. Netcom Solution http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm06/bm0601/bm060111.htm Kathy Melton teaches medical transcription online. Group courses cost 475 per month. http://www.kaysclass.com/ Sound Computing subscribers get 15 hours or more of audio information for 49.00. this time, we focus on the Book Port and Book Courier. Article 20 discusses the differences between these two devices and article 21 gives a compendium of Book Port information not found in the manual. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm. There are lots of collections of Windows xp shortcut keys. Here's one in Excel format. For best results. use the context menu or right click, depending on which screen reader you're using, and choose choice a, Save Target As, then open in Excel. http://www.bootdisk.com/temp/keybdshortcuts.xls Accessibility reviews of Skype version 2.0, Skype Answering Machine version 1.35, Cool Edit 2000 version 1.0, Shades of Doom version 1.2 and Amadeus II version 3.4.8 have all been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ OPAL offers several online audio programs in the coming days: finding Health Information Online, Monday 9 January at 19:00 GMT and Wednesday 11 January at 01:00 GMt, The Armchair Traveler, Wednesday 11 January at 19:00 GMT, and Wiki World an Introduction, Thursday, 12 January at 20:00 GMT. http://www.opal-online.org/progschrono.htm The Bootlist gives us this Url to a clear site concerning setting up a wireless network: http://www.ezlan.net/index.html Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, January 12, 2006 I'll be in Chicago for three weeks, and can offer affordable computer setup and training services during evenings and weekends. * The January, 2006 AccessWorld features a review of the BrailleNote mPower http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070107 an article on converting audio tapes to digital audio using Goldwave http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070108 reviews of the current versions of the three major Windows screen readers http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070103 and more EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) is launching its first Podcast: Barrier-free Information Technology Tips and Tricks. Programs will appear at least weekly and will last about fifteen minutes each. http://easi.cc/podcasts/ EASI also presents a free interactive webcast, Comparing Accessibility Checker Tools, on Thursday, 19 January at 19:00 GMT, and a two-part paid series, Podcasting: How do You Get Them and How Do You Make Them?, 25 Jnauary and 9 February at 19:00 GMT http://easi.cc/clinic.htm Two mailing lists, primarily geared to people in the UK and Europe, have been created. To join the Visually Impaired Home Cinema group, send a blank message to vi-homecinema-subscribe@smartgroups.com and to join the Visually Impaired Motorized Satellite group, send a blank message to >vi-motsat-subscribe@smartgroups.com There's also a mailing list to discuss the Firefox web browser. To join, send a blank message to firefox-request@freelists.org A new build of Keysoft 6.2 for the BrailleNote and VoiceNote, solving a problem of loss of speech, has been posted. http://www.humanware.com/Products/Notetakers/braillenote_downloads.asp At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, three companies: Philips,Panasonic and Netgear announced plans for phones to allow people to place and receive calls using Skype. The Netgear phone will be a stand-alone unit. JAWS scripts for the sound editor Goldwave have been updated. http://jbauer.port5.com/ Accessibility evaluations of spyware doctor version 3.2.2, xm module version 1.6, laplink ftp version 2.0.15, and Norton Partition Magic version 8.0 have been added to the AccessWatch database. http://www.accesswatch.info/ AccessWatch now has a podcast, focusing on technology reviews. http://jamiepauls.libsyn.com/ Richard Seltzer produces compilations of public-domain books on cd and dvd, and also produces a newsletter discussing this and other topics. He now has launched a blog mostly discussing books on cd and dvd. http://www.samizdat.com/blog Updates for the Victor Reader and Victor Reader Plus daisy book players to version 3.1 are available from HumanWare.. http://www.humanware.ca/web/en/Download.asp Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, January 19, 2006 De Witt Associates, an adaptive technology company n New jersey, US, is looking to hire an adaptive technology trainer. Send a cover letter and resume in the body of an e-mail to john@4dewitt.com Blind Cool Tech continues to be a valuable source for technology information as well as other interesting recordings. Recent podcasts available for download include a two-part course on html, Two articles about the IRiver mp3 player/recorder, a demonstration of the Cobolt Talking Color Identifier, and demonstrations of downloading text and audio books from the public library. http://www.blindcooltech.com/ Here is a New Zealand site that seeks to find the lowest prices for computer and mobile phone equipment http://www.pricespy.co.nz/ The makers of the Owasys 22C screenless phone have seen fit to drop its price by half, to $199.00. http://screenlessphone.com/ TENbot aims to convert rss feeds into formatted text; a test version is available http://www.daden.co.uk/tenbot The Poetry Online Archive contains readings of poems by their authors, with some recordings dating back as far as 1932. http://www.poetryarchive.org/ A fairly new mailing list to discuss JAWS now has a web page and a slightly different name: jaws-users http://www.jaws-users.com/ Gw Micro has revamped its web page, with an improved shopping cart, a knowledge base, and clearer organization, among other improvements. www.gwmicro.com windows Onecare Live Beta is available to anybody who wants to test this firewall, antivirus, tune-up and back-up package http://www.windowsonecare.com/ An accessibility review of Skype Answering Machine version 1.0.8 has been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info HumanWare announces KeyMaestro, a wireless braille keyboard for its Maestro pda. http://www.humanware.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, January 26, 2006 Dolphin Systems has released version 3.01of Cicero, their optical character recognition package, which now uses the Finereader recognition engine. they have also announced new versions of their screen reader and screen magnifier, allowing support for Windows Xp Media Center and various other enhancements.. www.dolphinusa.com A concerted effort is afoot to encourage Google to stop using visual verification, a security procedure which drastically limits accessibility to the web for people with vision loss. Google could do much to promote web access by providing a sound alternative which others could emulate. Read about and sign the petition, which already has over 2,300 signatures and needs many more, at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/1/prweb333502.htm Optelec announces the EasyLink12, a unit which consists of a wireless keyboard and 12-cell refreshable braille display, intended to provide wireless access to pda's, pc's and smart phones. http://www.optelec.com/ Until the end of July, Gw Micro is rewarding U.S. purchasers of their Braille Sense notetaker with a free subscription or renewal to Bookshare. They have built the Bookshare Unpack Tool into the Braille Sense, so that users will not need a computer to open Bookshare books. http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1035 The much-announced Keysoft 7 for the BrailleNote family of products is now actually available. There is a web site devoted to the upgrade, whose many features we mentioned here previously, found at http://www.humanware.com/7_0 It turns out that the price for the Screenless Phone has not been reduced as I suggested last week, but rather US customers of TMobile can get the phone on a subsidized basis. Meanwhile, the US distributor has released a Frequently Asked Questions document about the phone: http://screenlessphone.com/FAQ Several large companies, including Google and Sun, are joining forces to create a web site to fight what they term "badware," meaning spyware, adware, and other malicious code that makes the web dangerous. http://www.stopbadware.org/ Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind in Florida, US, is seeking a Rehab technologist. Complete the application available at http://www.tampalighthouse.org/ If you want accessible crossword puzzles and other accessible puzzles, an employee of Puzzler encourages you to express your interest by e-mailing reception@puzzlermedia.com> If you're looking for a podcast on a particular topic, one way to find it is to use PodZinger, a search site that indexes content from some 48,000 podcasts and uses voice recognition technology to allow you to search the content of the programs. http://www.podzinger.com/ An accessibility review of Anapod Explorer version 8.95 has been added to the AccessWatch database. http://www.accesswatch.info/ Freedom Scientific announces that a new addition to its product line for folks with low vision, the $795 Opalt Ultra-Portable Video Magnifier, will be available in March. The pocket-sized magnifier can be connected to a tv or computer screen for increased magnification, or used with its own 4-inch screen. http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Gw Micro is busily adding material to its new KnowledgeBase. An article entitled Learning New Applications with window-Eyes is available at http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1036 and an article concerning Opening attachments in E-mail Messages is at http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1034 Internet security expert Steve gibson has written a handy free utility, Wizmo, which has many features including capabilities to control the computer sound via desktop shortcuts. http://www.grc.com/wizmo/wizmo.htm On 18 March the third Annual Accessible World Old time Radio Symposium will take place online. An announcement-only mailing list to prepare for the event has been created. To join, send a blank message to OldTimeRadioAnnounce-subscribe@talkingcommunities.com PowerDvd is a commercial program for viewing dvd's on the computer. To see a list of shortcut keys for use in the program, send a blank message to powerdvd@topdotenterprises.com. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. top Tech tidbits for Thursday, February 2, 2006 At the suggestion of a reader, I will begin numbering the tidbits. Each number will be followed by a right parenthesis ). this way, you can skim through announcements. I do listen to feedback, so keep feedback coming. Also, thanks to people who sent news items this week. Over a thousand people appreciate your contribution. 1) As Seattle prepares for its historic first appearance in the Super Bole, we learn that Jim Kitchen has recently created a free self-voicing football game, available at http://kitchensinc.blindprodigy.net/ttsgames/winnfl3.exe He has lots of free games on his site http://www.kitchensinc.net/ I learned about this one from a review of it by Chris Judd for BlindCoolTech http://www.archive.org/download/ChrisJuddbct333Football/bct333Football.mp3 2) Gw Micro now offers some rss feeds, enabling interested people to use rss to find out about new entries to their web site: http://www.gwmicro.com/RSS/ 3) Sight Exchange is a new mailing list dedicated to free exchange of items for the blind. All items will be made available for free. To subscribe, send a blank message to sightexchange-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 4) while we're on the subject of helping people acquire used stuff, blindad is a mailing list for buying and selling items by and for the blind, along with related discussions. the new address to join this list is Blindad-join@babel-fish.us 5) Midimag is a mailing list for visually impaired persons who have an interest in or work with MIDI and other music technologies for home use or professional purposes, to discuss accessibility, share documentation, and help each other. the list has moved, and the current address to join is midimag-subscribe@midimag.org 6) Thanks to the LangaList, www.langa.com Here's a comprehensive site listing travel sites and specialty search engines: http://www.allsitecafe.com/search2.html 7) Fred Langa has written an article about how to boot windows Xp from a 256-mb flash drive. the purpose is for portability and also to repair complex system problems. I have no idea whether screen reader users can make use of this procedure, though I suspect they could, so if somebody tries it, let me know and I'll pass on the findings: http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102101 8) Access Technology Institute's Gene Asner will present a free demonstration of the free audio editor Audacity on Tuesday, 14 January at 01:00 GMT. The formal presentation will last about an hour with questions to follow. http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/ATIPresents.html 9) A security flaw has been found in the popular media player Winamp. Version 5.13 has been released to solve the problem. One easy place to get it from is http://www.whitestick.co.uk/download.html 10) Episode 23 of the always-informative Desert Skies Podcast is out; many of us are glad to see this program return to the net. this edition largely deals with blogging and podcast-hosting. http://www.tdspodcast.com/ 11) You can read Microsoft's answers to the top ten Outlook Express questions here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/OEtopten.mspx 12) Courtesy of the BootList www.bootdisk.com If your windows xp system is slow to shut down, there is a section on this page that may help you solve the problem: http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/shtdwnxp.htm 13) And from the same source: Here's a non-Microsoft site that delineates the differences between Xp Home and Pro: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_home_pro.asp 14) Two articles have been added to the Gw Micro KnowledgeBase. Window-Eyes LTO Internet Activation http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1037 andNo Interruptability in Internet Explorer http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1038 Here are two items of primarily local interest, though the local areas involved have large populations. I may not always publish such items: 15) New york: The Assistive Technology Expo 2006 will be held on 11 May in Albany. They are looking for vendors. http://www.atexpo2006.com/ 16) Washington, DC: ITG, an IT company in the DC Metro area with a specialization in Assistive Technology, is hosting an Open House on February 8 and 9 with demonstrations of key Humanware products. A presentation on Using Accessible PDA Products for Productivity within the Workplace by Jonathan Mosen, Product Manager for Humanware will be given. Interested parties should RSVP: by February 6, 2006 mailto:adaptiveadmin@itgonline.com Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. adaptiveadminTop Tech tidbits for Thursday, February 9, 2006 1) Shaun Everiss has started a mailing list, primarily but not exclusively for discussing old computer equipment. to join, send a message to the address below, and put the word subscribe in the subject field techrubbish-request@freelists.org 2) The American Foundation for the Blind will publish the first AccessWorld Guide to Assistive Technology Products. the book will appear in March on disk and in print and will cost $24.95. 3) Independent Living Aids, in conjunction, I believe, with a Swiss organization, is marketing the Milestone mp3 player/recorder for $365.00. the unit features accessible navigation and the ability to store audio files in its 256 megs of built-in memory or on a cf card. You can listen to a presentation on the device and read more about it here: http://accessible-devices.com/milestonerecorder.html 4) Top Speed2 is a car racing game with impressive sound effects and an enthusiastic community of players. the game is free from http://playinginthedark.net/ 5) Gw Micro, maker of window-Eyes, and Libera, maker of the System 7, a case management application, have announced that they have collaborated to make this case management system accessible to blind social service employees. 6) A new mailing list for those interested in learning to write scripts for JAWS has been created, called Scriptography. Read about it here http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com 7) OPAL and LibraryU present the Day of the Digital Audio Book on Ghursday, 16 February. Presentations and self-paced modules will take place throughout the day. Free, but registration requested: http://learning.libraryu.org/LULiveReg/LULiveReg.asp 8) window-Eyes users report that the menu system in the cd burning program Nero Burning Rom, which was formerly not accessible, now works wel in window-Eyes with version 7.0.5.4. 9) The February, 2006 issue of the Braille Monitor contains a review of the three accessible gps systems available for blind travelers: http://www.nfb.org/bm/bm06/bm0602/bm060206.htm 10) If By Phone is a new interactive phone service trying to get started. You can call the US toll-free number 866-350-9836 or visit http://www.ifbyphone.com/ 11) I got the month wrong for the AccessTechnologyInstitute presentation on the Audacity audio editor, but not the day. You haven't missed it! It's coming up on Tuesday, 14 February at 01:00 GMT. I always give times in GmT, and this event takes place at the beginning of Tuesday even though North Americans will experience it on Monday. 12) Jonathan Mosen shares a link to a site that contains the audio feeds for all the many BBC channels in one accessible place. http://dave.org.uk/streams/ 13) In the 30 January entry on his blog, Jonathan discussed software designed to turn gext into mp3 or other digital audio formats so one can listen to it in a portable player, burn it to cd, and such. http://www.mosenexplosion.com/ Thanks to those who reported the problem with the web edition last time. It was corrected during the week. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday February 16, 2006 We spend 43 minutes in Sound Computing, Article #22 studying how to record and how to schedule a recording using Total Recorder. For information about the $9.00 Sound Computing package, www.topdotenterprises/scinfo.htm 1) For-the-people will begin offering monthly tech mini-classes. You need to be a member to take part in these audio courses, but you need not pre-register or pre-qualify. the first class will take place on Wednesday, 22 February at 01:00 gmt and is called Working with winZip. www.for-the-people.com 2) A recent list message mentioned places to find compact flash cards and other similar computer products. http://www.thenerds.net/ http://www.pricegrabber.com/ http://www.pricescan.com/ 3) The german Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI has made its Mary text-to-speech engine open-source. I've seen no reports of how this works with screen readers, but it is said to be easy to install, and contains German, English and Tibetan versions. http://mary.dfki.de/ 4) A reader recommends this site for old-time radio programs http://www.oldtimeradio.com/ 5. On that topic, there will be an old-time radio chat online in the OTR chat room on the TalkingCommunities site, Friday 17 February at 01:00 GMT. When you get to the site, choose the Old Radio Room. http://www.talkingcommunities.com/pat 6) Kathy Ann Murtha has written a comprehensive textbook on the screen magnification and reading program ZoomText 9.0, available on a dvd with content in text and audio formats. the text begins shipping on 21 February, and orders placed online before that date can receive a 20 per cent discount if the code ZT09 is entered into the promotional code field of the shopping cart. http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/catalog/courses/ZoomText.html 7) A new article has just been posted to the GW Micro Knowledgebase: Window-Eyes and Firefox Extensions http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1040 8) The Adaptech Research Network is looking for Canadians who have taught or supported persons with disabilities in post-secondary e-learning activities,or who are disabled and have taken courses using some sort of electronic support to participate in a 20-minute online survey. http://www.adaptech.org/elearning 9) If you run windows xp Sp 2, you can use the now-accessible version of windows Defender Beta, Microsoft's evolving anti-spyware tool. One place to get it is http://www.tdspodcast.com/ 10) Accessibility reviews of Windows Defender Beta version 2.0 and Top Speed version 2.0 have been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ 11) A reader of the Bootlist http://www.bootdisk.com/ suggests this site if you want to upload a really large file to share with others so they can download it easily http://tinyurl.com/9tqv8 12) Jonathan Mosen has created a new Internet radio station for broadband users. The station's focus is music about love in all its forms. http://www.the-minx.com/ Here are a few mailing lists which, while not related to technology, use e-mail for their dissemination, and will be of interest to some. 13) EChurch is a list for blind Christians and friends to support each other. to join, put the phrase "subscribe firstname lastname" in the body, using your real name, and send that message to listserv@listserv.icors.org 14) The Blind Chef is a list for those who want to improve cooking skills and discuss available equipment. to join, send a blank message to TheBlindChef-subscribe@yahoogroups.com 15) BlindHandyMan promotes discussion of independent home repair and power tool use by the blind. To join send a blank message to blindhandyman-subscribe@yahoogroups.com finally, here are sites of interest to speakers of other languages. 16) Speakers of South-Slavic languages such as Serbian and Croatian can benefit from http://www.slikom.org/ and can join the Slikom mailing list, whose information can be found at http://www.freelists.org/list/slikom 17) French speakers will find a wealth of adaptive technology information at www.winaide.net If you stop receiving Tidbits via e-mail, it's probably still being sent, but your ISP is considering it spam and blocking it for you. You may be able to change this behavior on their part, but otherwise consider the web or rss notification systems, which I have set up precisely because of this problem. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, February 23, 2006 There will be several news items that won't get into this week's newsletter because of travel and other deadlines. It's already Friday! 1) If you want to hear what the Speech Plus Calculator, sold in the 70's by Telesensory Systems, can do, here is a web site demonstrating it: http://www.bluegrasspals.com/speechplus 2) Tutorials for learning music by ear are available at http://www.musicvi.com/ 3)Read about the soon-to-be-released Sanyo induction heat-type cooking stove with voice navigation and voice and musical alerts: http://www.popgadget.net/2006/02/cooking_stove_w_1.php#trackbacks 4) Skylook is a program used in conjunction with the popular chat system Skype and with Microsoft Outlook to record Skype calls. Hear an interview with the creator of Skylook by going to the 15 February program for this Melbourne radio station: http://www.rrr.org.au/byteintoit 5) EASI will launch its second podcast on 3 March. this regular broadcast will be entitled "It's about People, not Technology." http://easi.cc/podcasts/ 6) The National Conference on Reuse of Assistive Technology will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, US, from 8-10 May 2006. For more information e-mail nbailey@resna.org 7) Winamp version 5.2, a major upgrade for this popular media player, is available. One easy place to get it is http://www.whitestick.co.uk/download.html 8) You can read a review of Windows Defender Beta, mentioned in last week's Tidbits, here: http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windefender_beta2.asp 9) Two articles have been added to the Gw Micro Knowledgebase. Window-Eyes and Remote Desktop http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1042 and ZoomText Not Tracking Focus with Window-Eyes: http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1041 10) Sean Randall has written a program called Burgeon, especially useful for people who run their screen reader from a usb drive. It creates lists of programs to run easily. http://www.randylaptop.com/projects/burgeon/ 11) Rockbox is an open-source project to improve the operation of disk-based mp3 players. One result is making those players much more accessible. According to this announce,ent, Rockbox can be added to the 4 GB IPod. http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPort Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, March 2, 2006 1) If you want to encourage the creation of more accessible computer games, a couple enthusiasts will be speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. they are looking for stories of game experience as a blind user, game wishes and ideas. Submit to http://www.audiogames.net/contact.php 2) The current issue of The Voice of the Nation's Blind has several technology-related articles: Google Struggles with Accessibility as Services Expand http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/192/google-struggles-with-accessibility-as-services-expand Mozilla Firefox Is Accessible! http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/191/mozilla-firefox-is-accessible The Ins and Outs of Audible.com http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/189/the-ins-and-outs-of-audiblecom Touch the Sun, about a new tactile-braille book on the sun http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/articles/195/touch-the-sun-brings-earthrsquos-nearest-star-to-life-for-blind-students 3) Jonathan Mosen has conducted an excellent review of Replay Radio AV, a tool which seems to surpass all others in its ability to easily record streaming audio. Listen to his tutorial http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=P11c4b4b51f579a9a6d9fd7f3cf50823aZV56QlREY2Zz&buffer=5&fc=CCFF33&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&autoplay=1&gateway=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.audioblog.com%2Fplaylist&player=ap21 4) A list member recommended the program called Switch for easily converting files of a variety of sound formats to mp3: http://www.nch.com.au/switch/ 5) Jamal Mazrui has augmented Layout by Code, a public-domain tool for aspiring Windows programmers, to version 2 http://www.empowermentzone.com//lbc.zip 6) Jamal has also begun work on an open-source accessible database manager, DbDialog, and seeks feedback as to its usefulness. http://www.empowermentzone.com/dbdsetup.exe 7) Finally, Jamal has a collection of a dozen books on the Perl programming language which he has customized so that they are in easily-readable text format http://www.empowermentzone.com/perl5doc.zip 8) the archives for the weekly technology program Main Menu have now been updated, at http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=19&MMN_position=30:29 Main Menu is also available as a podcast by adding this link to your podcatcher http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=mainmenu 9) Among other material, the March, 2006 issue of AccessWorld from American Foundation for the Blind http://www.afb.org/aw/main.asp contains: Focus on Screen Magnification, Part 1: A Review of ZoomText 9.0 and LunarPlus 6.5 http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070203 and an article about audio description http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070205 10) A new article has been added to the Gw Micro KnowledgeBase: Configuring the Braille Sense to Work as a Braille Display via the USB Port http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1043 11) In the first item to concern the upcoming CSUN conference, a $714.50 two-day class on JSay, the JAWS add-on which facilitates using Dragon Naturally Speaking to control the computer by voice, will be offered on 17-18 March. Participants receive three meals and a full copy of the program. RSVP by 3 March is requested to swandi@ngtvoice.com 12) A mailing list to discuss the open-source sound editor Audacity has been started. To join, send a blank message to audacity4blind-request@freelists.org. 13) Let'stalradio is a mailing list for discussing radio history and on-air personalities. You can join at the website http://letstalkradio-subscribe@topica.com/ 14) Accessibility reviews of quicktime alternative version 1.68, Total Recorder version 5.3 and uTorrent version 1.4 have been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ 15) From the E-Access Bulletin http://www.headstar.com/eab/ we learn that the SpeakOn, to be released later this year at a price said not to exceed 500 pounds, will be a stand-alone Internet device for listening to audio content from the net without a computer http://www.a-technic.net/ 16) From the same source, an accessible audio version of a popular brainteaser, Sudoku, has been produced. http://www.audiogames.net/sudosan 17. We announced winamp version 5.2 last week. this program is not as accessible as it used to be. Particularly, the library feature is more difficult to use than before. Advocacy is going on with the developers to remedy this problem. http://forums.winamp.com/ 18) Some new synthetic voices, complying with the SApI standard, are available at http://www.cepstral.com/ and http://www.nextup.com/ I am very pleased with TMobile as my cell phone carrier, Earthlink as my Internet service provider, and Onesuite for long-distance phone cards. If you might be inclined to purchase any of these services, I would appreciate credit for a referral, so please contact me if interested. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top tech tidbits for Thursday, March 9, 2006 I'm in an auto-responderish sort of mood this week, so I've added three free text documents to the collection and updated the list of available documents. In all cases, just write to the address given if you want the document, you need not include a subject or body. Also, if you're somebody who fights spam by making new correspondents reply to a message or fill out a form before their message reaches you, you cannot get these text documents because no human is going to intervene on your behalf! 1) SSB Technologies has or will have several jobs in either the San Francisco or Washington dC area for web accessibility consultant, accessibility tester and software accessibility consultant. http://www.ssbtechnologies.com/ 2) From the Rvers Computer Help Newsletter mailto:newsletter@rverscomputerhelp.com?subject=Newsletter Question The Freecycle network is a large network of community groups which allow you to give away items you no longer need so they don't end up in landfills, or to find something you want http://www.freecycle.org/ 3)From the same source: Use Am-Deadlink to check your favorites in Internet Explorer or Firefox to weed out links that don't work: http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm 4) Woody Anna Dresner writes clear and informative books on technology for National Braille Press. Of course, the drawback of these and any books on technology is that they can quickly become outdated as things change. to keep her books relevant and to give announcements about new ones, Anna has created a blog where she gives new information about the topics covered in her books. http://nbpupdates.wordpress.com/ 5) Although the manuals for the sound editor Sound Forge are ordinarily distributed as protected pdf files, making them hard to use for screen reader users, you can often ask Sony Media to provide you with an unprotected pdf copy by explaining that you are blind. In addition, Neal Ewers has made the manual for Sound Forge version 8 available in Word, text and html format on his ftp site, which can be reached through your usual web browser or an ftp program ftp://ftp.ravenswood.org 6) During March, Serotek is offering their remote computing solution, the Key to Freedom, along with their access program System Access, for a total cost of $395, $200 below the standard price for this bundle. http://freedombox.info/ 7) Jamal Mazrui has made several improvements to his free database manager DbDialog and brought it to version 2.0. http://www.empowermentzone.com/ddsetup.exe 8) Code Factory has released version 1.0.6 of Mobile Speak Pocket, their screen reader for PocketPc devices. the version brings the ability to both control the device and read its output on some bluetooth braille units, additional voices in several languages, support for some PocketPc Smart Phones and more. http://www.codefactory.es/mobile_speak_pocket/mspeak_pocket.htm 9) Two members of the pc-audio list discuss how to build a playlist for music or other audio on your computer using Windows Media Player. To read their instructions, send a blank message to wmp-playlist@topdotenterprises.com. 10) the latest issue of the Freedom Scientific newsletter is now available. the bulletin begins the process of unveiling the new features of JFW version 7.1, Pac Mate version 4.0, and Scantalker version 2.0, all of which will become available sometime after the CSUN conference later this month. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_news/current_newsletter.asp 11) JAWS scripts for the MIRC program, a popular way to access the IRC chat system, are available at http://jbauer.port5.com/ 12) A pc-audio member describes how she uses the Rhapsody music service with JAWS. To read her explanation, send a blank message to rhapsody-jfw@topdotenterprises.com 13) A limited number of computing-related internships (software engineering, programming, web design, computer science research, etc.) are available on campuses and in industry nationwide for college students with disabilities who are considering the pursuit of computing studies and careers. For more information and an application, e-mail Scott Bellman at swb3@u.washington.edu 14) the article Previously Accessible ActiveX Controls No Longer Speak has been added to the Gw Micro KnowledgeBase http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1044 15) There are various ways to take the sound from a DVD movie and turn that sound into a file. One of the emerging favorites among blind users is DVD Audio Extractor. It's also a very accessible program for viewing DVD's. Jonathan Mosen has conducted a 27-minute review and demonstration of the program. You can find it on his blog, http://www.mosenexplosion.com/ or listen using this Url, making sure your system doesn't split it into two lines; http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=P2ea1ca7d5433ffa326670964bbc7fc0eZV56QlREY2V1&buffer=5&fc=CCFF33&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&autoplay=1&gateway=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.audioblog.com%2Fplaylist&player=ap21 16) Jonathan also came across a relic from his Apple computing past, the game called Ad Libs, where you had to enter parts of speech and they would be used to fill in the blanks in stories, often creating very funny results. the web-based version of the game is here: http://www.sundhagen.com/babbooks/adlib.cgi 17) there will be an assistive technology exposition in Topeka, Kansas, 27-28 March. http://www.kckcc.edu/faculty/beach/brochure_txt.doc 18) A powerful and little-utilized feature of the winamp media player is its ability to let you set up global hotkeys so that you can control it from anywhere in windows and even eliminate its window from the taskbar altogether without losing functionality. Kai posted detailed instructions on how to accomplish this, and Matthew Bullis passed them on to me so we all can benefit. A lot of good instruction like this appears in mailing lists, and when you see something like it, others will probably want to read it, now or in the future, so pass it on to me. to read Kai's article, send a blank message to winamp-global@topdotenterprises.com 19) I have updated the Masterlist of all the auto-responder text documents you can receive via e-mail. some of these documents are out-of-date, but many are highly valuable. to get the list, send a blank message to masterlist@topdotenterprises.com I am very pleased with TMobile as my cell phone carrier, Earthlink as my Internet service provider, and Onesuite for long-distance phone cards. If you might be inclined to purchase any of these services, I would appreciate credit for a referral, so please contact me if interested. Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top tech tidbits for Thursday, March 16, 2006 1) the University of California at Berkeley offers some lecture courses for free download or as podcasts. Course files contain video content and have a format of .mp3.rm. Renaming the files to delete the .rm portion of the name seems to allow them to play as audio mp3 files; otherwise they play in RealPlayer. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/feeds.php 2) Talking Computers magazine, from the UK, is now available as streaming RealPlayer files. the site is self-voicing, so no screen reader is needed. http://www.tc.pressakey.net/ 3) Ken Gould has written JAWS scripts for the new version of Audible Manager, the program that helps you track and access the books you purchase from the popular budio-book site. this is version 5.0.0.5, and Ken has received support from the developers at Audible as they developed this version. Scripts only are developed for JFW version 7.0. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_support/BulletinView.cfm?QC=1035 4) JFW 7.1 will be out sometime soon, and the company is making it available for public beta testing sometime sooner. The new version features some 206 announced fixes and some enhancements to JAWS functioning in many programs, as well as a new installer designed to ease the transition to Windows vista. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws710fea.asp 5) Jonathan Mosen is attempting a return to the business of selling computer-related instructional material. His first production is a two-hour tutorial entitled Jonathan Mosen's Get going with Google, which promises to help you get all you can from this powerful search tool. Introductory price, $9.95. http://www.mosenexplosion.com/google/google.html 6) Jamal Mazrui has assembled plain-text collections of materials on two programming languages: PHP 4 and 5 http://www.empowermentzone.com/php_doc.zip and Visual Basic 2003, 2005 and Ado.net http://www.empowermentzone.com/vbnetdoc.zip 7) Gw Micro is holding several hands-on programs in their suite at CSUN Conference next week, and during one of those sessions, will announce plans for a new product. 8) Ai Squared is offering discounts for ZoomText to attendees at CSUN. 9) On 31 March, The next program in the series An Accessible World will be held, this to be a Symposium, The world of Work in the 21st Century, beginning at 18:00 GMT with sessions running for the next five hours. Archives will be available afterwards. To attend, go to http://www.talkingcommunities.com/pat 10) For information about recently-uncovered security problems with Microsoft Office and windows Xp, go to http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA06-073A.html 11) Useful articles on windows Update and on trouble-shooting USB 2.0 problems can be found here: http://www.softwarepatch.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, March 23, 2006 1) Users of the software Daisy player FS Reader will, beginning in April, be able to play books from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. the 1.10 upgrade which is to make this possible will be available on April 13 http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/FSReader_Desktop_Update.asp 2) The public beta version of JAWS 7.10 is now available for testing by all comers. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws710pbintro.asp 3) Gw Micro announced on Wednesday the release of the Small-Talk Ultra, a palm-sized computer weighing less than a pound and running windows xp, bundled with window-Eyes. the price for the basic unit starts at $2.795. http://www.gwmicro.com/smalltalk 4) the primary support mailing list for Gw Micro products is gw-info, and now the web interface to this forum has been redesigned so that it is easy to read list messages on the web. http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo 5) A new source for audio commentary on the CSUN technology conference this year comes from the Association of Blind Citizens. Remaining webcasts will take place Friday and Saturday, 24 and 25 March , beginning at 02:00 GMT, lasting about an hour. http://www.blindcitizens.org/live 6) Ongoing coverage of CSUN is also available via audio files and some written commentary via the ACBRadio blog http://www.acbradio.org/blog/ 7) The Accessible World Symposium entitled the World of Work will take place on Thursday, 30 March. This is a correction from last week's newsletter. http://www.talkingcommunities.com/pat 8) Serotek has released version 2.0 of System Access, its Windows access system which provides easy access to windows and to many supported windows programs. In conjunction with the Key to Freedom, a user can have speech access on any windows computer and can remotely access her home computer, all without having administrative rights on the computer to be accessed. http://freedombox.info/ 9) Microsoft is looking for college students interested in interning with the company across the U.S. http://www.microsoft.com/college 10) Assistive Technology Center announces a remote support service, through which technicians from the Center can, with the user's permission, examine the computer remotely and resolve problems. the service is free to those who purchase from the Center and available for a "nominal fee" for others. For information, e-mail, support@atechcenter.net> 11) Version 1.4 of the on-the-fly spell checker tinySpell is now available. the company has also released a Plus version, available for a $5 contribution, which allows for the creation of auto-correct lists. http://www.tinyspell.m6.net/ 12) An accessibility review of Microsoft SyncToy version 1.1 has been added to the database at AccessWatch http://www.accesswatch.info/ 13) If you're interested in detailed talk and tracking of major weather events, here are three podcasts to consider, complete with the links to subscribe to the feed: Pod Weather (Internet Partnership Radio) http://www.podweather.com/podcast.php WRBN.Net Podcasting http://www.barometerbobshow.com/podcast/podcast.php?com=1 StormWatch Report, The Weather Channel Podcasts http://podcasts.weather.com/common/podcasts/stormwatch.xml 14) Engineer Debee Norling is conducting a thorough and well-researched series on how to "de-gunk" a windows computer. the audio is available through Blind Cool Tech http://www.blindcooltech.com/ and she also sent detailed notes for the first program of the series to the mailing list. To read her notes, send a blank message to de-gunk1@topdotenterprises.com 15) with this newsletter, we complete the fifth quarter of tidbits issues. You can receive issues 53-65 by sending a blank message to q5@topdotenterprises.com. In addition, you can download a text or zip version of the entire package to date. For the zip version: http://topdotenterprises.com/tidbitsfull.zip and for the plain text version http://topdotenterprises.com/tidbitsfull.txt >Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, March 30, 2006 1) Various organizations are producing audio books as podcasts, either for free or for a small contribution to the author. Here are four sites, with the first having the most material at present http://www.podiobooks.com/ http://www.bmw-audiobooks.com/ http://www.silentuniverse.com/ http://www.darkerprojects.com/ 2) Kathy Ann Murtha is offering a two-hour, $50 online course on using the firefox web browser, suitable for both JAWS and window-Eyes users http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/catalog/courses/firefox.html 3) Gw Micro has posted a new article to its KnowledgeBase: the Path from JAWS to wndow-Eyes Made Easy: http://gwmicro.com/Support/Knowledge_Base/?kbnumber=GWKB1045 4) A user has set out to simplify the process of locating blindness-related items on the large auction site eBay. He has created a page of popular searches, and promises to expand the scope. http://www.bestmidi.com/ebay.php 5) In the category of somebody generating a useful item using technology, Enid O'Leary, with both home economics and rehabilitation teaching degrees, has produced a cookbook on cd in Word format containing over 1,100 recipes. Recipes are formatted for clarity and ease of reading, and the cd sells for $25 including shipping. http://www.creativecookingclassics.com/ 6) Freedom Scientific announces the release of Pac Mate 4.0, featuring an improved help system, the much-sought-after ability to have two word processing documents open at once, and other improvements. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/DL_PACmate_40_Update.asp 7) At the CSUN Conference, a new Linux-based pda for the blind was shown in prototype. the Icon from a new company called LevelStar aspires to feature one-touch recording, audio file playback, word processing, calendar, Firefox web browsing, and gsm phone among others. Two podcasts from the BlindCoolTech series discuss the product: http://blindcooltech.xplorations.net/bct481BreakfastWithMarc.mp3 http://blindcooltech.xplorations.net/bct482IconDemo.mp3 8) duxbury Systems announces version 2.3 of the braille translation program MegaDots, featuring integration with windows, free beginner Braille and MegaMath modules and improved printer support. http://www.duxburysystems.com/news.asp 9) An accessibility review of Talking Typer for Windows has been added to the AccessWatch database http://www.accesswatch.info/ 10) Here are the subscription links to four podcasts dealing with language and words: A Way with Words http://kpbs.org/words/podcast podictionary http://www.podictionary.com/rss Just Vocabulary's Podcast http://feeds.feedburner.com/JustVocabulary The Word Nerds http://thewordnerds.libsyn.com/rss 11) Fred Langa http:/langa.com has demonstrated the ability to build a computer with a Terabyte, 1,000 gigabytes, of storage for around $500. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183702383 Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 6, 2006 1) Twingine is a clever privately-run web search tool that lets you search Google and Yahoo simultaneously and read the results of each search in a separate frame. Let's hope it lasts. http://www.twingine.com/ 2) Kathy Ann Murtha offers an $85 course, An Immersion into Windows, during May. This will be an 8-lesson course, and if you pay by 12 April, you can receive a free textbook from her collection. http://tinyurl.com/zt7bb 3) Again this year, all radio broadcasts of Major League Baseball are available for a total cost of $14.95 through the Game Day Audio subscription, http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/subscriptions/gameday_audio.jsp For those who prefer, there is a simplified interface to the broadcast links, though it does not presently offer links to the archived broadcasts which the main site provides: http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mediacenter/index.jsp 4) the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind has launched a US-wide toll-free assistive technology support line, (888) 825-0080, for resolving issues for blind users, teachers and other interested parties. 5) the former UK Audio Network has been renamed The Audio network. It is a site that speaks without aid of a screen reader, offering games, links to radio broadcasts, to audio-described movies, radio drama and other content. http://pressakey.net/ 6) HumanWare is striving to improve the performance of the BrailleNote with Word documents, and to this end invites users to submit to them all sorts of Word documents that could be expected to work on the Braille Note. Send documents, along with a message stating the Word version used to create the document and whether or not it opens currently on the brailleNote, to worddoc@humanware.com 7) Odiogo is an Rss aggregator that converts the found articles to mp3 files using the voice of NeoSpeech Paul. http://www.odiogo.com/ 8) Speaking of rss, I periodically get questions about what it is and how to use it. I get the same sorts of questions regarding podcasts, so article 23 of the Sound Computing series introduces rss and demonstrates the free Bloglines service. An article about podcast listening will follow. Just one more article you get for your $9 subscription. www.topdotenterprises.com/scinfo.htm 9) Airchecks, recordings of live radio from the 60's to the 80's from the northeast, are available in abundance here: http://www.northeastairchecks.com/ Visit the Tidbits page at www.topdotenterprises.com/tidbits.htm where you can subscribe to the rss feed and grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Top tech Tidbits for Thursday, April 13, 2006 1) If you've been wanting an introduction to the world of podcasting, Sound Computing article 24 talks