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 Sens