Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, March 15, 2007

I have updated the complete tidbits archive, 110 issues over slightly more than two years.  It's on the web in both plain text and zip format, and is a great one-stop place to find that Tidbit you think you remember seeing but can't quite locate.  It's also a great retrospective of what has gone on in adaptive technology over the period.  I'm probably going to discontinue the quarterly collections, and I have stopped producing auto-responders or making them available because they generated vast amounts of spam. 

1)  this page of the Internal Revenue Service web site gives links for obtaining accessible tax forms and publications for U.S. citizens and residents.
http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=96151,00.html


2)  Pirillo's Picks directs us to Squeezer, a site that purports to make other web sites work better with mobile devices.  Perhaps it will make more sites usable by owners of the various increasingly-popular small accessible gizmos such as the Braille Note, smart phones, Ikon and others.
http://skweezer.net/


3)  The topic for training from Accessible World for gmt 20 March at 00:00 will be Accessing  the Internet Easily With Webtext Reader, which is a program that benefits those with learning and reading disabilities as well as those with limited vision.
http://www.accessibleworld.org>


4)  Gw Micro has launched a blog for sharing technology information from their company's perspective. 
http://www.gwmicro.com/blog/


5)  It's CSUN Conference time again.  ACBRadio's Main Menu for gmt 21 March will allow listeners to ask questions that those from the station who will attend the conference can research while there.  Various organizations will be providing streaming audio if the last couple years are any indication.  One site that is pledging to link to product announcements and to streaming audio from the conference is blindBargains.
http://www.blindbargains.com/


6)  At conferences of this sort, vendors frequently offer drawings for prizes to conference attendees.  De Witt Associates is offering several drawings to people who visit their booth.  They have also updated their list of premium-[priced training packages (prices are not visible on their web page but range in the $150 area) to include Using the Internet with JAWS for Windows and Getting Started using System Access.
http://www.dewittassociates.net/


7)  Users of the last several versions of the winamp audio player have had difficulty using the Library feature.  the newly-available beta version purports to make this feature accessible.  Here is a download link:
http://www.whitestick.co.uk/progs/winamp534_1155beta.exe


8)  If you're a fan of bluegrass music, there's an Internet radio station that plays nothing but.
http://www.worldwidebluegrass.com


9) A new mailing list has been formed to discuss open-source software for the blind.  to join, put the word subscribe in the subject field of a message to this address:
blindopensource@freelists.org

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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.