Top Tech tidbits for Thursday, March 22, 2007
1) Brian Hartgen and others from T&T Consultancy are recording some presentations and writing and recording comments from the CSUN conference going on as we write. You can get to it all from their blog
http://tandtconsultancy.wordpress.com/
2) the folks at Talking Communities and LetsgoExpo.com are providing both audio and video streaming of different conference events. Here's the link for the interactive audio conference room
http://67.19.90.10/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs6ac12b97d65e
and for the video webcasts
http://www.letsgoexpo.com/expo/index.cfm?EID=80000081&p=0&page=schedule&HID=6924
3) Speaking of Brian and T&T Consultancy, they have announced the release of JSay Pro version 5.0, working with Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9 and JFW version 8 and including improved documentation.
http://www.tandt-consultancy.com
4) Gw Micro is now taking orders for three products which won't ship until June. One is the voice Sense, a voice-only small notetaker, whose price will be dropped $100 from its usual $1895 price until July. Second are two lightweight usb-powered braille displays, the 20- and 32-cell Sync Braille, costing $2,495 and $3,495 respectively. An availability date for the third product, an external camera for the Portable Sense View designed for handwriting.
http://www.gwmicro.com
5) Fire Vox is an open source, freely available talking browser extension for the Firefox browser
http://www.firevox.clcworld.net/index.html
6) Guerilla Technologies has emerged onto the adaptive technology scene with a product sounding a lot like the Kurzweil NFB Reader, consisting of a tablet pc connected to a camera for reading and in this case magnifying print. We don't know how available the product is; they showed it at the ATIA conference in January.
http://www.GuerillaTechnologies.com
7) the current issue of windows Secrets contains, among many other things, a compendium of tips and links concerning hard drive repair.
http://WindowsSecrets.com/comp/070322
8) Jeff Levy, purveyor of computer news on Los Angeles radio station KNX will be the speaker on the Accessible World training for gmt Tuesday, 27 March at 00:00, with a topic entitled Finding Your Way Through Gigabytes and WiFi.
http://www.accessibleworld.org>
9) For its USA customers, Dolphin Computer Access will allow those purchasing its Dolphin Pen, a portable version of its access products, to also buy stand-alone installable versions for one price. Purchasers can choose the screen reader Hal, magnifier Luna or Luna Plus, or combo package SuperNova.
http://www.YourDolphin.com/usa
10) Wayfinder Access is a gps system which now works with the Mobile speak screen reader and Mobile Magnifier for mobile phones, thus creating a very small and potentially more affordable gps solution for many of us.
http://www.wayfinder.com/news.en.php?id=92&year=2007
11) A service release of the Duxbury Braille Translator is now available, featuring improved Daisy import, functioning on windows vista, and working with Word 2007 among other enhancements.
http://www.duxburysystems.com/dbtwhst.asp.
12) If you are an accessibility consultant in residing in the Northeast United States, and you have more than three years experience in accessibility standards and programming, consultant work may be available. E-mail
accessibilityblog@gmail [dot] com.
13) Byte Into It is an Australian radio computer program, airing wednesdays at 19:00 on 3RRR in Melbourne. the program is available as a podcast, and now there is a blog for it
http://byteintoit.wordpress.com.
An individually-mailed text version of Tidbits is available to those who want it or have difficulty receiving the usual html version. Write to me to request it.
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.