1) Code Factory, the maker of screen readers for mobile phones, is changing its licensing scheme. Up until now, the Mobile Speak or Mobile Magnifier license has followed the phone. Now, it will be tied to the user, so that users can buy new equipment and apply their same license to it.
<http://www.codefactory.es/ucl>

2) We learn from the Fred's Head Companion about AudioForBooks, a web site containing articles, how-to guides, reviews, a blog and much more concerning audio books.
http://www.AudioForBooks.com.

3) From The Ranger Station, we learn about SpokenText.net, a web site with a free converter to turn most text into mp3 files for use on web pages or in a personal player or computer.
http://spokentext.net.

4) wondering about upgrading to Vista or buying a new computer to run it? the October 2 entry in The Ranger Station gives lots of coherent explanations and suggestions.
http://therangerstation.blogspot.com/

5) The public beta for JAWS for windows version 9 is now available, featuring faster performance in Word, the ability to copy web documents to the clipboarde and retain formatting, and a long-overdue easier way to configure JAWS. Anybody can use this beta in 40-minute mode, and users of JfW 8 can use it without restriction.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws90fea_beta.asp

6) In news that will immediately begin to benefit any student of any level living in the US, and will ultimately benefit US readers and perhaps others of all ages, BookShare has received a 5-year 32 million-dollar grant from the US Department of Education. As of now, students get free memberships to BookShare, and, among other as yet unnamed initiatives, the organization plans to add 100,000 titles to its collection during the period, which would tripple the size of the collection.
http://www.bookshare.org

7) the Blind Bargains site is back in full swing, providing lots of links to good deals. You can subscribe to an rss feed and now you can get daily e-mail announcements of the site's contents.
http://www.blindbargains.com/emaillist.php

8) From that list, I found this posting to the Lifehacker site where the poster listed many keyboard shortcuts for Excel and responders added their favorites and made comments about keyboard use in Excel, sometimes supplemented by use of the mouse.
http://lifehacker.com/software/excel/keyboard-shortcuts-for-excel-238097.php

9) On Tuesday, 9 October at 00:00 GMT, a Tek Talk training with the topic of ZoomText: A Feature Rich Tool for the Visually Impaired will take place.
http://www.accessibleworld.org.

10) The Main Menu program for 3 October featured a two-hour discussion of building and maintaining computers from a blindness perspective. Listen to it here:
http://www.acbradio.org/archives/mainmenu/mm312.m3u

11) the September 20 and 25 entries to the Gw Micro blog contain good information about running Windows Vista, helpful to users of any screen reader.
http://www.gwmicro.com/blog/

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.