Top Tech Tidbits - Volume 247
The Week's News in Access Technology

Distributed by Flying Blind, LLC
http://www.flying-blind.com/

This Issue's Featured Advertisement:
Introducing the Talking Bible from Talking Books International
 
Talking Books International, Inc., the creators of the Talking Bible®, have been providing Talking Bibles to blind and print-impaired persons around the world for the last decade. The first Talking Bible was a large cassette player. Now, it is a handheld, high quality, digital audio player that comes pre-loaded with both the Old and New Testament and is available in many different languages. There are no moving parts, no CDs, and no there is no complex download process required. The Talking Bible is very useful for those of us who are physically and/or visually impaired, blind, or learning disabled. A powerful speaker allows for safe and convenient listening when ear buds or headphones are not preferred. For more information, please visit http://www.flying-blind.com or email talkingbible@flying-blind.com.

Greetings,

1) Here's a valuable resource if it remains active: Cory Ballard spends a week using an adaptive device, then writes a review about it on the Access4 Us blog. So far, the site has a review of the Icon from Levelstar.
http://access4.us/category/a-week-with/

2) The creators of Entumbed say that it is the first ever complex audio roll-playing game. It is now officially released, and you can grab the demo here:
http://www.blind-games.com/

3) The Main Menu show gets an exclusive this week, as Larry Skutchan from American Printing House will discuss the philosophy and demonstrate some of the features of the Book Port Plus audio player due to be released in March. Listen GMT Saturday, 27 February, at 01:00.
http://www2.acbradio.org/mainmenu/

4) Tek Talk will present an interview concerning the American Council of the Blind's Audio Description Project on GMT Tuesday, 2 March at 01:00.
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rsc9613dc89eb2

5) This Fred's Head post is entitled "Keep Track of Congress with RSS, Email or Twitter"
http://www.fredshead.info/2006/08/keep-track-of-congress-with-rss-or.html

6) This blog post from the NFB Access Technology Blog briefly reviews the Handy Tech iRead OCR software package we mentioned a few issues back.
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=555&SnID=2031711518

7) This one records some first impressions of Mobile Speak version 2.
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=556&SnID=2031711518

8) Gizmo offers us the guide "Where to Find Free Legal Information on the Web"
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmosbest/~3/anEyICsRUzk/free-legal-information-on-the-web.htm

9) And this one: "Best Free Online University Courses"
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmosbest/~3/Ez_PI5oDVN8/universities-best-free-online-courses.htm

10) They have also updated their recommendations for Best Free Disk Defragmentr
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmosbest/~3/_f6I2mDIGyU/best-free-disk-de-fragmenter.htm

11) "Quick Cures for the Worst Windows 7 Annoyances" is the lead article in the February 18, 2010 issue of Windows Secrets.
http://windowssecrets.com/2010/02/18/02-Quick-cures-for-the-worst-Windows-7-annoyances

12) The Blind Technologists group has been created on the professional networking site LinkedIn.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2796139

13) Students who are between the ages of 16 and 22 years who are braille readers and users of assistive technology are needed for a study. This University of Pittsburgh study will explore how you use both braille and electronic information for classroom work, and how you learned these literacy practices. Write to
fmd22@pitt.edu

14) Version 11.50 of all Dolphin Systems screen readers and screen magnifiers brings support for 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and much enhancement to the support of Microsoft Office.
http://www.yourdolphin.com/newsitem.asp?id=449

15) Humanware announces the release of the firmware for Victor Stream 3.1,a free upgrade featuring some new shortcut keys and the ability to sort books in the talking books folder into subfolders.
http://www.humanware.com/stream_support

16) More developments for solving CAPTCHA's: a couple fans of the Firefox plub-in Webvisum have urged me to remind you about it:
http://www.webvisum.com/
A clarification about last week's mention that the Twitter client Qwitter now has an effortless interface with Salona to allow for solving CAPTCHA barriers: one need not use Twitter at all to take advantage of this Qwitter feature:
http://www.qwitter-client.net/
Finally, Jamal Mazrui has released two powerful JAWS scripts, FxMax for Firefox 3.x:
http://EmpowermentZone.com/FxMax.exe
And IEMax for Internet Explorer 7 and above:
http://EmpowermentZone.com/IEMax.exe
which add all sorts of capabilities to these browsers, one of which is easy interface with the Salona service for solving CAPTCHA's.

For questions and comments regarding Tidbits, please e-mail Dean Martineau at dean@topdotenterprises.com. Dean Martineau provides adaptive technology training by phone, online, and in person, with flexible arrangements, and at affordable prices.

Would you like to receive text-only versions of the Top Tech Tidbits and Adaptech Insider Newsletters? If so, find the link at the bottom of each Newsletter titled "Update Profile/E-Mail Address", and check this newly-available option.

Feel free to forward individual Tidbits, or the entire tidbits issue, to interested people (but make sure they don't already receive it; a lot do!) When doing this, please have the courtesy to cite your source, perhaps directing them to the Tidbits archive (see below.)

Tidbits is intentionally concise, and we know a lot of people may not understand some items because little explanation is given. If a particular Tidbit brings up a question in your mind, feel free to ask, and I will try to answer as time and knowledge permit.

Visit the Tidbits archive at https://www.toptechtidbits.com/tidbits2010.html where you can grab back issues. All that welcome information for future issues can come to me at dean@topdotenterprises.com.

You can subscribe to Top Tech Tidbits on the Flying Blind, LLC Website at: http://www.flying-blind.com. Here you will find an accessibly friendly and secure form into which you can enter your email address, click submit, and begin receiving Tidbits weekly. It's that easy.

| Flying Blind, LLC | 955 Pembrook Road | Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44121 |