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Top Tech Tidbits - Volume 200
The Week's News in Access Technology

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

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.

1) The latest incremental upgrade to JAWS 10 features a 64-bit version of the screen reader as well as the ability to specify which sound card will be used for JAWS speech if you are using more than one on your system.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws/JAWS-whats-new.asp#Enhancements

2) The March, 2009 edition of the official Freedom Scientific podcast FSCast includes information about the improved accessibility of AOL.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/FSCast/episodes/fscast028-march2009.asp

3) Freedom Scientific has updated the Basics of Scripting manual to cover changes in the scripting capabilities of JAWS 10.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/training/training-downloads.asp#fsdn

4) As part of their new online training initiative, in which they will offer some free and some fee-based training, Freedom Scientific will offer a 1-hour free session, JAWS and MAGic Reading Commands and Cursors Used by JAWS, on Tuesday 24 March at 19:00GMT.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/training/e-LearningEntrance.asp

5) We learn from Fred's Head about WhatDoesthisErrorMean.com, a web site that helps you decode those wonderfully incomprehensible Windows error messages.
http://www.whatdoesthiserrormean.com/

6) this is CSUN week, so there will be a few new products, though increasingly I'm going to wait until a product actually ships, as opposed to when companies begin hyping it, to announce it. Sometimes, I don't know if the product is really shipping yet or not. Such is the case for the two handheld electronic magnifiers announced by HumanWare. the Smartview Versa has a 4.3-inch screen, 5-15x magnification and a rechargeable battery. The Smartciew Versa+ has all that and also plays music, shows videos and has an sd-card slot for storing material.
http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/about_us/press_releases/2009_press_releases/copy_of_humanware_low_vision_products_featured_at_csun

7) HumanWare is busy this year at CSUN. Again, I don't know if one can actually buy and use this yet, (I doubt it,) but it will be a first when we can: a screen reader called Orator for Blackberry Smartphones.
http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/products/blindness/orator_for_blackberry_smartphones/_details/id_131/orator_for_blackberry_smartphones.html

8) HumanWare's third announcement at this year's conference is the new release of Victor Reader Stream, version 3. and the Stream Companion Software, with a new look. The new Stream, which will be available for download by the end of March, allows you to search for text in text-based documents, has improved navigation and file management, and lets you keep two synthesized voices available on the unit in the English version.
http://www.humanware.com/en-canada/about_us/press_releases/2009_press_releases/humanware_unveils_victor_reader_stream_3

9) Speaking of the new Victor Reader Stream, it will be demonstrated and discussed on Tek Talk on GMT Tuesday, 24 March at 00:00.
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rsc9613dc89eb2

10) ReadHowYouWant is a web site that sells accessible books in large print, DAISY and electronic braille (.brf) format.
http://www.readhowyouwant.com
Starting in April, you will be able to download the first chapter from twenty of those books per month from the HumanWare site so you can decide if you want to buy the book.
http://www.humanware.com/en-canada/about_us/press_releases/2009_press_releases/humanware_and_readhowyouwant_join_forces

11) this Blind Cool Tech podcast is a comparison between the two GPS systems for mobile phones, Wayfinder Access and Mobile Geo.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/bct/bct1329GPSComparison.mp3

12) this Fred's Head post is entitled How to Backup Email and Other Data, and includes directions for backing up Outlook Express files.
http://www.fredshead.info/2006/05/how-to-backup-email-and-other-data.html

13) Fred's Head also lets us in on Sue's Kitchen a site by a blind cook from the British Isles with tips and recipes.
http://www.tafn.org.uk/cookery.htm

14) this issue of Tidbits appears as lots of people in the U.S. become obsessively involved in something called March Madness, a very large basketball tournament. Again this year you can listen to and watch live streams of all the games.
http://www.ncaasports.com/mmod

15) SeroTalk Tech Chat 8 is called Recording and Editing Audio On Your Computer
http://serotalk.com/2009/03/13/serotalk-tech-chat-8-recording-and-editing-audio-on-your-computer/

16) SeroTalk Podcast 10 is ON Podcasting and Tech News for March 17, 2009
http://serotalk.com/2009/03/17/serotalk-podcast-10-on-podcasting-and-tech-news-for-march-17-2009/

17) Bill Boules has launched what he calls the Friday Morning Podcast, which often appears on other days. He does some adaptive technology training and discusses favorite topics of his. He actively seeks feedback. Recent episodes have discussed the Amazon mp3 site and the Scrip Talk method for labeling prescriptions.
http://www.gcast.com/u/billboules/main.xml

18) Staying Safe Online is the title of the next seminar from Hadley School, which will take place on Wednesday, 25 March at 18:50 GMT. As always, this seminar will be available for download later.
http://www.hadley.edu/5_c_seminarAtHadley.asp

19) It would be most interesting to know if this is accessible: TopOCR os an optical character recognition program that runs on Windows Mobile Smartphones. It allows for scanning texts written in eleven languages, a built-in translator, text-to-speech, the ability to save in various text formats, a command-line interface and the ability to turn scanned documents into MP3's for playing on the phone or some other portable device. The program is at version 3.1.
http://www.topocr.com/

20) It came up in the March FSCast interview with people from AOL that AOL is at least open to considering ways to make Winamp, which they now own, more accessible. If anybody would like to write them about this, send a message to
aolaccessibility@aol.com

21) Lift, Inc. in Westchester County, New Jersey is seeking a programmer-analyst trainee. No experience is required.
http://www.lift-inc.org

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