Top Tech Tidbits - Volume 189
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) I have my own technology winter sale to announce. I only sell my own used equipment in this newsletter and I have a few items to sell now. Prices for these items may be negotiable; I'd rather somebody be using them and I get some money for them! This should be a win-win situation for everybody.

a. Plextalk PTR2, digital recorder: DAISY player equipped to play RFB&D books, MP3 player, cd player, cd burner. This fully accessible unit sells for $900 new, and this one is as good as new. $475.

b. Trekker-Maestro: a fully accessible portable device including a GPS system, DAISY book reader, contact manager, calendar, word processor, e-mail, web browser and memo recorder. These units sell new for around $2,000. $750
c. Olympus ds-50, digital recorder 1-gb recorder which speaks the menus and settings dialogs. well-designed for dictation and recording of lectures and conferences. $150

d. Panasonic rf2200 shortwave radio from the 80's, with am, fm and complete coverage of the shortwave bands, $100 plus $15 shipping.

Write to me for specifics about any item, and to express interest.

2) "It's Not on the Keyboard: Typing Special Characters and Foreign Languages in Word" By Anna Dresner is now available as a download or braille book for $5.00 from National Braille Press.
http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/SPECIAL.html

3) The latest SeroTalk podcast discusses the whys and hows of social networking using the two most popular sites, Facebook and Twitter, among other related topics.
http://serotalk.com/2008/12/11/third-podcast-discusses-social-networking-what-it-is-and-why-we-should/

4) Listen and Learn Recordings is a site seeking to offer a variety of recorded instructional information. At present, it features an Introduction to the KSonar mobility aid and lots of information about accessible use of Linux.
http://www.lalrecordings.com/page/Linux.aspxv

5) If you enter promotional code 2008 in the appropriate field of the ATI shopping cart, you can save 15% on Kathy Ann Murtha's textbooks, seminar recordings and trainer handbooks until the end of 2008.
http://www.blindtraining.com/catalog/
Three new textbooks are available: Word 2007 with JFW 10, Excel 2007 with JFW 10, and MSIE 7 with JFW 10

6) Robert Betts is the offer of eight accessible self-voicing games: Accessible Battleship, Accessible Blackjack, Accessible FreeCell, Accessible Memory, Accessible Simon, Accessible Word Play, Accessible Word Scramble, and Accessible Yahtzee. These gtames now sell for $9.95 each but their prices will rise to $12.95 each after the first of the year.
http://www.GamesForTheBlind.com

7) Some users of JAWS 10 have been having trouble reading mail with Outlook 2007. Here is a tech support note and a fix from Freedom Scientific:
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_support/BulletinView.asp?QC=1317

8) A new article, Using the E-mail Program of the Braille Sense and Voice Sense Notetakers has been posted to the Gw Micro knowledge base.
http://gwmicro.com/kb1100

9) Blind Bargains directed us to Mosio, which describes itself as People Powered Mobile Search.You use text messages to ask questions and get answers from humans who are subscribed to the service.
http://www.mosio.com/

10) Serotek is offering three discounts through Dec. 24, 2008 during the 12 Days of christmas Promotion.
http://www.serotek.com

11) EASI offers two fee-based courses in January: Barrier-free Information Technology
<http://easi.cc/workshops/adaptit.htm>
and Creating and Repurposing More Accessible Documents
http://easi.cc/workshops/text.htm

12) The Worldwide WebConsortium has approved a set of WebContent Accessibility Guidelines,version 2.0, to guide web developers in creating accessible web pages.
http://www.w3.org/2008/12/wcag20-pressrelease.html

13) Fred's Head Companion informs us about docx-converter.com, a site to which you can upload Word 2007 .docx files and receive via e-mail a html conversion of the original that will play on almost all computers.
http://www.docx-converter.com/

14) From the same source comes a posting with a variety of resources for listening to or hearing about old recordings.
http://www.fredshead.info/2005/11/victor-victrola-and-turtles-78-rpm.html

15) Finally, to end the year of Tidbits, here is a posting with a couple resources for podcasts and text documents containing US legal information
http://www.fredshead.info/2007/02/law-in-plain-english-by-nolo.html

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