Serotalk Podcast 85: I Want Food!

You did an excellent job with the show. My question is to you. Is the windows seven book using system access going to be in Braille? Please let me know.

Keep up the great work! Look forward to the next show.

Blessings,

Ben

From Gary, no last name given on the Twitter and iPhone

Hey all. Great podcast. Another good twitter app for the iPhone is twitterific. I use that one.

Another one from Dan about NLS

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in what we are thinking about!

I received my NLS digital Talking Book player about a year ago. In 2009 and 2010, there were quarterly reports about it in the News; I live in Northern California and receive the Talking Book Lending Library News in both print and Braille. I’ll admit not using the player much for NLS reading material. I have received a few cartridges from the library in Sacramento, but more from Christian Record Services library, and I bought a personal 2 gig cartridge from Perkins School for the Blind. I use it mainly for Librivox books and for playing high fidelity music in jam situations and at church, where mp3s and wma files come in handy. 2 Gigs is a lot of space and I only occasionally have to use compression to reduce the size of movie files or larger music files. I have the upgrade for the new player, and I have found it easy when necessary to download the upgrade software and install it from the cartridge.

So I don’t know about the claim that the digital players are not distributed well in Northern California or how accurate it is. I think it might be more fair to say that there may be a yawning disinterest on the part of some of the qualified blind people who could, if they wished, receive it. Many of them seem to think the tapes they want are simply more widely available than good books on cartridges. What good is the player if you can’t get the books or magazines you want to play on it? As books on cartridge and thumb drive become more widely available, the player may become more popular. I would love it if you keep commenting regarding thoughts regarding your use of digital talking book players, distributions, other applications of said technology, and the BARD Web site. Mentioning some of the lesser known libraries would help, too.

Oh, by the way, my friend Sheila in Philadelphia bought a cartridge, too, and she likes having Librivox books and music on it, too, and we have also been reading some recordings from http://www.fcbh.org

Sincerely,

Dan Shelley

More on NLS, this time from Beth.

Hi, way to go on podcast 84! Mike’s thoughts about book-writing are great and I have a site which may make future publishing and writing easier, here is the link for more info and you guys can explore the whole site at your leisure and as you prefer:

http://www.hyperink.com/platform

I love my NLS player, the sound is exemplary, hope the Stratus is that good too! Regarding the new Read Easy Plus: I see a couple of genuine markets. Sometimes, blind tech users just want simplicity and, in this case, portability, with just one machine, no lugging around a laptop, camera, plus your material to scan. Some seniors would also definitely benefit. You discussed Facebook, a funny thing happened on Skype the other night. I got one call announcing some kind of I.D. number, what was that? I also got 2 requests to be added to my contacts from people I never heard of and I blocked those and found the list of status indicators and I now am invisible on Skype, except if I know I have a call scheduled. How did those people get my Skype name? Keep up the terrific work, guys! Beth

From Mike Arigo

Just listened to pod cast 84, a few comments. I like the android shoes idea. Hopefully they would have a speaker, this would allow you to have spoken directions as well. That GW Micro reading thing is silly, I would also like to know who would waste money on that, notice I said waste, not spend, because that’s what it is. You could get a nice computer, scanning software and a scanner or camera for so much less.

Why pay more for a device that only does one thing, even for someone who doesn’t want to do anything else, get a computer and put the scanning software in their start up folder in windows, or log in items on the mac and it will automatically start when you turn on the computer. I cannot think of any reason to get that at all. This new version of keysoft is another example, charging for an update and the main new feature is PDF support. Let’s see, I’ve been able to read PDF files since 2001 when Adobe made acrobat reader accessible in Windows, and on the mac, the preview application which comes with the mac reads PDF files and is very accessible. Another example of how these specialty note takers are way behind the times, cost too much and need to be replaced by main stream products that are now available, again, there’s really no reason to buy one of those when you can get all of that functionality and more much cheaper.

SeroSpectives from October 20^th Email from Laney

I put up a post about the the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed regulations on airline web and check-in kiosk accessibility. Information on how to comment and areas where I think the regulations need to be strengthened, is included. (Comments due November 25, 2011).

Serotalk Podcast 85: I Want Food!

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