October 06 Tech Update: The "Ghost Of LP Windows Walks Amongst You" Edition

Honestly there’s just so much news coming in November that a short, sweet and far less verbose update just seemed like the thing to do this month. And no I haven’t figured out what I am doing to the format yet. Maybe by Xmas I will have it figured out. At least my good friend Steve gets his feature back this month.

Steve’s Word Of The Month Za Definition: Pizza. The phrase is often used in text messaging and you can see really quickly who used the one handed typing method to text on their phones when they say things in code like Za.

* Kurzweil 1000 v11: Here’s the official press release on the new version shipping really soon.

http://www.blindaccessjournal.com/2006/10/kurzweil-k1000-version-11-released.html

* Trekker 3.0: Here’s the low down on the new GPS software for the Note Family of products from Humanware.

http://www.humanware.com/about/news/201006.asp

* Hadley Distance Learning: Hadley On Line what a world we live in these days!

http://geoffandwen.com/blind/newsarticle.asp?u_id=16017

* Audible and Mobile 2005: Blind Confidential has a wild tale about using the new Audible Manager on the new Mobile Speak Pocket.

http://blindconfidential.blogspot.com/2006/10/audible-strikes-again.html

* Mobile Speak Pocket 1.0.8: Speaking of MSP here’s the official release on that update.

http://geoffandwen.com/blind/newsarticle.asp?u_id=15775

* Windows Media Player 11: The final version is out and available for download now. Grab it from this Microsoft site…

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/download/download.aspx

* IE7 Keyboard Commands: Just about everyone else has linked to Kelly’s blog but Desert Skies had a bit more on the subject. And I don’t think I have shown Jeff love in a link yet. Shame on me.

http://jeffbishop.net/archive/2006/10/15/Keyboard-Guides-for-Internet-Explorer-7.0.aspx

* Firefox 2.0: Some say it’s a dud and others say it’s as good as it ever was. Still version 2.0 is out now with version 3 looming for non Windows 9x machines. To get more info on the Firefox debate check out the ZDNet page.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=129

* W3C: The group has come under fire by many in the Web 2.0 league of developers who wish not be constrained by a little thing like standardization. Read more on this issue in the link below..

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061029-8101.html

* Apple Boot Camp 1.1.2: A new Beta of Boot Camp is now on line. Some in the know say running in Parallels is better though. Still you can find the Beta download links here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

* Instant FM: A new USB dongle allows you to record FM and Web Radio straight to your computer. See the article from Slashdot here.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/10/30/217234.shtml

~ Vista Corner

Well several Betas have begun for Vista testing with Assistive Technology. And while I can’t speak about that because of Non Disclosure Agreements I can at least say that all this blathering on about Vista for the last 18 months will finally come to pass on January 30^th 2007. Expect some more hardware musings from me when I take a look back at the infamous NFB presentation I did back in July in a post to be coming very soon. Some 4 months later I still get a little flack over that one. Go fig! Until then here’s some bits on Vista. The “Road To Gold” being a fascinating read by the way.

` Final packaging revealed-

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061031/vista-news-leaks/

` Road To Gold:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_roadtogold_01.asp