Really Random Goodness: Ear Wax, Rock! And Happy Fun Ball

Can You Hear Me Now: The first link below talks about a possible cure for deafness and the second one mentions why ear wax is a good thing. Personally I can’t deal with the stuff but maybe that is just me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/08/27/scideaf127.xml

http://www.livescience.com/health/080829-earwax-removal.html

Rock!: And when you have finished cleaning your rears you could venture out this weekend to Houston where an “Austin City Limits” of Rock .. of sorts is taking place. There is a real trend for the US to go the route of European styled festivals. And if you are into that sort of thing then this lineup will blow you away. But if you didn’t watch “Headbanger’s Ball” in the late 80’s or early 90’s then just be amazed at the names appearing at this event.

http://rockthebayou.com/

Too Many Manuals: I’m reading a ton of product manuals and release notes this week. And from out of nowhere I remembered one of the greatest disclaimers ever. Please hit the link below to know just how to play with “Happy Fun Ball”.

http://www.luvistheanswer.org/videos/snl-happy-fun-ball.html

Press Release: AllInPlay Announces the ACB Open

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All inPlay and ACB Radio have teamed up to bring you the ACB Open: a series of four tournaments throughout September featuring all four of All inPlay's games.
The best part? It's free to everyone!

Each Saturday in September, starting at 3 pm U.S. eastern time and lasting for 24 hours, you'll be able to join people from across the country and around the world in a thrilling free tournament.

Here's the schedule:
September 6: Five-card Draw Poker
September 13: Crazy Eights
September 20: Texas Hold'em
September 27: Tag: The Anagram Game

To play, just visit:
http://allinplay.com/
during the tournaments and click on any of the games. From there a link will take you to the tournament tables. If your account with us has expired, you won't be able to play on the regular tables, but you will notice a link that will be active during each tournament that will take you to the tournament tables, where you will be able to play free of charge.

A big thanks to ACB Radio for making this event happen. Pay them a visit at:
http://www.acbradio.org

We hope to see you at all four tournaments!

Enjoy the last of ssummer...or winter!


-The All inPlay Team

Early Reviews Of IE8 Beta 2

Two of my fave sites have posted their thoughts, and in some cases a good feature rundown, of the newly released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. Check out these links from the Windows Super Site and Ars Technica.

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/ie8_beta2.asp

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080828-ie8-beta-2-shows-microsoft-is-serious-about-playing-catch-up.html

Internet Explorer 8 Public Beta 2 Live

IE8 B2 is all up on the web and begging for you to take a spin. Just remember to check with your AT maker of choice to see if there is a patch, beta or other way of using it first.

Nab the version that works best for you at the link below..

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/worldwide-sites.aspx

JAWS 10 Beta Is Now Online

Remember all that cool stuff I blogged about JFW 10 back during convention? Well now you can play with all of that and more as FS has released the first version of the JAWS 10 Beta for public consumption. To get it and read the release notes.. go to the link below.

http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws/JAWS-public-beta.asp

And if that isn’t enough you can listen to more about the release in the latest Freedom Scientific podcast. This link will take you to the FSCast page.

http://www.freedomscientific.com/FSCast/default.asp

Quick News: CAPTCHA, 7 And G.W/ Micro

CAPTCHA: Could their be a new and better use of this tech that doesn’t make the rest of us run from the room screaming? Well, Ars Technica has an article that says the stuff could aid in the document recovery and other archival tasks.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080814-captchas-workfor-digitizing-old-damaged-texts-manuscripts.html

Windows 7: And so it begins. Microsoft slowly starts talking about the next version of Windows in a new blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

G.W. Micro: The company has posted a Press Release in response to the litigation from Freedom Scientific.

Thanks to john in comments for spotting the bad link.. The release is now below.

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GW Micro Response to Freedom Scientific Lawsuit

Aug-14-2008Fort Wayne, Indiana, August 15, 2008 -- GW Micro, Inc., a Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company dedicated to providing high quality adaptive technology solutions for blind and visually impaired individuals, announced today that it has received notice of a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Freedom Scientific, Inc., the self-described "world leader in technology-based solutions for people with visual impairments." The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court, Middle District of Florida, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,993,707 for a "Document Placemarker." GW Micro has reviewed the claim and believes it is overreaching and not consistent with what Freedom Scientific told the Patent Office when obtaining its patent. GW Micro intends to defend itself vigorously and expects to prevail in court."As many of our users know, our screen reader -- Window-Eyes -- has had the capability of returning to a specific line within a webpage since version 3.1, which was released over nine years ago, well before Freedom Scientific's alleged invention," said Dan Weirich, GW Micro's Corporate President. Weirich went on to note that, "The implication in a recent Freedom Scientific press release that GW Micro is 'benefit[ing] from [Freedom Scientific's] investment at no charge' is simply not accurate nor in line with GW Micro's tradition of success and fair play." Finally, Weirich concluded, "We will aggressively defend both our legal position and our place in the assistive technology community."Daniel R. WeirichGW Micro, Inc.725 Airport North Office ParkFort Wayne, IN 46825ph 260-489-3671www.gwmicro.com

Random Goodness: Smart Contacts, 78s and Snowl

Smart Contact Lens: I’m all about the tech, however, I put the brakes on when we get to Wetware. Too much reading of Bruce Sterling and William Gibson I think. Well for glaucoma patients this contact lens may just be the thing to catch those pesky eye pressure spikes.

http://thefutureofthings.com/news/1278/smart-contact-lenses.html

Before LPs There Were 78s: We have reached an age where if you discuss Vinyl with younger people they think you are talking about clothes instead of the long playing record variety that so many of us grew up with prior to the MP3 generation. This article talks about one man’s crusade to digitize as many 78s as possible.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/one-mans-quest.html

And if that doesn’t take you back you can read this about albums being reissued on Reel to Reel.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/28/albums-reissued-on-r.html

Snowl: I’ve been hearing about this Firefox extension that lets you read your messages within the browser. I don’t have the time to play with this now but I think I might come back to it later. Here is a Windows Super Site blog entry on Snowl.

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/08/12/introducing-snowl-an-experiment-with-messaging-in-the-browser.aspx

Random Goodness: The “Head In The Clouds” Edition

I have two themes going today. One is all about data in the Cloud. And the other is me asking a bunch of questions in each post. The latter was accidental.

A Password Stuck In My Head: Forget your password a lot? Tired of today’s CAPTCHA? How about a system where you could use your fave MP3, picture or other data instead? Well that is what some researchers thing would be a good idea.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/08/let-your-theme-song-be-your-password.html

Cloudburst: The recent downtime for Mobile Me and Gmail is pretty scary. But what if you left all your data on the cloud… and the clouds dissipated leaving you with no data? Just such a thing happened and see how devastating the new Web 2.0 can be if you go head first into the deep end of the pool with no off site physical backups.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/081108-linkup-failure.html?hpg1=bn

Your Friends Are My Friends: This story is out of the UK but I can easily see companies in the US following along in new service contracts. The thing is.. are your contacts your contacts or are they the property of the company who you worked for at the time you made those networking contacts. And if you rely on services like “Linked In” should you use one account for work and one for home? Take a look at this article and decide for yourself.

http://www.bombaycrow.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/who-owns-your-online-networking-contacts/

Quick News: Dragon, Firefox And Window Eyes Beta

Here are some quick bits for a Friday afternoon.

Dragon 10: So if this is coming and J-Say just updated to JFW9 and JFW 10 is coming.. umf!

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/resources/pressreleases/20080807_DNS10Launch.asp

Firefox 3: This awesome FAQ for Screen Readers has been making the rounds on the blog scene. And I thought it was good to follow SUIT.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox+3+with+Screen+Readers+FAQ

Window Eyes 7b2: The same goes with providing the link to the updated Window eyes Beta 2 release of the upcoming 7.0 line.

http://www.gwmicro.com/Window-Eyes/Beta/

Poll: July’s Mini Poll Results And Full On August Poll Posted

I want to thank the 19 of you who played along with the mini poll for July. And I want to apologize for not having Tuna as an option. I have no idea what I was thinking. So maybe come the holidays we will do another mini poll with a wider range of menu items. For now let us gaze at the results of Kitchen Stadiums’ “Battle Sandwich”.

Poll: What Sandwich Sounds Good Right About Now?

Ham 1 (5%)
Turkey 1 (5%)
BLT 6 (31%)
Rubin 4 (21%)
Meatball Sub 5 (26%)
Veggie Delight 2 (10%)

For about a week it looked like Meatball was going to run away with things. Then BLT came out of nowhere and stole it on the last two days of voting. Personally I was in the mood for a Rubin when I wrote that. And today I brought Spaghetti. Therefore I would fall into the Meatball camp I guess. Either way Veggie did its best to topple the carnivores. And Turkey sat at 0 for the longest time before someone voted for that option. I know this wasn’t as topical as some of the other polls but, for me, it was fun to have something crazy up there. And again I thank all who played along.

Alas, I went back to the traditional poll question for August. Less you think I have gone all culinary.

August's Poll: Which Public Beta Will You Download And Install This Month?

JAWS 10.0
Window Eyes 7.0
Windows Live Mesh
Firefox 3.1 Alpha

I highly suggest you take a look at Live Mesh if you are into the Cloud or really wanting a more user friendly Remote Desktop/Sync solution. And it looks like Firefox 3.1 will have some interesting changes as well. And the web is a blaze about the other two public betas. So this one should be fun to watch.

Pac Mate 6.1 Released

Sporting various tweaks, Contracted Braille Anywhere and a few other features.. 6.1 is a free update that you should nab if you are already an Omni user. Make sure you check out the new install/upgrade steps too. Here is the link to the page with all of this and more..

http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/pacmate/pacmate-omni61-update-dl.asp

Press Release: Beat The Summer Heat With TAG!

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Happy Summer from All inPlay,

We've got great news! Our newest game, All inPlay Tag: The Anagram Game, has been launched. We're celebrating by opening the site for a uge, 15-day free for all. That means all of our games, not just Tag, will be free to play until August 16, whether you've tried All inPlay in the past or not! so come on over!

http://allinplay.com/

If you can't remember your old account info, just create a new account, or email us at support@allinplay.com.

What's Tag, you ask? It's All inPlay's take on this classic brain bender. Find as many words as possible from a given root phrase, but beware, you don't have much time, and players all over the world are banging on their keyboards trying to leave you in the anagramical dust! Three difficulty levels make this game fun for the whole family, and you'll learn a few new words in the process.

But that's not all. We've also been busy on other fronts. If you were a member of All inPlay in the past, you might remember something called the Max Game. It's a popular style of poker that some people greatly enjoyed but that others had no interest in, and it caused some confusion. We're happy to tel you that we've added the Max Game to our offering of Draw Poker tables. Now those poeple interested have a place to play this wild form of poker, and those who want to stick to the basics don't have to worry about the Max Game. If you sit at a Max Game table, our software automatically bets the max for the first person to bet after the dealer. Come try it out:
http://allinplay.com/

Were you a fan of Crazy Eights? We've added some exciting one on one tables that add a new dimmension to the game. It's all at:
http://allinplay.com/

With all this new activity, we've still got the same great community. Stop by and see for yourself.


Cordially,
The All inPlay Team