Serotek Announces Two New Options To Obtain Your System Access

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Serotek Corporation, the Accessibility Anywhere people, is proud to announce two exciting new options to extend accessibility to everyone. Serotek now makes its complete product offering available to people on a budget with two Software As a Service (SAS) options. For those who feel uncomfortable making any commitment, the entire Serotek offering including System Access Mobile with Neospeech and the System Access Mobile Network is available for the low, low price of $39.95 a month with no obligation. You can discontinue usage at any time and owe no cancellation fee. For those willing to commit to a forty-eight month relationship the price is just $24.95 per month. After forty-eight months you will have a paid up license to System Access Mobile with Neospeech. On-going use of the System Access Mobile Network (SAM Net) and continuing software updates will cost just $129.95 a year, guaranteed beginning in year 5 and beyond.

If you or someone you know has been caught in the dilemma of not being able to afford the accessibility tools you need and want because government agencies will only fund screen readers that are too complex and require too large an investment of your time to achieve minimal proficiency, this offer is for you. System Access Mobile is more than a screen reader, providing all the standard accessibility functions including access to the major Microsoft Office productivity tools including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Outlook Express, and many other popular applications like Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer, Skype, Windows Media Player and much, much more. And, with System Access Mobile you get Neospeech, delivering naturally sounding voices. In addition, System Access Mobile, in conjunction with the System Access Mobile Network delivers connectibility as you’ve never experienced it before. Access your home computer from work or on the road; exchange files; interact on-screen with friends and colleagues. System Access Mobile takes social networking to a whole new level.

Best of all, System Access Mobile is easy to use. In minutes you’ll be up and running, browsing the Internet, sending and receiving e-mail, and accessing your favorite productivity tools. Additional training is available for those who want to really put the software through its paces.

You also get full access to the System Access Mobile Network (SAM NET), the world’s most complete compilation of accessible sites for news, entertainment, shopping, information, and social networking. With SAM NET you can launch your own Web site, create and participate in Blogs, customize your news and entertainment. SAM NET puts you right in the center of the digital lifestyle, helping you enjoy the independence and productivity you crave. On SAM NET you’ll find a community of like-minded individuals who are taking control of their lives.

So if you’ve been hesitating because of the cost, now is the time to act. You can enjoy the digital lifestyle for less than a dollar a day ($.82/day actually). You’ll save that and more just by using an Internet telephone service like Skype, which is fully accessible to Serotek SAS subscribers. Why not give yourself (or someone you know) the digital lifestyle for the holidays. It will be the most liberating gift you’ve ever received.

http://blog.serotek.com/2007/10/two-exciting-new-system-access.html

Open Book 8.0 Is Coming.. Soon!

The long awaited update to Open Book will be hitting the streets soon with new features and some other functionality I can't talk about yet. However rather than I just tease you about things I have seen from the near future I give you the newly posted preview page from Freedom Scientific. Oh and expect more info in an upcoming FS cast as well.

http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_OB80ComingSoon.asp

Press Release: Dolphin Celebrates Win At CSUN With New Promotion

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PRESS RELEASE - IMMEDIATE

Lunar from Dolphin named the World’s Best Screen Magnifier at the CSUN conference - Celebrate with this incredible Promotion
Over 10 million Americans are blind or visually impaired and every seven minutes a new individual in America will become classed as blind or visually impaired. However, only 1.5 million of these 10 million individuals can actually use computers!
Increasing the individual’s independence and mobility combined with finding a solution to the difficulties and barriers that are encountered as a result of blindness and visual impairments is the philosophy of Dolphin Computer Access and its award winning software solutions.
In the battle of the screen magnifiers at the 22nd Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN) in Los Angeles, Simon Lakin & Steve Plumpton two accessibility experts from the RNIB in the UK chose Lunar as the clear winner over six other screen magnifiers. To celebrate, Dolphin Computer Access is delighted to announce an incredible promotion aimed specifically at increasing the number of visually impaired PC literate users within the US and Canada.

Purchase a Dolphin Pen edition of the award winning software Lunar or LunarPlus today and receive a free complementary CD license edition, saving an incredible $235 on Lunar & $355 on LunarPlus!

What is Lunar?
Straining to see what’s on your computer screen? Lunar screen magnifier from Dolphin Computer Access can help you work for hours longer without getting tired eyes.

With just a click on Lunar’s innovative control panel or a push of a hot key you can instantly magnify everything on your screen, so whether you are typing a document or simply reading an email the days of having to strain your eyes are long gone.

Lunar can also greatly reduce glare too, thanks to its built-in color changer. Whether it’s inversing the desktop colors to give you white text on a black background or choosing from over 20 different color schemes, you are sure to find the one that’s right for your eyes.
Why did the judges love Lunar?

Below are just a few of the reasons why Lunar easily came out on top:
• Line view mode, ideal for relaxed reading or those with peripheral vision.
• Responsive, stable and reliable.
• Magnification at login. No need to manually load Lunar’s magnification software, just sit back and relax as it automatically loads.
• Fractional Magnification, more fractional magnification levels than any other magnifier in the market.

What is the Dolphin Pen?
Take Lunar or LunarPlus with you wherever you go without needing to install it ever again, simply plug it in and Lunar will automatically load directly from the pen drive. All thanks to Dolphin’s software being pre-installed within the new 1GB robust swivel cap design USB powered Dolphin Pen drive. It truly is the perfect assistive software solution for any low vision person who regularly uses different computers. In addition Version 8.01 of Lunar and LunarPlus work seamlessly in conjunction with all of Microsoft’s 32bit flavors of Windows Vista.

What are the advantages of a Dolphin Pen?
Increase your mobility and independence by taking your preferred screen magnification software and personal settings with you wherever you go. With the Lunar Dolphin Pen you can hot swap desks or buildings without the inconvenience of having to re-install Lunar and avoid the frustrations of inaccessible technology.
What’s the benefit of a FREE CD license edition?
If you ever forget to take your Dolphin Pen home, don’t worry you can still access the internet, email friends or maybe occasionally continue with your work as Lunar or LunarPlus could already be permanently installed on your home PC thanks to the free CD license edition.

What’s the difference between Lunar and LunarPlus?
LunarPlus includes all of the unique magnification features found within Lunar, combined with the added bonus of speech. Whilst LunarPlus is not a full screen reader, it does include the popular Eloquence and RealSpeak voices, making it ideal for those long passages of text.
LunarPlus has been specifically designed to give the user that little bit of extra help when their eyesight starts to flag towards the end of a busy day.
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Notes for Editors:
1. ABOUT DOLPHIN COMPUTER ACCESS GROUP – Dolphin is one of the largest companies in the computer access industry with over 60 employees in the USA, UK and Sweden and dealers in over 30 countries worldwide. The company offers a complete range of software solutions, including screen readers, screen magnifiers, text scanners and readers, Braille translators, educational software to help with reading and writing, speech synthesisers, DAISY talking book software and mobile solutions for Windows Mobile enabled Smartphone’s. Dolphin also has the only complete solution which includes speech, magnification and Braille in a single product. Dolphin packages are developed to operate seamlessly in many different environments including education and business networks, stand-alone PCs and laptops. Dolphin is the world leader in the development of DAISY software players and content creation tool, including EasyProducer, EasyReader, Dolphin Publisher and EasyConverter. Dolphin software supports over 20 languages as standard and comes complete with Dolphin’s own synthesiser. More information about Dolphin and its products is available at www.YourDolphin.com .
2. Press Contacts:
Archana Bharathan, Dolphin Computer Access
231 Clarksville Road, Suite 3, Princeton Junction NJ 08550, USA
info@dolphinusa.com Tel: (866) 797-5921
Neil Woodcock, Dolphin Computer Access
Technology House, Blackpole Estate West, Worcester, WR3 8TJ, UK
neil.woodcock@dolphinusa.com Tel: +44 (0)1905 754 577
www.YourDolphin.com
3. Statistics used in this release are available from the AFB website at http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=15 .

Apple: Classic, Older Macs, Hacks And Vista Vs Leopard

Eek! This is the most info I have ever posted in one month. Eek! This is the first time I have ever dedicated two whole posts to Apple. What's next? Dogs and cats living together .. mass hysteria?

Bye Bye Classic: If you were thinking about upgrading to Leopard and you are an older G4 866 MHz or lower well.. Welcome to Vista envy! Older applications below 10.0 are also out of luck as they can not be upconverted to Leopard. Yeah Steve. Tell me again how OSX is not like Vista.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/10/25/apple-quietly-disposes-of-classic-in-leopard

Faster, Faster Leopard, Kill, Kill: Just how fast will your experience be if you do upgrade to 10.5? Take a look at some early field tests in the link below.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple/how-fast-is-apple-os-x-leopard-on-old-macs-315288.php

Put A Leopard On Your PC Drive: What happens when your fave company who lived by the slogan "think different" becomes mainstream? Well for some people out there they woke up to a very chilly morning in some very hot places. Hackers have moved their attention from unlocking the iphone back to hacking OSX on a Windows based PC. Being popular has it's disadvantages I guess. Sure this has been done before but I don't think it was done this well this fast. See how to load the hacked copies below.

http://dailyapps.net/2007/10/hack-attack-install-leopard-on-your-pc-in-3-easy-steps/

Vista Vs Leopard: The title of this Engadget article is self explanatory except for one point. . Vista has sold over 88 million licenses and I don't think the copy-cat will do that any time soon.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/27/leopard-vs-vista-feature-chart-showdown/

The JAWS 9.0 Public Betas Keep On Coming..

One of the things I learned from all my time in working with AT Venders on private beta testing is that the info we testers submit is limited to the equipment we testers have at hand. When you go public then, and only then, do the training wheels come off and you find out that this code doesn't work with some piece of equipment from 2001 or what not. My hat is off to the gang at FS for responding and reposting to the public beta so much this go around. I hope the info they are getting continues to be valid!

http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws90fea_beta.asp#Update

Quick News: IE8, Vista DRM, Real Player, Web Fonts And Why The 21st Century Makes You Miserable

Today I start off with a theme "all about the web" then I tear that asunder with a purely non web humor story at the bottom of the post. In my days of being an aspiring radio personality they called that last story a "kicker" to end your newscast on a high note. When I start writing posts like the copy I had to create for morning radio I totally understand if you delete me from your RSS readers.

IE8: The Windows Super Site now has a blog and it gives us some idea of what changes come in the UI for the program in it's next whole number version update.

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2007/10/23/internet-explorer-8-preview.aspx

Vista DRM: Another blog from Ed Bott at ZDnet has a really long but really neat series debunking the rumors about some of Vista's high def DRM functions affecting some of Vista's overall speed and quality. Well sort of.. check out the blog and then check out the next episode of TWIT's Windows Weekly as Ed is set to be on to discuss his 3 part series of articles on the subject.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/

Real Player: In many of the recent training sessions at work that I have conducted or assisted with in the last six months I have railed on about the fact that viruses are not unique to email and MS Word. Now a days the bad stuff can be found in MP3s, PDFs or even audio and video streams. After all everything on the computer is just 1s and 0s. And malware, spyware and virsuses are ... 1s and 0s. Back on topic, someone did a Day Zero attack on Real Player.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=599

Web Fonts In Vista: I thought this was an interesting Slashdot article that points out Vista's updated Web Fonts and how this carried over to Vista's new look.

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/10/19/1535203.shtml

7 Reasons Why The 21st Century Makes You Miserable: Remember MAD Magazine before it became MADTV on FOX? Now do you remember it's big competitor CRACKED? It is okay if you don't because it doesn't effect the funny article below about technology woes. I just haven't thought about CRACKED in years nor did I even think for one second it was around and on the web.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Apple: Leopard Security, Leopard Impressions And Leopard Universal Access

This post goes out to an offline friend named Chris. He is one of the few Apple fans out there that isn’t a full on zealot to the “Cult of Apple”. Yes Virginia there are normals out there. So I’ll throw him a bone and post some interesting Leopard news.

Security in Leopard: Ars Technica takes a closer look at the new security features found in OSX 10.5.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/10/24/examining-the-security-improvements-in-leopard

Leopard Impressions: This article from Mac Rumors has been sitting on the Digg Top 10 long enough for me to read it.. so you know it is a slow day for me then.

http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/23/mac-os-x-10-5-leopard-first-impressions/

17 Universal Access Features And More: Neat blog on AT for the Mac. And this article outlines other features in the recent Apple announcement that would also aid those of us who use Magnifier or Voiceover.

http://atmac.org/2007/10/20/leopard-17-universal-access-features-or-more/

Quick Bits: Code Factory, JAWS, Humanware and OSX Leopard

So what happens when I make a sarcastic statement about the volume of available news? More news comes a rollin' on through of course.

Code Factory Mobile Magnifier Beta: The Desert Skies has posted two Code Factory press releases. The first about Mobile Magnifier for Smartphones. To me magnifying those incredibly small screens versus quickly hearing info with speech has me saying "Speech" every time, however, to each his or her own I guess.

http://thedesertskies.com/archive/2007/10/17/the-first-magnifier-for-windows-mobile-smartphones-is-now-available.aspx

Mobile Speak Public Beta 2.0: Since we are talking about speech the second press release covers the new public beta phase for Moble Speak. I am really excited by their new licensing method and I think I may finally break down and get a real phone.

http://thedesertskies.com/archive/2007/10/17/code-factory-releases-public-beta-of-mobile-speak-for-windows-mobile-smartphones-version-2-0.aspx

JFW 9: No one can say that Freedom Scientific isn't listening to feedback as they posted another update to the on going JAWS 9.0 public beta.

http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws90fea_beta.asp#Update

Classmate Reader: Humanware has announced a new device that will aid the Education market with reading and language comprehension skills. The link below takes you to the press release.

http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/about_us/press_releases/classmate_reader

Keysoft 7.5 Build 20: I guess I have been under a rock. I'm a little late on posting this but Build 20 is up and the link is below.

http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/support/braillenote/keysoft_7.5_upgrade

Leopard System Requirements: Apple has recently said that 10.5 will drop on 10/26. If you aren't running an older G4 at 866 MHz or lower.. rejoice. If you are running an older G4.. You will be taking a trip to the Apple Store for hardware rather than software. See more of the requirements and an overview of some of the features at the link below.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/10/16/leopard-system-requirements-and-new-features

Random "Microsoft" Goodness

More than 10 posts in a month. Wow, I either found a bunch of news or I found a little more time to post content. Hmm.. I am sure its not the latter. Oh well here is some random news that just so happens to be centered around Microsoft and it's many products. Minus the Zune 2, HALO 3 and Windows Home Server stuff. Ooo.. I may have another post in me this week yet!

OOXML: A month or so ago the Open XML standard was up for adoption in Europe. To say that there was some controversy around the voters and the voting process would be a very large understatement. It seems that the same endgame happens anytime money is involved with standards, format adoption and [here comes the nasty comments about me] Open Source initiatives. Check out the story below.

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20071016092352827

Office 2007 Online Converts: No its not what you think. Mary Jo Foley's Microsoft Watch is a good blog that is worth a read on some of the inside moves with the company. In a recent post she gives some NPD numbers on retail sales of Office 2007 and how people buying it through Microsoft via the method of converting their trials is somewhat affecting retail sales. Looks like Office 2007 is a hit and everyone wants a piece of the pie. Even Mac owners are buying Office in droves and they don't even get the Ribbon until next year. See the article link below.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/office_trial_causes_channel_conflict.html

Vista Out Of Memory .. Again: Remember those posts from May, June and maybe even July about Vista and it's hotfixes on moving files? As usual in life you fix one thing and one other thing breaks. ZDNet is saying that memory gets eaten fast when moving files. C'mon SP1..

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=829

SP1 Spoofing: Speaking of SP1 for Vista.. Did you know that if you are really crazy and really desperate you could actually fool Windows Update into giving it to you.. right this second? Ars Technica links to another site that tells you in detail on how to do just that, however, just reading the Ars description gives me a headache. So those who live in their registries go forth and conquer.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/10/16/windows-update-spoof-allows-early-download-of-vista-sp1

Whew! All this posting. It has been soo long since I went mad with info. Shout out to one individual at a particular company who always reminds me when we talk that I don't post enough on my blog. Now the conversations will switch to what I *AM* posting right? I tell ya there is no pleasing the internet.

Talking Microwave On Clearance At Wal Mart?

I picked up the silver version of the Hamilton Beach Talking Microwave last week for $40. I found it in the Clearance Rows at my local Super WalMart. I asked the management if this was just a move to clear inventory or if there was a new model on the way to replace the sku. Take this as plain rumor but I heard that there is a new model on the way. So if you were looking to pick up this awesome microwave head out to your nearest big box retailer as it may be on the cheap right now.

Here is the print version of the manual by the way.

http://www.accessible-devices.com/hamiltonbeachmicrowavemanual.html

Find a few other manuals from the same site here.

http://www.accessible-devices.com/textmanuals.html