The Idea Place Posts

At times it seems as though I’m one of the last to actually own a cell phone. In fact of my immediate circle of friends and family I know I am absolutely the last one to have a cell phone.

I’ve dabbled in owning a cell phone a time or two in the past. My first attempt was back around 2000 when cell phones were really just portable telephones. More recently about 30 months ago I tried a couple different phones that were supposed to have a limited amount of accessibility but quickly grew frustrated when many of the functions on the phones I wanted to use did not work correctly.

Since then I’ve watched the complexity of cell phones grow and grow in terms of what the units can actually do. I’ve also watched the accessibility solutions improve and grow in number.

The American Foundation for the Blind
reviewed two of the most current screen readers for cell phones not too long ago. They also have a second review that goes beyond some of the basics.

I opted for Code Factory’s
Mobile Speaks Smart Phone version because the phone I settled on (Samsung’s Blackjack) runs Windows Mobile. Anyone who knows me will tell you that when it comes to gadgets I tend to be picky. I’m someone who’s willing, perhaps too willing at times, to make liberal use of return policies if I’m not happy with a product.

After 30 days of using the Blackjack Mobile Speaks combination I can say that I’m favorably impressed. By and large everything I’ve wanted to do with the phone has worked. This has included the basics like making and receiving calls with associated functions such as reading call duration, notification of caller ID details and reviewing call history. The more advanced functions such as sending and receiving text messages, browsing the internet and using various other applications such as e-mail, a calendar and more have also worked well. Finally I’ve been able to use all the settings and configuration options on the phone to adjust things to my liking.

Screen reading on the PC this is definitely not. You have a very limited set of commands for most of the basics including read character, word, full window and such. That said it has proven enough to get the job done and the folks at Code Factory thus far have seemed responsive to issues. In the 30 days I’ve been using the software they’ve had one update already that addressed some of the issues I found were not working when I first tried the combination.

Accessibility here is not cheap. There have been many different discussions over the years about how much we should have to pay versus what should be built into the technology we want to use. Perhaps I’ll share more of my opinions on that topic at a future date. What I will say is that the $299 I just spent for the Smart Phone version of Mobile Speaks seems like a reasonable price for what the software does and the relative market size where the product is being sold.

The blog’s been pretty quiet for the last couple months for some personal reasons. Hopefully I’ll get back into writing a bit more going forward.

Aimee and I used the extended Memorial Day weekend to get out of town for a few days. We started off by driving to Portland on Friday evening where we stayed at the Silver Cloud Inn. This is quickly turning into a favorite hotel when visiting Portland. The hotel is reasonably priced for a Portland hotel, located in a great neighborhood for exploring the city and rooms are spacious and comfortable.

Saturday morning we made the obligatory visit to Portland’s Saturday Market. This is a must-stop if you’ve never been to Portland and even after some 12 years of visiting the market I can still say that a couple hours strolling through the eclectic collection of crafts and people is a unique adventure. Saturday Market is really one of the quintessential Portland experiences with the range of people you’ll encounter. This can be everyone from those protesting the outrage of the month to folks who most likely spend most of their shopping dollar in upscale malls.

Our weekend continued with a drive over to Lincoln City. This isn’t our usual destination on the coast but the late date for planning our trip caused us to try a different hotel. We found a new cozy place called The O’dysius Hotel that will likely be a place we turn to on a future trip. I wrote a Trip Advisor Review because we enjoyed the hotel so much.

Our weekend was relatively quiet with much time spent relaxing at our hotel, walking on the beach and in general taking it easy. We did stroll around at the Yaquina Head Lighthouse and made yet another obligatory stop at the visitor’s center of the Tillamook factory. I’m probably not completely objective as I think Wisconsin dairy products are better but here in the northwest, Tillamook is definitely one of the better brands for dairy you can find. The cheddar cheese is especially tasty.

The Oregon coast is one of those places that feels more and more like home each time I visit. The state has done an excellent job at ensuring the public has access to the entire coast. State law mandates that the entire coastline is public land. The beaches run the gambit from flat and sandy stretches that are great for an afternoon stroll to rugged and rocky spots that are more like hiking in the hills just to get access to the water. Numerous state parks and other great hiking stops up and down the coast provide endless opportunities to experience a wide range of nature peppered with the relaxing sound of the ocean close at hand. The relatively unpopulated nature of most cities also means by and large you do not spend all your time fighting crowds. If the saying about home being where the heart is has any truth, then one room in my home is definitely known as the Oregon coast room.

Here’s an interesting column from the Seattle Times on how to get self-published as a book author. The column details the author’s experience with a company called BookSurge, and the experience sounds reasonably reputable.

From time to time I wonder if I have a book in me. The opportunities have been less than I expected when finishing college with a degree in journalism, but there’s still a big part of me that enjoys the craft of writing.

Here’s an interesting article that seems like it could be a boon for accessibility. The basic premise is that cell phones will be used to get more details on pretty much any object we encounter. Seems like a great match because if this catches on, then you’d be able to easily identify many more objects from the environment.

There are already accessibility solutions that use bar code readers to identify products. But those I’m familiar with require use of a computer and frequently a database of known objects or otherwise require the user to have or acquire knowledge about the object being identified.

The solution described in this article, while not aimed at the accessibility arena, would seem to place no requirement that the user know anything about the article in question. The bar code would contain all the descriptive details.

It sounds like something straight out of a futuristic film: House hunters, driving past a for-sale sign, stop and point their cellphone at the sign. With a click, their cellphone screen displays the asking price, the number of bedrooms and baths and lots of other details about the house.

Media experts say that cellphones, the Swiss army knives of technology, are quickly heading in this direction. New technology, already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows the phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet.

On Wednesday morning I signed into my computer to print a document and heard the Windows sound that indicates a device was removed from my computer. Strange I thought since I hadn’t disconnected any devices. The thought was quickly chased from my mind because the PC stopped working in any way that I could detect.

Trial and error, multiple reboots and the other standard troubleshooting I can do when things don’t work as expected didn’t get the machine working. Later with the help of a couple of folks I was able to determine that the machine has a hard drive reading problem.

That’s where the real joy starts I suppose. You begin the scramble to think what was actually stored on that drive? Can I get any of it back? I did back all that stuff up right? After all the 300-gig USB drive bought expressly for that purpose is sitting there purring away just waiting to be connected to a working machine to hand out the information stored on it.

Ironic, but I suspect not uncommon, that the first piece of advice I give to anyone I know who asks me for computer help is to backup your information. Sad, but I suspect again not too uncommon, that I fail to completely follow my own advice.

So now here I sit convincing myself that it won’t be a big deal to re-encode the 600_plus music CDs that I’ve converted over the last three months to play on my Squeezebox. I say that those digital audio files of sounds from recent trips weren’t that important were they? All those books I’ve scanned do get uploaded to Bookshare anyway so I can get them back right?

Thankfully all’s not lost. Important financial data was backed up two months ago and I’ve been successful at downloading all the missing data from the period since the last backup. E-mail is recoverable from all but the last couple months and I do have a full backup from about eight months ago that will have the vast majority of what I care about.

Then too, there’s still some hope that more of the data may be recoverable. Using some utilities for this sort of thing it has been possible to see many of the files on the problem drive. Copying them someplace is another story as the utilities thus far only offer a 1.4-meg floppy which is already filled with the utilities themselves as a copy destination. Let the fun begin.

The painful lessons in life are probably those we learn the best. I for one will definitely be better about taking my own advice.

The New York Times ran an excerpt of a new book to be published later this week looking at the life of Thomas Edison. “The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World,” sounds like an interesting read.

I made previous reference to Bookshare, a service that allows individuals with print disabilities to scan and share printed books under an exception made in the U.S. copyright law. According to the home page for Bookshare, the CBS Evening News will feature the organization on Thursday 2/22.

The CBS Evening News will profile Bookshare.org as part of its “American Spirit” series. The Bookshare.org segment is part of a collection of stories about effective and scalable solutions to social needs.

March isn’t here quite yet, but with the Wisconsin Badgers doing so well in basketball this not so young man’s fancy is already turning to March madness. My annual quest for a quality accessible NCAA bracket experience is already starting.

Each year I hunt around on various web sites trying version after version of the NCAA bracket. Some are complex web forms that get confusing with a screen reader. Others, and what seems to be the majority here, are PDF documents that are basically incomprehensible with a screen reader.

So here’s hoping the Badger hoopsters make it through their bracket unscathed and that I can actually predict their progress with an accessible experience.