] Computer Training & Sales/Disability Consulting 464 Sylvania Avenue phone (215) 572-5882 Glenside, PA 19038-3629 fax (215) 572-6045 June 10, 1996 OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS Once again it is time for that informal document I call a newsletter. Much has been happening in the world of technology since my last issue in January, 1996. In addition to bringing you up to date, I will try to pass along interesting tips for your use. CHANGES AND UPGRADES As you might suspect much of the news in this area has to do with windows. Companies are busily improving the screen readers for Windows 3.1 and Windows for Work Groups, and, some companies have already released screen readers that can handle Windows 95. Here is the scoop: Arkenstone has notified its dealers that Hewlett Packard has discontinued the 3p scanners, the most popular scanner for the Openbook and Openbook Unbound. As of this writing there are still some reconditioned 3p scanners available with a one year guarantee, but these are going fast. The recommended replacement is the HP 4p scanner, a bigger scanner with an 11 by 14 inch bed. An upgrade to the Openbook Unbound software, Version 2.2, includes drivers for many more scanners than had previously been supported. Atlas Speaks, a talking map program. is shipping. One can buy maps for the entire United States, or, for any of the four regions of the country. The detail of these maps is fantastic. The Arkenclone product line, a line of computers produced by Arkenstone, has been increased. One can now buy a 100MHZ pentium with bigger hard drive options. Prices on these computers have been reduced. Strider, a travel companion that will let you know your location with remarkable accuracy is still not in Beta test. It is hoped that this product will be available by the end of the year. Naturally, the company continues to work on upgrades to the Openbook program and, given the history of past upgrades, one can expect to see interesting and impressive features. Artic has released Solo, a windows reading program that does both Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. It does not require you to run Business Vision, and supports the DECTalk internal and the accent external speech synthesizers. Yes, that's right, it runs independent of BusinessVision. Also, the Windows 95 version of Winvision is shipping. Demonstration versions of these programs are available from the Artic Bulletin Board at (810) 588-1424. Artic has put much work into hardware. The mini transport is truly mini. I estimate it at about 4 inches square and less than an inch thick. It has a pop out battery pack which is easy to change, a serial port for connecting to the computer and five keys along one edge. There are two models, the mini transport which is mainly a speech synthesizer, and the Mini Transport Deluxe in which you can store and access to-do lists, phone books, etc. The keys help you navigate through the information. Then there is the Sqwert a scaled down transtype, the size of a standard transtype with a braille keyboard. There are six function keys above the Braille keyboard to access extra functions. The Advest program discussed in our last issue is still not on the market. Predictions are that it will be with us soon. Artic has a new pcmcia card, the P27 with advest. It is a type II pcmcia card for notebook computers and is reported to have clear speech with fast response. The company reports the orders for this product have exceeded expectations. ASAW is here. In my last newsletter I told you that Larry of Microtalk was aiming for a February release date for ASAW, the windows version of ASAP. It is here and, as promised, includes the ability to handle windows 95. Although your author has not had time to work much with it, reports from those who have indicate that it functions well and moves seamlessly between ASAW and ASAP. In my next issue I will have much more to report from my own experiences. Microtalk has established a listserve which you can join by sending e- mail to: maiser@scs.tamu.edu. In the body of the message write "subscribe Microtalk." GW Micro has just released version 1.04 of Window-Eyes. Version 1.03 of the product was released after our last issue and did much to improve responsiveness and speed. Version 1.04 promises even more speed although I am quite pleased with the speed of 1.03 on this old P90 computer. The company states that most of the bugs in 1.03 are gone, there are improvements in the dictionaries, mouse hot keys will now let you know if the button is down or up, a summary hot key now reads the entire edit box, there is improved recognition of more nonstandard buttons, improved set up and reading of windows, and more. . Demo versions of the program are available from the GW Micro BBS at (219) 489-5281. To subscribe to the GW Micro listserve send e-mail to listserv@gwmicro.com and in the body of the text write "subscribe gw-info." Henter-Joyce has continued to upgrade its product at a rapid rate with many improvements. The latest version as of this writing is 1.21 with improved icon recognition, improved compatibility with major programs and netscape, the inclusion of the "say all" or read to end of file key stroke, and more. The company will be represented at both the NFB and ACB conventions with break out training sessions. With the coming release of version 2.0 there will be a new upgrade policy. As you know, the company does not now charge for the many upgrades it has done. You can download them free from the internet and many bulletin boards. The company will charge a $10.00 shipping and handling fee if you order the disk copy of the upgrade from them. As of the release of version 2.0 which WILL INCLUDE THE ABILITY TO READ WINDOWS 95, there will be a charge of $95.00 to current customers for the upgrade. A new software maintenance agreement will allow users to have free upgrades for one year which will be mailed automatically to you. If purchased separately this service will cost $100.00 a year. If you order the maintenance agreement with your upgrade to version 2.0 the total cost is $150.00 for a savings of $45.00. Henter-Joyce has both a home page on the world wide web and an ftp site from which one can obtain information. the homepage is at: http://www.hj.com, and the ftp site is ftp://ftp.hj.com/pub/hj. Since my last newsletter Kansys Inc. has decided to release four of its products as freeware. They are: NAMES35.ZIP (the NAMES DataBase), ABRL15.ZIP (AutoBraille 1.5), PRVX60.ZIP (Provox 6.0), and BARB11.ZIP (Barb The Browser 1.1 and related utilities). As chuck Hallenbeck says in his release about this move, "You may obtain a diskette containing all four freeware packages and both demos by sending $5.00 for shipping and handling to KanSys, Inc., 4301 Wimbledon Terr. #2B, Lawrence, KS 66047. If you have a Compuserve account you may request individual packages free of charge by sending your E-Mail request to 70431,3476. You may also reach us at our Internet address: chuckh@idir.net You can also get current demonstration versions of Turbo Braille and LowRez from the internet through: anonymous FTP over the Internet. Use FTP on your local system to connect to FTP.IDIR.NET. Log on as ANONYMOUS and give your return electronic mail address as the password. Change directories to KANSYS (cd kansys) and get the files TBRL###.ZIP and LOWREZ##.ZIP, where the ##s represent the current versions and may change as updates are completed. Phil Scovell continues to add more information to his monthly phone book. I mentioned what was included in my last newsletter. Now Phil advises that you will find two new files. In Phil's words, "news.txt is a news item file with things of interest to the blind. The file is purged every month and renewed at the first of each month. That is, I will delete the news.txt file after you have received this notification and start a new one which will come out April 15 and then again next month. Don't send me old news to put in that file because people won't read it. forsale.txt is a buy, sell and trade file for which I take absolutely no responsibility except I serve as your humble editor. If you'd like to include items in either of these two new files, email me for details." New TUTORIALS AVAILABLE Phil has released two new tutorials on MCAFEE VIRUS PROTECTION and Q&A. The McAffee tutorial covers scan and clean and the use of the memory resident shield program to protect against viruses on an ongoing basis. concerning Q&A let me quote Phil who says: :The TMT tutorial on Q&A walks the blind computer user through the cd rom installation of the program step by step. Fortunately, the diskette installation is nearly the same as the cd rom. The advantage, however, of the cd rom version of q and a is it's cost. Many Q&A distributor sell the cd rom version for fifty dollars. The diskette version is five times that amount." "Following installation, the TMT tutorial begins by showing the user how to access the built in online help system. Cd rom users also have the advantage of accessing the complete Q&A manual available only on the cd rom. An explanation of how to use and access this manual is part of the TMT tutorial. Other Q&A lessons include program customization and configuration, menu structures, database introduction, creating and designing a database, adding information to the database, editing features, cursor movement and key commands, retrieving information, alphabetizing data, how to sort and retrieve on multiple sort levels, and how to remove unwanted records in your database. The two tape set tutorial concludes by teaching how simple it is to back up data files and how to recover a corrupted database if there is a power failure or computer lockup." "Additional Q&A tutorials soon to be released will take the user into advanced Q&A applications. Items such as redesigning a current database, creating complex databases, designing multiple databases, complex search and retrieve implementation, printer installation, advanced function key commands, macro creation and application, and external program installation and application will be covered. The additional tapes will also extensively cover the Q and A built in word processor including using the spell checker and thesaurus, writing and printing documents, editing features, key commands, macros, function key application, file merge, and printing labels. The Q and A built in word processor is comparable to Word Perfect and many blind users find the Q and A word processor preferable since they are using it as a database in the first place. In short, Q&A offers everything in a single package and TMT makes Q&A database application user friendly for the blind computer user." DON'T FORGET! Young Opportunities carries all of the above products at below market prices and provides excellent technical support. Visa, Master Card and American Express orders are accepted. PROGRAM REVIEW Okay, I confess, I like to collect recipes and, when I can convince the family to break the monotony of their every day meals, I like to cook on Sundays. For years I collected my recipes in Braille, a large collection I still have. However, more recently I have discovered MealMaster, a recipe program, and some neat listserves and WWW sites for getting tons of recipes. This month, I want to tell you about Mealmaster, a dos based recipe program that enables you to collect and maintain thousands of recipes, categorize recipes, look for recipes containing specific ingredients or words in the title, easily print out one or more recipes of your choice, draw a shopping list of ingredients, and adjust the recipes to serve larger or smaller groups of people. How it works. When you enter the program you are in a main menu that allows you to choose between: adding recipes by typing them in, search for a recipe, do certain maintenance tasks on your recipes, or run certain utilities. Adding a recipe by hand is easy. You simply choose add, and follow the prompts. You are asked for the title, the categories and the number of servings. You are then put in the ingredients area where you add the quantity, the measure, and the ingredient. You move from field to field with the enter or the tab keys, and if you are in doubt about how to abbreviate the measure, i.e., "c" for cup, you hit the F1 key for a list. When you finish the ingredients you hit escape and type in the instructions. Among other things the utilities area allows you to select another database, modify the title or category indexes, draw a shopping list, import or export recipes. Importing or exporting recipes is quick and easy. If you have a recipe in mealmaster or qbooks format--there are thousands of them available--you can easily import it into your recipe collection. If you want to share a recipe with someone else you can export it as a disk file or print it out. You can even mark a number of files and export them so that you could give someone a number of different recipes for any dish. The program will even look for duplicate titles when it is importing a new recipe. In the maintenance area you can change recipe files, control the format of files you print out, control the way quantities are displayed, and re-index your file if you delete some recipes. Although the program allows you to keep thousands of recipes in one database, I have decided to divide mine into; breakfast, main dish, desserts, cakes, cookies, and beverage. This is not necessary as you can use the categories of each recipe to specify these areas, but it appeals to my sense of organization. The only drawback of MealMaster is that in order to do this you need to set up different databases and establish a subdirectory for each one. This makes very little difference once you know that it is required, however, the documentation is weak and it took me quite a while to figure it out. There is a listServe for sharing recipes, a ListServe for asking questions about the program, and a number of sites for getting recipes. To subscribe to the listserve for asking questions about mealmaster send e-mail to listserv@salata.com, and in the body of the message write "subscribe "mm-d." To get on the mealmaster recipes listserve send e-mail to: majordomo@idiscover.net, and in the body of the message write "subscribe mm-recipes." I believe that the largest site is http://www.synapse.com/@gemini/food/mealmaster. There are literally thousands of recipes at that site and, together with those that you get from the listserves it is almost impossible to keep up with importing them into the program. What is PwWebspeak As Mark Senior Vice President of The Productivity Works Inc. stated in a newsgroup message; webspeak (real name pwWebSpeak) works with PPP and SLIP accounts, and works fine with Compuserve's internet dialer. pwWebSpeak is being designed and developed by The Productivity Works, in conjunction with John De Witt & Associates and Thomas Edison State College (Trenton, NJ). We are currently in controlled beta testing and are planning for a production release at the end of April." Although this projected deadline was not met, the program is now available. PwWebspeak is an interesting concept. It is a specialized program to allow one to browse the World Wide Web. It does not require a speech synthesizer using a generic sound card such as the sound blaster. As it is designed with ease of Web navigation in mind it is far less complicated than generic web browsers on the market. I was impressed with the demo I saw. More information and the program are available at http://www.prodworks.com. COMING SOON Young Opportunities will soon have a home page on the internet. It is being designed as I write this newsletter. Through my home page you will be able to download my catalog and issues of this newsletter, and link to other interesting sites. By the time you get this newsletter you should be able to visit our home page at http://www.voicenet.com/~youngopp. Finally, you should note the change in my e-mail address which has changed to: youngopp@voicenet.com. Feel free to contact me through my home page or e- mail. Theodore (Ted) Young