Podcasts about vfo

roundtable balloon cq amateur radio vfo

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2023 4:30

Foundations of Amateur Radio A is for Antenna, the eyes and ears of any amateur station. You'll spend eighty percent of your life attempting to get twenty percent improvement for any antenna you'll ever use. B is for Balun, bringing together the balanced and unbalanced parts of your antenna system. C is for Coax, the versatile conductor that snakes into your station, one roll at a time. D is for Dipole, the standard against which all antennas are measured, simple to make, simple to use and often first in the many antenna experiments you'll embark on in your amateur journey. E is for Electron, source of all things RF, the beginning, middle and end of electromagnetism, the reason you are an amateur. F is for Frequency, the higher you go, the faster it happens. G is for Gain, measured against a baseline, you'll throw increasing amounts of effort at getting more, one decibel at a time. H is for Hertz, Heinrich to his mother, the first person to transmit and receive controlled radio waves in November of 1886 proving that James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism was correct. I is for Ionosphere, the complex and ever changing layers that surround Earth which led radio amateurs to discover HF propagation in 1923. J is for JOTA, the Jamboree On The Air where radio amateurs, guides and scouts come together on the third full weekend of October to share global communications. K is for Kerchunk, the sound caused by the local repeater that brings a smile to the operator and a grimace to the listener, created by pushing the talk button and not saying anything. L is for Logging, the only way you'll ever remember who you spoke to and when and the perfect excuse for bragging to your friends after you managed to collect contacts all over the globe. M is for Modulation, adding information to a radio signal by varying the amplitude, frequency, or phase. N is for Net, a social excuse for getting on air and making noise with your friends. O is for Oscillator, making repeating currents or voltages by non-mechanical means. P is for Prefix, the beginning part of an amateur callsign that identifies your country or region of origin. Q is for QRP, the best way to make just enough noise to make yourself heard, low power is the way to go! R is for Resonance, the point where a circuit responds strongly to a particular frequency and less to others, used every time you tune a radio or an antenna or both. S is for Shack, the space you call home, where you live your radio dream. The size of the corner of the kitchen table, the back-seat of your car or a purpose built structure with never enough space, no matter how much you try. T is for Transceiver, a single box that contains both a transmitter and receiver that share a common circuit. U is for UTC, Coordinated Universal Time, the only time zone that radio amateurs should use for any activity that goes beyond their suburb. V is for VFO, the Variable Frequency Oscillator that provides radio amateurs with frequency agility, the means to listen anywhere, any-time. W is for Waterfall, which displays radio signals across multiple frequencies at the same time. X is for XIT, Transmit Incremental Tuning, changing your transmitter frequency whilst listening on the same frequency, helpful when you're trying to break through a DX pile-up. Y is for Yagi, or Yagi-Uda antenna, the most popular directional antenna invented in 1926 by Shintaro Uda at the Tohoku Imperial University in Japan and popularised to the English speaking world by his boss Hidetsugu Yagi. Z is for Zulu, the last word in the phonetic alphabet that every amateur should know and use. 73 is for best regards. Saying goodbye is hard to do, this says so without fanfare and clears your station from the air. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

english earth japan foundations frequency abcs shack hertz resonance waterfall heinrich zulu rf logging dx jota utc electron antenna hf modulation amateur radio coax prefix yagi qrp james clerk maxwell oscillator ionosphere dipole xit vfo transceiver balun jamboree on the air

Amateur Radio Roundtable Feb 14, 2023

Amateur Radio Roundtable

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2023 0:02

use a scope and signal generator to tune an antenna. Glen reports from Hamcation, Tom builds a retro VFO, plus more.

roundtable amateur radio vfo hamcation

Amateur Radio Roundtable Jan 3, 2023

Amateur Radio Roundtable

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2023 123:21

Big show tonight at 8:00 PM Central on W5KUB.COM Soldering iron trigger position for heat solved (well sort of), next months CQ magazine, build a retro VFO or signal generator with the esp32, a 240 volt 40 amp suicide shower head?(you tell me if its safe), Balloon updates, visitors in the back yard, and much more.

PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio #1238

This Week in Amateur Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2022

PODCAST: This Week in Amateur Radio Edition #1238 Release Date: November 19, 2022 Here is a summary of the news trending This Week in Amateur Radio. This week's edition is anchored by Terry Saunders, N1KIN, Dave Wilson, WA2HOY, Bob Donlon, W3BOO, Rich Lawrence, KB2MOB, Don Hulick, K2ATJ, Eric Zittel, KD2RJX, Will Rogers, K5WLR, George Bowen, W2XBS, and Jessica Bowen, KC2VWX. Produced and edited by George Bowen, W2XBS. Approximate Running Time: 1:28:49 Podcast Download: https://bit.ly/TWIAR1238 Trending headlines in this week's bulletin service: 1. CAMSAT CAS-10 Launched to Chinese Space Station 2. Astronaut Bob Behnken, KE5GGX, Retires From NASA 3. ARRL New England Division Receives Grant To Combat Radio Frequency Interference 4. San Angelo Amateur Radio Club Celebrates 100 Years 5. Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications Surpasses 25,000 Items 6. Federal Emergency Management Agency Releases New Online Study Course 7. UPDATED STORY: Federal Communications Commission To Extend Application Deadline For Fall 2023 Honors Program 8. Dayton Hamvention Announces Theme for 2023 9. Eastern Massachusetts Section To Welcome New Section Manager; Incumbent Section Managers Were Re-elected 10. 2022 ARRL November Sweepstakes Phone Begins Saturday, November 19th 11. CW Operators' Club Accepting Nominations For Advancing The Art Of CW Award 12. Disk Shape For Small Satellites Is Explored By Researchers 13. Popular Shortwave Broadcaster WTWW Signs Off The Air, Goes QRT 14. Fishing Vessel In Distress Receives Aid From The Maritime Mobile Net 15. Proposed New Tower Law In Germany Makes Antenna Regulation A Little More Friendly 16. Australia Communications and Media Authority Announces Deadline For Comments 17. Virtual Reality Presentation In Wales Honors Marconi 18. New York State Police Say Pumpkin Patrol Helps Keep Overpasses Safe 19. Upcoming Conventions, Hamfests and On The Air Contests 20. ARRL Announces 2022 Board of Directors Election Results 21. FCC Unveils New Interactive Broadband Maps 22. Federal Communications Commission Approves Broadband Label Rules Plus these Special Features This Week: * Technology News and Commentary with Leo Laporte, W6TWT, will help you take a close up look at your modem and your often neglected home network router.. * Working Amateur Radio Satellites with Bruce Paige, KK5DO - AMSAT Satellite News * Tower Climbing and Antenna Safety w/Greg Stoddard KF9MP, will tell you the best methods to follow when you need to climb your tower with a partner. * Foundations of Amateur Radio with Onno Benschop VK6FLAB, will answer the question "What exactly is in a VFO?" * Weekly Propagation Forecast from the ARRL * Bill Continelli, W2XOY - The History of Amateur Radio. Bill returns with another edition of The Ancient Amateur Archives, this week, will take us back to the IRTC Treaty conference held on October 4th, 1927 which superseded the US Radio Act, and finally established amateur radio under International Law. * The latest news from Parks On The Air and Summits On The Air with Mike Herr, N3MWV ----- Website: https://www.twiar.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/twiari/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/twiar RSS News: https://twiar.net/?feed=rss2 Automated: https://twiar.net/TWIARHAM.mp3 (Static file, changed weekly) ----- Visit our website at www.twiar.net for program audio, and daily for the latest amateur radio and technology news. Air This Week in Amateur Radio on your repeater! Built in identification breaks every 10 minutes or less. This Week in Amateur Radio is heard on the air on nets and repeaters as a bulletin service all across North America, and all around the world on amateur radio repeater systems, weekends on WA0RCR on 1860 (160 Meters), and more. This Week in Amateur Radio is portable too! The bulletin/news service is available and built for air on local repeaters (check with your local clubs to see if their repeater is carrying the news service) and can be downloaded for air as a weekly podcast to your digital device from just about everywhere. This Week in Amateur Radio is also carried on a number of LPFM stations, so check the low power FM stations in your area. You can also stream the program to your favorite digital device by visiting our web site www.twiar.net. Or, just ask Siri, Alexa, or your Google Nest to play This Week in Amateur Radio! This Week in Amateur Radio is produced by Community Video Associates in upstate New York, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. If you would like to volunteer with us as a news anchor or special segment producer please get in touch with our Executive Producer, George, via email at w2xbs77@gmail.com. Also, please feel free to follow us by joining our popular group on Facebook, and follow our feed on Twitter! Thanks to FortifiedNet.net for the server space! Thanks to Archive.org for the audio space.

The nature of learning things...

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 19, 2022 4:37

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I discussed the concept of a VFO, a Variable Frequency Oscillator. It's an essential building block for our amateur radio community. In describing the idea behind it, while making an error in one of the CB radio frequencies, thanks to Ben VK6NCB for picking that up, I skirted around how a VFO actually works. In reality the VFO is a collective term that describes a whole range of different methods to vary a frequency. Naturally I continued my exploration and discovered a whole range of documentation on the subject. I even started writing about how one common method, a Phase Locked Loop or PLL, works and how a VCO, a Voltage Controlled Oscillator, operates as part of that. I'll come back to those shortly. In doing my reading, since, as is often the case, I use my weekly contribution to the world as a method to learn things. I'll investigate a topic and attempt to describe who came up with it, what it means, how it works and what its place is in the world, the who, where, why and what of it, if you like. I suspect that comes from my very first introduction to broadcast radio where that was one of the very first things I was taught, thirty years or so ago. If you've followed along for the decade I've been at this you'll know that I also intersperse such learning with observations about the things that I'm interested in. This is such an observation, a meta view if you will. I discovered somewhat to my chagrin that the ways that an essential component of our hobby, a system called a Phase Locked Loop, was described in such academic terms, complete with formulas and detailed circuits and even component lists, spread over pages and pages of verbiage, or explained in YouTube videos lasting an hour or more. Of course there were some little gems, ElectronicNotes on YouTube manages to cover the basics in little over six minutes, but that's a rare example. It reminded me of a website that I've been using to fill in the gaps in my understanding of SDR or Software Defined Radio and Digital Signal Processing or DSP. The PySDR.org site is an online textbook written by Dr. Marc Lichtman. He says about his method: "Instead of burying ourselves in equations, an abundance of images and animations are used to help convey the concepts [...]" My weekly efforts have always attempted to do exactly that and I found myself in a place where such a thing didn't appear to exist for the concepts behind the PLL and VCO. My obvious response to that would be to write the missing document and as I said, I have a first draft of it sitting on my computer. There's only one problem. I don't yet "grok" the concepts. If you're unfamiliar with what grokking is, it means to understand intuitively and emphatically. It also means that unless I can describe it in less than a single page of A4 paper I don't understand what I'm saying and you'll get bored waiting for me to make a point. Here's my point. How do you learn concepts? What is it that you do to discover new topics of interest and how do you progress through the various stages between discovery and grokking? For me it's about puzzle pieces. It's always been puzzle pieces. Little nuggets of information, almost trivial on their own, but after a while you get to a point where you have enough of them that you can start joining them together to grasp a more complex concept. Here's a puzzle piece I discovered today. Impedance: The difference between an explosion in air and one under water is impedance. It's little concepts like that which make me get out of bed and discover what's on the horizon next. I'm also learning about double and triple conversion superheterodyne radio which I believe has a one-on-one parallel application in Software Defined Radio and Digital Signal Processing. Once I figure out how to describe it to you, I'll let you know. The point of all this is that learning things is as much about understanding as it is about explaining. Feel free to point me at new and interesting basic concepts. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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What's in a VFO?

learning emotional cravings urges vfo

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2022 5:06

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the many acronyms that define the world of amateur radio is VFO. It stands for Variable Frequency Oscillator. That doesn't explain much if you're not familiar with the purpose of it and just how special this aspect of amateur radio is. Much of the world of radio beyond our hobby, like broadcast television, WiFi and Citizen Band or CB, to name a few, uses radio spectrum in a particular way. On a television you change channels to switch between stations. Similarly, a WiFi network uses specific channels to make your wireless network a reality and the same goes for CB, different channels to make yourself heard. Looking specifically at CB for a moment, if you look at channel 8 for example, depending on which type of equipment you have, your radio might be using 27.055 MHz, or 476.575 MHz, or 476.6 MHz. Each of those frequencies can be described as CB channel 8. The first is on the 27 MHz or 11m band, the second is if you're using a 40 channel radio, which is now depreciated and the third is if you're using an 80 channel radio. If you look at digital broadcast television, channel 8 is on 191.5 MHz. On WiFi, channel 8 is on 2.447 GHz or 5.040 GHz. You get the point, depending on where you are as a user of radio spectrum, channel 8 might mean a whole host of different things and as I've described with CB radio, that might even change over time. Harry Potter needed magic to reach Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at Kings Cross Station to get to school. In a channelised world, getting to an in-between frequency is not possible if you're using licensed equipment, unless you're a radio amateur, then you can use magic to get into the gaps. That magic is called the VFO. You might recall that our radios use many different frequencies internally to be able to filter out specifically what signal you want to hear. Most of those frequencies are fixed, in fact in the vast majority of cases these are actually tuned and calibrated to work in a very specific way. The one exception is the VFO, it's by nature variable. It's likely calibrated, but it's not fixed and that allows our community to tune our equipment to any frequency we desire. The traditional user interface for this is a big knob on the front of your radio, colloquially referred to as the dial, as-in turn the dial to change frequency. This allows us something quite rare in radio land. We can be frequency agile. It means that if there's interference at a specific frequency, we can tweak our VFO and slightly modify where our radio is tuned. You use this almost subconsciously when you're on HF trying to tune to a particular station. In the world of software radio there's likely no knob. You type in a number and the variable frequency oscillator in the radio is tuned to another frequency and the output signal, or transmit signal if you're making noise on-air, changes to another frequency. Digital modes like WSPR, which generally use a very specific frequency also vary that frequency but in a different way. You set your radio to the appropriate so-called dial frequency, let's say 28.1246 MHz on the 10m band and then the software alters the signal by up to 200 Hz to change within the available audio range of your radio, altering between a low of 1400 Hz and a high of 1600 Hz, making the actual WSPR frequency on 10m between 28.1260 and 28.1262 MHz. I'm mentioning the WSPR example because while we're frequency agile in our hobby, we do use channels as well. There's a specific set of frequencies set aside, channels if you like, for WSPR, FT8 and other modes. We do the same on the 2m and 70cm bands where we have rules for where repeaters are allowed to be. It means that we get the best of both worlds. We have the stability and institutional knowledge where repeaters or some modes go, but we also get to play in any spot we want. For example, there's nothing stopping me and a friend setting our radio to some random frequency within our license allocation and outside pre-allocated space and run a WSPR transmitter there. Only the two of us will know about it, well at least at first, but it allows us to experiment away from any other users who might experience interference from our tests and exploration. The VFO is what makes our hobby so very interesting and it's what makes it possible to do weird and wonderful experiments. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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Urges and Cravings

Roadmap to Diet Success

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2022 22:47 Transcription Available

Episode 19 - Urges and CravingsDon't miss my PEEPS STORY this week, which kicks off the episode that explores the reasons for cravings, including physical reasons, emotional and other reasons, examining what you can do when faced with a craving. More detail is given with examining urges and the differences between cravings and urges. Learn the "pickle theory" and how putting in a pause between the craving or urge, and the giving into the craving or urge will make all the difference in the world. This week's ACTIONABLE COACHING ADVICE, will pull apart this week's VFO on Working through Urges, showing how to make the best use of everything in it. Next week's episode will investigate this matter more fully with habits, triggers and emotional eating. 1:15. Personal Story3:33. What is a food craving?4:17. Physical reasons for a craving6:34. Emotional reasons for a craving8:05. Other reasons for a craving9:25. What can you do about a craving?11:00. What is an urge?12:19. The urge you feel is always in direct relation to the trigger12:42. What can you do when it is an urge?13:50. For both cravings and urges I want you to think of this (THE PICKLE THEORY)16:29. This weeks actionable COACHING ADVICE20:32. This week's VFO (Valuable Free Offer)21:46. Episode 20, coming up.LINKS:Breaking Free From Diet Prison BookBreaking Free From Diet Prison CourseTHIS WEEK'S VFO: Learn To Work Through UrgesADDITIONAL VFO: Learning your Hunger ScaleBreaking Free From Diet Prison Facebook pageRoadmap To Diet Success InstagramBLOG: The Mechanics of Physical HungerBLOG: Forgiving Yourself: Buddha's Second ArrowACCESS Transcript HereCleveland Study

Kaisen - The Practice of Gentle Improvements

Roadmap to Diet Success

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2022 20:01 Transcription Available

Episode 18: Kaisen - The Practice of Gentle ImprovementsThe SMACKDOWN method of goal setting in Episode 5 is only a start. Here is a process of small and gentle changes, known as Kaisen, that will help you see how to be successful with measurable and achievable goals. You will also learn about the technique of Goal Laddering which will also help you be more successful. Your actionable COACHING ADVICE for this week is to learn another strategy, called MAPPING. Make sure to download this week's VFO on Working Through Urges so that you will be ready to tackle the upcoming topics of urges, cravings, triggers, habits and emotional eating.1:10. Listener of the Week2:03. Personal Story6:18. Kaisen Method9:15. Goal Laddering10:27. What mistakes are we making?11:00. Why are we making these mistakes?12:10. What is the cost of making these mistakes?12:49. Calling out a new way13:42. This week's ACTIONABLE COACHING ADVICE17:46. This week's VFO19:01. Episode 19, coming up.LINKS:Breaking Free From Diet Prison BookBreaking Free From Diet Prison CourseTHIS WEEK'S VFO: Learn To Work Through UrgesBreaking Free From Diet Prison Facebook pageRoadmap To Diet Success InstagramACCESS Transcript Here

practice gentle mapping improvements kaisen coaching advice vfo

Episode 19 – An Unstoppable Pioneer in Web Accessibility and Life with Mike Paciello

Unstoppable Mindset

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2022 64:43

It is not often that most of us have the opportunity and honor to meet a real trendsetter and pioneer. Today, you get to meet such an individual. Mike Paciello has been a fixture in the assistive technology world for some thirty years. I have heard of him for most of that time, but our paths never crossed until this past September when we worked together to help create some meetings and sessions around the topic of website accessibility. As you will hear, Mike began his career as a technical writer for Digital Equipment Corporation, an early leader in the computer manufacturing industry. I won't tell you Mike's story here. What I will say is that although Mike is fully sighted and thus does not use any of the technology vision impaired persons use, he really gets it. He fully understands what Inclusion is all about and he has worked and continues to work to promote inclusion and access for all throughout the world. After you hear our podcast with Mike, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at michaelhi@accessibe.com to tell me of your observations. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About our Guest: Mike Paciello has been a pioneer and influential figure in the accessibility industry for more than three decades. He wrote the first book on web accessibility and usability (Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities), and has since achieved many notable milestones. He is the founder of WebABLE.Com and co-founder of WebABLE.TV. Mike currently serves as AbleDocs VP of US Operations. Mike served as co-chair of the United States Federal Access Board's Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC), co-founder of the International Committee for Accessible Document Design (ICADD), and was recognized by President Bill Clinton for his contribution to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). He was the recipient of the 2016 Knowbility Lifetime Achievement and the 2020 ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium Social Impact awards. Contact Mike at mpaciello@webable.com or mpaciello@abledocs.com About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. Thanks for joining us this week, we have a guest I've been looking forward to for quite a while his name is Mike Paciello. And I'm not going to tell you a whole lot about him because he gets to do that himself, except I will tell you that he's very deeply involved in the web accessibility world. Why do we deal with web accessibility a lot on this podcast? And why do I continue to bring it up. Because if you've listened to many of these podcasts, you know that there is an ever widening gap between websites that are accessible and those that are not. And it is something that we all need to deal with. Because there are so many people in this world who don't get to access all the websites that everyone else can access for one reason or another. Mike has been very deeply involved in dealing with those issues for a lot of years. And I'd like to introduce you to him now. And we can talk more about it. Mike, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Mike Paciello 02:23 Thanks, Mike. Great to be here. Michael Hingson 02:27 So how did you even get involved in this? I mean, you you are cited you, you, as far as I know, don't have any what people would call physical disabilities and all that. So how did you get involved in all this? Mike Paciello 02:41 Well, it's a it's a long and winding story that probably folks have heard many times in the past, but I was worked at a a computer company that no longer exists anymore. It maybe exists in parcels at HP. But it was Digital Equipment Corporation back in the 80s. I actually Michael Hingson 03:03 just this morning was reading something from someone on a list where they were talking about the old desktop synthesizer. Mike Paciello 03:10 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know that memories. Yeah, I know the guys that worked on that. And Tony Vitaly was one of the lead engineers on that. And Tony, now we're good friends. He passed away several years ago from ALS. Ironically enough, it he discovered it while he was at the seaside conference. Boy, I think so. So this was in the late 90s, maybe in early 2000s. But at any rate, I was working as a technical writer at Digital in the mid mid 80s, right through the early 90s. And was asked to take on a project voluntarily, which involved providing our computer software documentation we did mostly operating system software, to the National Braille Press in Boston. And I just thought it was interesting. And so I followed up and they said, and maybe you'll get a request once or twice a year. I hadn't had the project for more than a few hours. And I got a cost a call right away from Bill reader who was the writer? Yep. You know, Bill, yes. And he said, Hey, we need this, this this this? Can you bring these down? And I said, Sure, I'd have been happy to. And so I hadn't carried the physical publications, which as I found out, they would then take and transcribe into and reproduce in Braille. And Bill was awesome. He gave me a complete tour of, you know, the factories and the offices and what they did. And right away he started talking about, you know, screen reader. Well, actually, it was a screen reader technology that was braille translation software at that particular time. It's so that that piqued my interest, and i i At the same time I was doing that I also happen to be working in the very first instances of markup language. This is pre SGML, which, as anyone that knows the standardized, standardized or Standard Generalized Markup Language was the precursor to HTML, which is makes up the web. But it was actually a, a markup language used to basically mirror what an editor, a physical editor of a red publication would do, you know, take a ticket document from an individual divided up into, you know, logical portions on on, you know, within a page. So this is a paragraph, this is a list, this needs to be indented. This is a title, this is a heading, those type of things. And Dale SGML could do that electronically. And at the time, I specifically was working on a project that involves converting our electronic documents or digital into postscript, which anyone knows a postscript is that free PDF? Yes. So I thought to myself, if we can do these electronic conversions from basically a text markup file, to a postscript file, which is, you know, kind of a graphical a page, right? Right. Why not output it to Braille? And that led me on my quest to go figure out how to do that. Michael Hingson 06:36 So what did you What did you end up doing? Mike Paciello 06:39 Well, I curse I had established a few contacts, because of this arrangement that digital had with the National Braille Press. And one of those contexts was George cursher. Anyone that knows anything about this business knows that George is a champion and a hero, and just one of the greatest human beings I've ever known. And Matt, and it's great to be to be called a friend and a colleague of his, Michael Hingson 07:08 and George was the person who kind of really was the proponent of the DAISY format, which is used today not only in audio recordings to make them fully accessible and navigable, but he did it for Braille as well. Mike Paciello 07:22 That's right. That's exactly right. And I'll tell you, a lot of people remember George for when he worked for what you would call it out there in New Jersey and Princeton for the blind index, Michael Hingson 07:36 RFP coding, right. Now Learning Ally, right, Mike Paciello 07:40 right, right, exactly. However, before he joined RFB, nd he had his own little company called computerized books for the blind, write it so I established a contact with him, he and I started talking about markup languages. He pulled it a couple of other people like Joe Sullivan, from Duxbury Systems. And Yuri Minsky, who was the President CEO of soft spot, which was a major producer of SGML editing software. And we formed together with many other colleagues, also international colleagues, what was a working group called the International Committee for accessible document design. We did that in the late early 90s, early 90s. Michael Hingson 08:30 So you, you put some processes together? And how successful were you at being able to get postscript translated into Braille? Mike Paciello 08:43 Well, no, no, as far as I know, there was no success there. Yes, story. The story with postscript is, you know, Adobe, eventually converted everything into a PDF. And that's where the success so to speak, relatively speaking, came in play. Adobe actually had members that were part of our, the internet international committee for accessible document design. And they got involved effect their lead engineer at that time was Carl Orthey. And Carl met with George myself in another great colleague, who worked with me at that time at Digital TV Raman. And we looked at ways of, again, taking the PDF and converting into something that was accessible. So that's that's so there's no real story as far as I know around postscript. It's all about PDF at that level. Michael Hingson 09:42 It's, it's interesting. You had a lot of good beginnings and laid a lot of foundations. But But today, it seems like a lot of the accessibility that we're seeing is still somewhat sporadic and spotty. In that not everything gets to be put into or can easily be put into an accessible form. Even with Adobe, there is a lot of document, there are a lot of documents that are released and created by various people that aren't accessible. Why is it that Adobe and other organizations don't really follow through and try to create native accessibility? Right from the outset? Mike Paciello 10:28 Yeah, well, you know what that is, it's it comes down very simply to it's a business decision. You know, corporations. for all intents and purposes, they've got a mindset, they're all about reporting back to their boards of directors, and reported profits. I mean, it's just a business's business, especially here in you know, in this in this country, where we're driven, you know, by a by, you know, why the markets in so businesses, businesses look at it, and I've yet to see this not be true. Even for those companies that I believe Excel, where accessibility is concerned, a businesses have never been able to figure out really how to turn accessibility as you and I know it into a business value proposition, they haven't figured out how to make it, how to make money out of it, there are all kinds of numbers that are thrown out there about discretionary income by people with disabilities. But it doesn't come down to that. It's it's channels, it's business lines, it's, it's we're talking about, you know, companies don't want to talk about making business unless we're talking about billions of dollars now. And then, you know, it won't take much longer looking at the recent, the recent profit reports, you know, by by Apple and Amazon, that we're going to be talking about trillions of dollars. So if we can generate that kind of thing, then then, you know, a business business really does want to want to investigate. And secondarily, designing architecting, developing all of the engineering lifecycle or product lifecycle disciplines that are associated with ensuring that whatever it is that we're building, and I'll just use just a software environment, because that's, that's what I'm most familiar with, whatever software platform or interface that we're designing or developing, you know, it has to be accessible, they're not doing enough, you know, out of the box, it's not being done in the concept, you know, conceptual design and architectural, and then fall all the way through. If you know, what I'm doing right now, as I'm illustrate, I'm using, you know, kind of a gesture to show, you know, for the beginning, all the way to the end of the lifecycle, there, every piece of that needs to be accounted for, where ensuring something is usable, and accessible to a variety of people, disabilities, and the persona types associated with it. And companies just typically don't make that kind of investment. Unless someone at the top is driving it. And, you know, you can look at, you know, I think Microsoft is a is a good company right now to kind of hold up there, because I believe that they've done a great job at raising the bar. Because all of its being driven by Jenny in by, you know, by their CEO, you know, he himself has, I think, at least one son with with a disability. So he's got a personal connection to it, but you don't see that at 90% of most businesses. So again, like I said, it's a, it's a value cost analysis, that, you know, from an accessibility standpoint, it's probably never going to really, truly wash. Now that even Michael Hingson 14:04 go ahead. Oh, go ahead. No, I was just gonna Mike Paciello 14:07 say, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't tackle this pervasive, really, you know, like global challenge, using other means by which to, you know, kind of change the world and change thinking. And I really think that that's probably another big piece of it. Michael Hingson 14:28 We see them with Microsoft, but even with Microsoft, now with new windows 11. There are a lot of things that are technically accessible, but they're not obvious and they're not obviously located so that one can see them, you know, as an example. It used to be in his latest Windows 10. If you wanted to go to what we're now calling even with Windows and app that's installed on your machine, you hit the start button. And then you could use the arrow keys to go down and find the AP. But that's not the case in Windows 11 anymore. And there are additional keystrokes or other things that you need to do. They have not kept the same obvious process. And yes, it's accessible because you can find it. But is that really is usable, and was a lot of thought given to that when they were creating windows 11. And it seems to me that Jenny has has done a lot and we're speaking by the way for those who don't know, of Jenny Lefevere, who is the Chief Accessibility Officer for Microsoft, and Jenny is deaf, we met at a convention a few years ago. And obviously, you, you work with her pretty well. But I just think that there are things that they aren't, they're still not giving a lot of thought or as much thought as they should, to some of the architecture and ways to make Windows is obviously usable as it should be. Mike Paciello 15:59 You know, I mean, Mike, I can't, I can't deny that I totally agree. I think, you know, what we see out on the web in terms of social networking, social Mark marketing, we see what Microsoft wants us to hear, right, but we're not inside. In I am not at all surprised, because I frankly, I hear this about a lot of the other, you know, big companies, who was it was at Forbes was at Forbes, or was a fast company that just came out with this glowing article. It in mentioned, it was it was really kind of interesting. It mentioned Microsoft, Amazon, Google. Facebook, who else was in there apple in all these great, wonderful things that they do in I mean, you can't deny the fact that they've made some awesome, you know, steps forward and done some great things in behalf of the entire disabilities marketplace. Right. But force, but at the same time, you and I both know, I see every single day, if not hundreds, you know, dozens, you know, if not dozens, hundreds. So whichever way you want to look at it, I have people who are seeing exactly what you're saying. Yeah, great, but now I can't use Windows, I've seen that. I've seen that whole discussion on Windows 11. So what happened? Who's Who's not watching the the watching the ball there? How can you not at this point in the game, when you're in industry, as mature as Microsoft is? Including the accessibility space? How could you miss these things? You can't. So someone's making decisions that should either is, is not well educated, well versed and accessibility, or be and I think this tends to be more likely scenario. They're doing it because they're being driven by whatever financial incentives that they have. Right? Michael Hingson 18:04 Right. But But here's, here's another aspect of that. I agree that in especially in this country, we tend to be very driven by the financial aspects of it. What Uh, what about our stockholders, we've got to report directly to them. And they're the only ones who matter, which I'm not convinced is true. But that's what what companies do. But when do we get to see companies believe? It says much about the cost of doing business to include people with disabilities, and we'll deal with blindness here. But in general, to include people with disabilities as it is others look at Adobe, if you install Adobe Acrobat, or if you look at a lot of the things that that you can do with Acrobat, and Acrobat, DC today, we have Acrobat, DC, licensed as I do here, you get options for different kinds of languages, you get a variety of different kinds of settings. And obviously, those were put in because people somewhere thought it was important to have more than English, then of course, part of that is you want Acrobat to be able to be marketed all over the world. But even in this country, you want Acrobat to be able to produce documents and English and Spanish and Chinese and Japanese and other languages as well. But so there's a mindset there, that that's important. But I think part of the issue with corporate decisions is there isn't a mindset yet about dealing with disabilities, even though more than 20% of all people in this country and around the world have some sort of disability there isn't a mindset of inclusion for those people yet. Mike Paciello 19:56 Yeah, I totally agree. Um, you know, we all I often talk about culture, we often talk about acumen, we I used to have a domain that was called thinkaccessibility.com. And it's true with the mindset is, they're just not doing it. But I also feel like in I kind of apologize, because I haven't been able to come up with the right answer yet. But I used to talk in terms of what, you know, what, how do we change the world? I mean, that's, that's what we're trying to talk about, right? We're talking about changing the world change the world's mindset, as it relates to people with disabilities, in, in accessibility. In terms of any kind of interaction or, or or inclusive design doesn't matter whether it's hardware, or software, wood, or paper, or electronic. The same thing is true all the way across the board, I still see buildings that are built, and they don't meet the ADA standards. Right. Right. So So what is it? I used to talk about, you know, back in the, in the 90s, particularly, we went through this phase, where alternative energy became, you know, a big thing. In many governments, many, many governments put billions of dollars into alternative energies for a lot of reasons, right? They want to stop fossil fuel pollution and things along those lines, right? The the atmosphere, but there were a lot of reasons for doing it. But the the government's and the people, the scientists behind it, saw, had had the foresight, they saw a vision of what the world would be like, in 5060, you know, 100 years or decades ahead, in from the term from the standpoint of preservation, for from the standpoint of, you know, global warming, pollution, things along those lines, it became intrinsic to life, for every human. We haven't achieved that in the disability accessibility. A world in our world, we have not created a mindset that says, We need to change the world, because if we don't, this is what's going to happen in the years to come. Right? That makes sense. It does. Michael Hingson 22:31 And, you know, part of the problem is the term disability is still, we're great at redefining words, right? I mean, we've re defined, we've redefined diversity all over the place. And now diversity generally tends not to include disabilities. And will but we haven't been able to define disability yet to not mean you're not able. And so it is a problem. And I'm just not sure how we're going to get around that. But somewhere, we need to do that, to get the mindset to shift so that people can truly understand and accept that just because a person has a different ability set than they and it doesn't include some of the things that that their ability set includes. That does go the other way as well. And it isn't all of a physical nature necessarily. Mike Paciello 23:24 I totally agree. I tell you every I mean, what's also factually true is, you know, the profession, the business and the community that you and I are part of, is it is in and of itself kind of a civil rights notion, right? It is. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the US, it's absolutely that, well, actually, most countries, it's absolute. That's why you have, you know, Ada, like legislator, legislation and laws throughout, you know, throughout the world. But here's the interesting thing about that. Every great civil rights movement, every great movement, has always had a great leader and a vocal leader and a visible leader. And I've always thought that that's one of the things that we miss, we don't really have, we have some great leaders, we've got some great people out there. Jenny being one of them, for example. You know, when I, when I grew up, Ellen Brightman was like, it was like my hero key and Gary Moulton. Were just, you know, awesome. Good. George cursher, you know, to this day is, but we don't have, you know, a Martin Luther King, like individual, you know, a Mahatma Gandhi, like individual who, who doesn't just bring the cause, but brings the recognition in, in in creates change as a result of that in in so I still kind of think that that's something that we we probably need in this industry to to to change the world the way that we want to change it. Michael Hingson 24:56 Yeah. And and the problem is that to bring the recognition that take a Martin Luther King, the the thing is, there were some differences about him. But there were enough similarities between him and everyone else that people could rally around him. And I'm not sure that when you're viewing people as physically disabled or developmentally disabled, when you bring that disability in, there's, there's a part of it, that I'm not sure that anyone yet has figured out a way to get around the closest person who I ever encountered. And I never met him personally, but person who I think could have achieved that, although not in the exact same strident way that Dr. King did would be Jacobus timber, the founder of the National Federation of the Blind. He was he was the deep philosopher, and extremely vocal about it and very innovative, but he was blind. And I think that that's that problem is what we face in terms of dealing with disabilities. Mike Paciello 26:11 Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, so I mean, I think that's just one, one piece of the, you know, of the puzzle, so to speak, to try to solve this worldwide mindset that that needs to be changed. Michael Hingson 26:31 Yeah, and I'm not sure how we're going to get around it. Because I think we also tend to not be violent, and we shouldn't be violent about what we do. But we do need to somehow cross this barrier. And maybe the way we need to do it is to be more forceful, collectively, and get people to to notice, but there are things that that companies could do take apple. So Apple, finally came to the realization and it took in part of the threat of a lawsuit to make it happen. But Apple finally took the iPhone and made it accessible. The iPod. And they even went so far as to make iTunes you available, although I don't hear as much about iTunes you today. But still, it was the method by which a number of people could get class lectures, and so on. And they made all of that accessible. The problem that I see with what Apple did is that they didn't take that last step. That is to say, there is still nothing in the App Store today that mandates any level of accessibility for the apps that they allow to go through the store. And they could make an incredible change in mindset and shift in mindset. If they would just say, your app has to have some level of accessibility. And that's going to be different for different kinds of apps. But at least I ought to be able to control apps that go through the store. And I recognize that a lot of apps are going to be graphical in nature, but they still ought to give me the ability to control the apps and manipulate the apps and my example that I use are star charts, you know, I'm not going to see star charts. But for me to take the time to describe it to someone and describe what I want to get them to manipulate it rather than me being able to manipulate it and then saying to someone, what do you see, I still don't even get that. And apps go in and out of accessibility in the app store all the time. Apple could, with a fairly simple process, make accessibility as mandatory in the store, as it does other things. It would seem to me. Mike Paciello 28:54 Yeah, well, what companies do about their own products is definitely one thing. But again, I still think it comes down to dollars and cents. No, they're not gonna push any harder than they have to, because they just don't have the C level people who should be, you know, putting this on their agenda and in prioritizing accessibility the way it ought to be, as we as we see it. Michael Hingson 29:21 Right. Right. But what's but what's the message there? The message, it seems to me is still we're still not really important enough for us to do that. Mike Paciello 29:31 Oh, that's right. You're not a viable entity? Yeah, absolutely. There's no doubt about that. They'll never say it. But in fact, that's really what's going on in the boardroom. Now. One One thing that we tried to do have been unsuccessful up till now. But when Jim Tobias and I shared the the last five weeks, one of the things that we had already laid groundwork for doing was implementing the Five weight requirements, which include all the the web accessibility requirements into the Americans Disabilities Act, because the Department of Justice was a participant there, they're following what we're doing. And we made some good head rows, headway into it. But it came to an abrupt abrupt stop. As a result of politics, frankly speaking. We, my my last meeting, ironically enough, at the White House, was the day before the 2001 or 2016 election. Yeah, yeah. 2016 election. And I listened to President Obama's chief technology officer, and his chief science officer, both talked about the players that they were laying out for the next four to eight years. In all those things got trashed right after that election. So again, not not not really, in no way am I see he could have a political position here, because I don't I stay out of politics, but I'm just sitting, having been the chair, a co chair, rather, of a committee, whose charter was to enhance the lives of individuals with disabilities by enhancing technology for accessibility. We lost, we lost, we lost quite a bit at that level. Now. You know, will it ever get into ADA? I don't know. I really don't know. It's it's more or less than table, that the Department of Justice position at this point is well, you know, things are fair, you know, are out there for everybody to follow. They don't need enforcement. But the reality is, lawsuits are gonna keep coming until until until enforcement is mandated. And then then corporations will do one or two things, they'll either comply, because they'll have to obey. Or they'll do what they typically do, which they send lobbyists groups in and fight it. Michael Hingson 32:06 Yeah, well, and you bring up a really interesting thing regarding lawsuits, because lawsuits can can be a powerful and valuable way to help the process if the litigation is brought for the right reason, namely, we really want to help fix the problem. But we're also seeing a lot of lawsuits. And it's been going on well, certainly before the ADEA. But we'll use the ADEA. And, and and our situations and experiences as the example, lawsuits today are often filed by lawyers who just want to make a bunch of money. They're very frivolous lawsuits. I saw one last week, where a lawyer decided to sue a company actually a bunch of different companies, because they said their websites were inaccessible. And they use the same boilerplate on on all of the lawsuits. And in reality, from the time the plaintiff, quote, looked at the website that I am aware of, until the time the lawsuit was filed was about a month. And in that time, unbeknownst to the defendant, or to the plaintiff, the company took action to make the website accessible because it was the right thing to do. So that by the time the lawsuit was filed, in reality, the claims were totally baseless because the website had become accessible and usable, demonstrably speaking, but yet the lawsuit was still fired filed, and there are so many of those frivolous lawsuits. It seems to me that one of the things that we ought to figure out ways to do is to get Bar Association's and others to go after these lawyers who are doing these frivolous lawsuits, because they're not doing anyone any good. Mike Paciello 34:07 Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about there are a lot of evil, it's chases out there. They've been out there for as long as I've been, you know, in the software and web accessibility, because it's, I mean, I don't know if we'll ever be able to change that unless, unless we do what would there is there has been some inroads made in terms of how much a person can sue for and, and in some of the motivations for but yeah, yeah, I mean, it's sad, in unfortunately, they they bring in individuals with disabilities, you know, to be part of the of the suit itself. And that creates angst in the communities as well. Right. So I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's funny, I gave a talk at the UN years ago on fear based incentives, and I hate them. I mean, it's such a stands for any kind of fear based incentives. But the fact of the matter is that we see it does. It does effect change, right. So you've seen large corporations in organizations in educational institutions who have made the changes because they were forced to as a result of those lawsuits. I don't like it. I don't think anybody likes to be quarter, you know, put into a corner and then have to fight out. It just gives accessibility and disabilities a bad name overall. But it is effective. Set Michael Hingson 35:36 offer, marketing, fear based marketing is all around us. I mean, turn on a television, and you hear commercials, like your check engine light is going to turn red at some point. And then it's going to be too late. You have to get our car warranty. Now I'm in fear marketing is all around us. Mike Paciello 35:56 Yeah, that's true. And I work separately. It is ironic, because it is kind of ironic that you're talking about that, because we are kind of talking about messaging, and marketing. It's one of the reasons why would I built web able, one of the things that I really wanted to focus on was trust based marketing, that anyone that I did business with, has to has to be truthful in everything that they say and everything that they do. And so I've worked really hard at that focus, I'm actually updating our pages right now to add another set of value statements associated with trust, and in truthful marketing, because I believe it's ironic my drive here is to make sure that people with disabilities and consumers with disabilities, you know, what they're being told, or what they're being sold, is, you know, an accurate reflection of what your product can or cannot do. So or what a service company or a service based company says they can and will do, because I believe, frankly, speaking, very analogous to the lawyer, you know, the English face lawyer scenario, is I believe that there that that individuals with disabilities, not unlike the elderly community are often take advantage, taking advantage of, because they don't know everything that's going on it, you know, their disability puts me into a situation where they, they, they often are not aware of what the true motivations of a corporation or organization really are. Michael Hingson 37:38 Right. And it's, it says an important for those of us in the disability community to understand corporate dynamics, and do as much as we can to become a part of the corporate world, because change does have to come from within, and it won't come unless we help bring it about and unless we work as hard as we possibly can to get other allies on the inside. But I still think ultimately, it's it's going to require that mindset shift. And I'm, I'm not convinced that it needs to be a costly thing to bring about accessibility, especially if you create a native way to make it happen right from the outset. Then you're building it into the cost of doing business, which is what Apple did, of course, with the iPhone, and the iPod and the technologies that are in the Mike Paciello 38:37 Mac voiceover voiceover right. And then voiceover, Michael Hingson 38:41 it's a cost of doing business. And I'm not even sure I totally like that. But it's, it's okay. It's a cost of doing business to make sure everyone can use the product. And I think that's a reasonable thing to do. But that's why I think that they, they need to take that last step. And get to the point of recognizing that part of that same cost of doing business has to be to say, to developers, you've got to have some sort of basic amount of accessibility, just like we do with the with the iPhone and the iPad and the Mac itself, because you're leaving people out. The The problem is that Apple put itself in that position by being a policing agency for what goes into apps and how apps work. I understand. I don't even I haven't looked lately, but I understand that if you create a piece of software that looks like it has a Windows desktop, that was true of Windows 10. Anyway, Apple wouldn't release it in the app store because it didn't look abolition often look to Windows II and of course their competitors. They have the ability to make and they do make decisions based on what they choose. Mike Paciello 40:02 Yeah, yeah, there's no no no doubt about that, again, businesses are in the business of doing business. Right. And, and, and that's why we have things, you know, like trademarks and copyright and, and patent infringement and patents, and, you know, all of that it's all proprietary, proprietary systems closed open. This that's, that is the world that we that we live in today is as as we started, as you said, from the beginning, the sad part of all of this is that in that the decision makers, the architects, the designers, are not really truly thinking about accessibility and building an infinite start. Michael Hingson 40:44 And it would make it just and it's not that hard to do. If they would do it. Tell me about the web accessibility initiative a little bit. Mike Paciello 40:53 Gosh, sure. Well, I'll tell you, as much as I know, I mean, I haven't. I've been on the fringes of it more or less for the last 15 years or so. But I'll tell you the, the interesting story about the about the way is that I and I was working as a volunteer, I was working at digital and working as a volunteer to kind of with MIT, in the WCC to just kind of build some content, leads, you know, email lists, you know, some some resource information, and just keep it there for accessibility. Organizations like trace ad, which then under Greg Vanderheiden, was at the University of Wisconsin, now down at University of Maryland, Baltimore, I think that's where they're at. And in WGBH, here in Boston, under Larry Goldberg's directorship in cast, they also were organizations that were kind of pulling together these resources around around the web. And so while I was there, I came in contact with a few key people like Daniel da, and of course, Tim Berners. Lee, I was working closely with with Uri Rybicki before he passed the 96. In others, Dave Raggett, just a few other people that were there, in ultimately, you know, we started talking about, you know, can we do something with this. But at the same time, conversations were being carried on with with the National Science Foundation is Department of Education, and a couple of European consortiums, including tide. And what happened was, Tim, as I understand it was approached by either Vice President Gore, or President Clinton at at that particular time said, hey, look, would with the W three C, would you guys be interested in kind of building a project around people disabilities that access to the web? And Tim came back to myself DlG Villar a dragon and said, Hey, do you guys think that we could do this, but would this be something that we could do and ultimately, that led to us putting together a plan and a proposal for an initiative at the time was called the web accessibility project or whap. And I never liked it. Never like, you know, from a marketing standpoint, you know, a branding simple, I just knew it wasn't gonna work. So when we decided that we were going to launch it in 1997, Danielle, and Danielle and I went back and forth, okay, what can we name this whole thing? And I came up with way Wi Fi. That was marketable, it was easy to say and easy to brand. And Daniel liked it. And and we were back in 1997. Now at the I think it What was it? Like everybody, I think it was the sixth, sixth or seventh. Why would conference, I think the seventh I want to say seven, but even six. And I've got my stuff right over here on my other shelf. I can't see it right now. But we launched it there. It's at Stanford and see in Santa Clara. And that's that led to, to the launch of the initiative. We got funding, US government funding matching funds from MIT in matching funds from the tide initiative for three years. So we built a three year business plan for it. Ultimately, I at that time, actually, I changed jobs and Dale Yuri had passed away 96 It's now 1997. And I was the executive director of the European ski and sky foundation. So under that notion, I went out and helped help lead and build the the Web Accessibility Initiative Program Office. And ultimately that led to us hiring Judy Brewer. Who was in Massachusetts, it had been very well known for her activity with. With her boy, I can't remember the name of the organization was I want to say the mass mass association for disabilities. But she had led the effort to requiring Microsoft to ship Windows, Windows 95, with certain accessibility features into it. And so she was a great hire, you know, to leave the office, I went back off and eventually left the OSI Foundation, and started up my own company TPG. Michael Hingson 45:43 And now you've since fairly recently sold TPG, right? Mike Paciello 45:49 Today, it's already been for almost five years. Michael Hingson 45:54 What did TPG do? What what did you form the company to do? Mike Paciello 45:59 Yes, so I, what I really wanted to do was forming a professional services organization, company that helped make web web applications and software, regardless of the platform, usable and accessible to people disabilities. So I built an initial team, we went through several iterations of the team, before I could pull the right group of people together. But ultimately, that's, that's, that's what we did. And that's how I sold it became one of the most, if not the most well known brand, in software, professional services around web and software accessibility in the world. And that led to the company at the time, was VFO. Now now known as Despero, and they acquired they acquired TPG is specifically for that we had the largest bring not the largest company, but the largest brand most well done. It was because we were built on a foundation of trust. Every client that we had, came to us by referrals, we never did outbound sales ever. And, and we had lots of lots of repeat business enough to keep you know, ultimately, I think when I saw that we had about 40 or so people on staff in some of the world's best, best of the world in this business. Now my drop it in their knees, because they're all there are there. So they've gone off and formed their own companies. You know, I find I find that a little bit of a legacy. They you know, a car girls would often in antennen, and now he's with level access. Leone, Watson went out and started petrological. And she's got, you know, seven or eight members of her key team are all former TPG employees. Sara Horton is going off. She's doing her thing. So and I've gone off and done my so there's, there's been a lot of it's kind of interesting, a lot of breakout companies from from TPG. Michael Hingson 47:52 And now you're doing web ABL. Mike Paciello 47:56 And now I'm doing web ABL. Yeah, I've kind of labeled right. Web evil and evil docs. Michael Hingson 48:02 And you're married. So you have three jobs. What's that? And you're married? So you have three jobs? Mike Paciello 48:08 I probably have five because yeah, there's that parent tells me I have like five jobs now. So yeah, we're able to able to access web people. It really started out at TPG. It was my idea to kind of build a marketing, but I wanted to honestly, I built a news aggregator which the front of it is front end of it is a news aggregator. But ultimately, I wanted to be a digital marketing social networking marketing company strictly within the context of of, of accessibility and disability. And that's, that's where it's at. Michael Hingson 48:47 And what Able Docs? Mike Paciello 48:49 Able Docs is a right now, it is primarily known for documentation accessibility across the board. So it's not just PDFs its word, its Excel, PowerPoint. We're dealing with Google Docs. But it is a company that is involved in digital accessibility. We've recently branched out and started building on our, our own web accessibility services. So we did an acquisition of web key it out in Perth, Australia, so that we brought them in. And we're buying some tools and we're building some business long there. So so I've been helping Adam Spencer's, the CEO there at Apple docs. Adam has a long history in documentation accessibility, and they're one of the world leaders in that. So I'm here to help them build their USN branch. Michael Hingson 49:43 Pretty exciting, isn't it? Mike Paciello 49:44 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's startup all over again. So it's kind of fun from that standpoint, but a lot of hard work Michael Hingson 49:52 well, and doing it in the COVID era. Well, you get to do it at home. So there's, there's there's lots of time do it. So at least you just don't have to travel as much right now. Mike Paciello 50:03 Honestly, that's the thing I missed the most. I love travel. Yeah, I do too. I love traveling. I love speaking, I will go no everywhere and anywhere to do that, you know, to kind of carry the mission. So I missed that the most. Michael Hingson 50:17 I I've never really minded being on airplanes, although I understand the whole issue with COVID right now, but I've never really had a problem with it. I enjoy traveling. I haven't been to a place yet that I couldn't find some things to like about it. And I've enjoyed everywhere I've gotten to go and all the people I've gotten to speak to and speak with and educate. Yeah, I miss it as well. Mike Paciello 50:42 Yeah. Well, you and I saw each other down in Washington, DC. We do in Baltimore. So the NFB and, and then m&a Bling. But I right after that COVID started to break out again with the Omicron variant. So I stopped all travel. So right now and I've done probably five or six other events since then. Right now, if all things work out, I'll be at CSUN. Michael Hingson 51:09 Tell me about that. You're going to be the keynote speaker this year? Mike Paciello 51:13 Yeah, I was kind of surprised. I got a call from from from CSUN. And they asked me there their executive director asked me if I would see any uploading, asked me if I would consider I was really shocked. To be honest with you. I haven't been at CSUN. In you know, in four years right now. Yeah, in four years. Because my first wife passed away. And I was like, at home for I retired after I sold TPG. I retired for, you know, for the better part of four and a half years. And you know, was caretaking for Kim. And I really couldn't travel. So I did go to C center. I've been to CSUN since 2018. Yeah, so be four years now. So when they call when I can't think it now just lost her name. Oh, see any? Sorry. I went didn't see anyone see any called me. I was really surprised. But she asked me if I would consider giving the keynote and, you know, see son to me. See, says where I got my start in terms of networking and meeting people and getting involved in the community, not just on the national level, but on the international level. And that I think really spearheaded an awful lot for me in just about every other company that that's out there. So it holds a very dear in your place to me, Harry Murphy's the director, the founder of CSUN. He and I are close friends, even to this day. He retired over 10 years ago. And I served on I served on two advisory committees to to see some over the years. So when Sandy? Yeah. Well, she asked me, I said, Yeah, I'd be happy to. So I've got so Michael Hingson 53:04 so what are you going to talk about? Can you give us a hint? Well, the theme Mike Paciello 53:07 is trying to get make it a little bit interesting, intriguing accessibility users and the golden goose, why trust is a vital digital asset. So kind of goes with what you and I've been talking about what we've been talking about. We we in I did actually talk about this at m&a Bling. That I think there are four key attributes of our business in our industry that needs to be pervasive and promulgated and in founded, organizations and companies need to be fully immersed in. And that's innovation, collaboration, transparency, and trust. When those four attributes are built together, then then I think we come out with a winning value proposition. And so I'm planning on taking using a trilogy of three stories, life stories, and bring them all together to show how they work out that way and the value behind them. Michael Hingson 54:12 Yeah, I've been in sales a long time having started while working for Kurzweil and taking. Actually, my first foray into sales was the Dale Carnegie sales course, which was a 10 week program once a week with live lessons and then other things during the week, but in Massachusetts, and the the interesting thing, and the overriding message that was constantly addressed during that course was that when you're selling, you're really advising you're, you're helping people and you're establishing a rapport and if you You're doing it just to drive somebody to get your product no matter what, then you're not selling the right way it is all about trust. Mike Paciello 55:08 Yeah, absolutely. There's no doubt. Well, I think it's all for these areas, I really, you know, especially because we're in high tech in a digital economy and digital society. So innovation is critical, right? Working together, right? dispelling the myths associated with with competition. And collaborating, I think is crucial, especially again, in our space, transparency, transparency, you know, organizations need to be, you know, transparent about what they can and can't do. This is one of I think, one of the, I don't know, I don't know exactly where to attribute it to. But this much, I do know that people with disabilities are more than happy to work with you or your organization, your company, they're there, they'll they're one of the first ones to jump on board, and help you to make things useful and accessible, right? Because it benefits that. But if you're not transparent with them, right, if you know, tell them what is what is truth, right? What my product can or can't do upfront, it worse, you, you know, you, you mark it, or you sell something that's not trustworthy, or truthful, you're gonna lose them as a community, and you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna get five bad vibes, because this is a very close knit community of individuals. So you've got to be transparent, it's okay to say, look, we've gone this far, I've done this much. Our plan is to go this far in over the next three, five years is what we're going to do. People with disabilities will, will will support you, they know you're making some inroads towards accessibility. They applaud the effort now, okay, so they see your plan for the future. As long as you stay true to that mission. They're all in, and you'll get all the support in the world that you need from them. Which is why trust is so important. Because once you break those first three, and you break the trust, then you got nothing. Michael Hingson 57:14 In 2016, the Nielsen Company did a study of brand loyalty. I don't know all the details of how it got commissioned, or whatever. But one of the main points of the study was that persons with disabilities tend to be very brand loyal to those companies that include them want to work with them want to make their products available to them. And the brand loyalty is extremely strong because of that, which really goes along with exactly what you're saying. Mike Paciello 57:48 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I remember when Jacob did that, that study. I think I may have even been involved in it some at some level. But yeah, that's it's absolutely true. I think people with disabilities, with maybe the strict exception of possibly elderly individuals are the most free and loyal community of individuals population of individuals ever, period. When it works. Sorry, you're not going to, you know, people, I mean, you know, this, people are Jaws users use JAWS because it works. Right, right. Even though Jaws is flawed, JAWS has has bugs in it, right. Just like every other piece of it I've ever I've ever seen. I've never seen a bug free piece of software at all technology. But once users got into it and started using it, it became very, very clear that this is going to be even though they've got to pay for it. Compared to say, and, VA, right. They're very, very, very strongly loyal to it. And that's been true about all 80. Frankly, Michael Hingson 58:58 but NVDA is is catching up NVDA has come a long way and is working better it is free, but it is still not Jaws know, at least in people's minds. And still not Yeah, Mike Paciello 59:12 nothing. Nothing is just me just, you know, Freedom owns 80% Plus that market. Right and in who have you seen over the years that have kind of gone by the wayside? Be You know, because they just churn market. Right. So Michael Hingson 59:30 and that will, that will be the case. As long as as you said, the trust is there. If if the sparrow breaks the trust ever, that's going to be a big problem. Mike Paciello 59:43 Yeah, I totally agree. I absolutely agree. They know it. I know it. And more importantly, all of the individuals have visual disabilities, the users know it. Michael Hingson 59:54 Yeah, no doubt about it. It's it's been that way and I've been using For a long, long time and have watched how they've grown and developed, and they've done some things that that have been challenging, but in the long run, it works, as you said, and that's what really is important. Mike Paciello 1:00:13 Yeah, yep. No doubt about it, Mike. Michael Hingson 1:00:16 Well, we have been going on for an hour How time flies when we're having fun. And I want to really thank you, if people want to reach out to you, how might they do that, learn more about the things you're doing and so on. Mike Paciello 1:00:30 Well, if they want to learn about Web Able, if you get what we're doing, I mean, we are we're on a sponsorship drive right now. So we're really looking for sponsors going into 2022. So you can send me email at M as in Mike Paciello, P a c, i e l l o at webable.com if they want to contact me at Able Docs for documentation, accessibility and even professional services around software and Web. And you can send me email at mpaciello@abledocs.com. Michael Hingson 1:01:02 Well, we've been we've been working together now for what since September, and October, and m&a billing and all that. And I know you're talking with folks that accessiBe, and there's a lot of exciting stuff going on there. And hopefully, we'll all be able to work together and make this a little bit more of an inclusive world. And hopefully, we'll be able to change mindsets, and get people to maybe look at the world a little bit differently than they're used to, and maybe look at it in a little bit broader and more inclusive way. Mike Paciello 1:01:34 I totally agree. Totally agree. Michael Hingson 1:01:38 Well, Mike, thanks very much for being here with us. And hopefully, you'll you'll have a chance and come back again. We'd love to have you back anytime. If you would have anything you want to talk about, then let us know. We'll try to catch the speech at CSUN. Not sure whether I'm going to travel down there or not this year, we'll see. But hopefully we'll we'll we'll work it out somehow. But thanks again for being here on unstoppable mindset. And for those of you who want to learn more about us, you can you can find us at Michaelhingson.com that's M I C H A E L H I N G S O N.com/podcast. And you wherever you heard this podcast, you can go anywhere where podcasts are posted and and released and you can find us there. So join us next week for another edition of unstoppable mindset wherever you are, wherever you happen to be at the time, and with whatever hosts you use. We'll be looking forward to seeing you then. You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

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213 - Flagship Scanner Feature Wishlist

Scanner School - Everything you wanted to know about the Scanner Radio Hobby

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2022 41:26

What features would you like to see in the next Flagship Scanner Radio by Uniden, Whistler, or someone else? I have my own wishlist and I think many of these features are overdue in today's scanner radio market. In fact, many of my requests are already available on other radios, including radios like Baofeng and TYT to name a few. Some of what I'd like to see on a Flagship Radio: Radio Reference Database should remain included in any future Flagship Scanner Bluetooth connectivity is a must Include a desktop charger or make it available as an optional accessory. Bonus points if flagship scanners would include accessory connections for external antennas, speakers, and pc connections via the desktop charger. No more custom battery packs, please! Apps for Android and iOS would be nice. Why can't future handheld radios include GPS built in? I can get dual VFO's in my Icom receivers and my cheap $30 imports. Why can't I have dual VFO's on my $600+ scanner? We need voice prompts in today's scanners (or fallback to smart phone and tablets and apps with screen readers) for those who are blind or need assistance seeing? All radios should be able to use aftermarket antennas without any special adapters or restrictions Check out more of my wishlist and even some ways manufacturers could include these without driving prices up inside this podcast. ====================================

Products made from unobtainium

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2022 5:29

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I received an email from a fellow amateur, Elwood WB0OEW. We've been exchanging email for a little while and having been in the hobby since before I learnt to ride a bicycle, he's always got some interesting insight into something I've said and an encouraging word to share. This time he introduced me to a project he built and published a couple of years ago. It's a variable frequency standard, built from parts and, at the time, costing all of about $150, more on that shortly. Compared to the microwave oven sized HP-606A signal generator sitting on my bench in bits, with some diligent layout, this project could fit inside one of the valves that drives that massive hunk of equipment. As an aside, truth be told, I'm a little afraid of the HP. It managed to pop the RCD, a residual current device, or safety switch, in my house and in doing so, took out the UPS that powers my main workstation, so, not unexpectedly, I'm reluctant to repeat the experience. Once I understand precisely what happened, I'll pick up the restoration efforts and based on what I learnt today, it might get me where I want to go faster. Elwood's frequency standard is a very interesting project that delivers a very precise Variable Frequency Oscillator or VFO with an accuracy approaching 1 part per billion. His project uses an Arduino to control a touch sensitive display, read a knob and set and correct the frequency using a GPS as an accurate external time source. It's all very compact, easy to follow and I immediately thought that this would be an excellent project to build with a little twist. I'm thinking that it would be really great to have this device sit on your local network and make it remote controllable. The heart of this frequency standard project is a chip called an Si5351. The Silicon Labs Si5351, to use its full name, was first sold by Mouser in 2010 and has been popular since. You'll find it in all manner of places, including the Linux kernel source tree, the QRPlabs QCX and BITX to name two, the Elecraft KX2, scores of Arduino projects and countless frequency source products and projects used in amateur radio. The Si5351 is a configurable clock generator. Think of it as a programmable crystal that can be configured on the fly, as often as you like. For configuration, it uses an I2C bus, or Inter-Integrated Circuit communications protocol, a special serial bus intended for chip to chip communications, invented by Philips Semiconductors in 1982. That's the same Philips from the light bulbs and audio cassettes, CD, DVD and Blu-ray, also the Philishave. To complete the picture, Philips Semiconductors became NXP in September 2006. Back to our frequency standard project. I wondered if I could cut out the Arduino from the actual correction process, since I didn't need a display or a knob and discovered that the Si5351 comes in several flavours. Elwood's design uses the A-version, but there's also a C-version that has the ability to take in an external clock, like say that from a GPS, and correct within the chip itself. With that information in hand, I figured that I could use a simple Wi-Fi capable system on a chip, something like say an ESP8266, to configure the clock and take care of communications with the outside world. In the process I'd learn how to do a bunch of new things, including my first foray into generating RF, first time writing actual firmware, first time designing circuits and no double many more firsts. Then I hit a snag. It seems that the Si5351 has gone from commonplace to zero in stock. Not just zero in stock in Australia, or the US, no, zero in stock anywhere. There are a few A-version breakout boards, that is, the chip on a circuit board, available from one supplier. There is also a new compatible chip, an MS5351M, available from China, but that's a drop-in for the A-version, not the C-version. So, where it stands is that I can almost taste the design, essentially three chips, an almost trivial circuit board, some SMA connectors, a power source and an external GPS antenna, something that would represent the very first circuit I actually designed, which is a long way from reading the circuit diagram for my Commodore VIC-20 back in the days before I owned a soldering iron. It did bring me face to face with an odd realisation. There are components that we use in day-to-day use, ones that are common, used across many different industries, that come from a single source. I should also mention that this particular manufacturer just got sold to another company, which doesn't help matters. Nobody seems to know how long this shortage might last with forecasts varying wildly, but I'm beginning to wonder how many of these kinds of components exist and how we might reduce our dependence on single supplier hardware. I'm also starting to look at using an FPGA to do all of this in software, but that's going to take some time, of course we could start using valves again. My 1960's era HP signal generator is starting to look much less intimidating. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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The Rebirth of Homebrew

Scanner School - Everything you wanted to know about the Scanner Radio Hobby

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2021 4:31

Foundations of Amateur Radio On the 12th of December 1961, before I was born, before my parents met, the first amateur radio satellite was launched by Project OSCAR. It was a 10 kilo box, launched as the first private non-government spacecraft. OSCAR 1 was the first piggyback satellite, launched as a secondary payload taking the space of a ballast weight and managed to be heard by over 570 amateurs across 28 countries during the 22 days it was in orbit. It was launched just over four years after Sputnik 1 and was built entirely by amateurs for radio amateurs. In the sixty years since we've come a long way. Today high school students are building and launching CubeSats and several groups have built satellites for less than a $1,000. OSCAR 76, the so-called "$50SAT" cost $250 in parts. It operated in orbit for 20 months. Fees for launching a 10cm cubed satellite are around $60,000 and reducing by the year. If that sounds like a lot of money for the amateur community, consider that the budget for operating VK0EK, the DXpedition to Heard Island in 2016 was $550,000. Operation lasted 21 days. I'm mentioning all this in the context of homebrew. Not the alcoholic version of homebrew, the radio amateur version, where you build stuff for your personal enjoyment and education. For some amateurs that itch is scratched by designing and building a valve based power amplifier, for others it means building a wooden Morse key. For the members of OSCAR it's satellites. For me the itch has always been software. Sitting in my bedroom in the early 1980's, eyeballs glued to the black and white TV that was connected to my very own Commodore VIC-20 was how I got properly bitten by that bug, after having been introduced to the Apple II at my high school. I'm a curios person. Have always been. In my work I generally go after the new and novel and then discover six months down the track that my clients benefit from my weird sideways excursion into something or other. Right now my latest diversion is the FPGA, a Field Programmable Gate Array. Started watching a new series by Digi-Key about how to use them and the experience is exhilarating. One way to simply describe an FPGA is to think of it as a way to create a virtual circuit board that can be reprogrammed in the field. You don't have to go out and design a chip for a specific purpose and deal with errors, upgrades and supply chain issues, instead you use a virtual circuit and reprogram as needed. If you're not sure how powerful this is, you can program an FPGA to behave like a Motorola 65C02 microprocessor, or as a RISC CPU, or well over 200 other open source processor designs, including the 64-bit UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor. I'm mentioning this because while I have a vintage HP606A valve based signal generator that I'm working on restoring to fully working. Homebrew for me involves all that the world has to offer. I don't get excited about solder and my hands and eyes are really not steady enough to manage small circuit designs, but tapping keys on a keyboard, that's something I've been doing for a long time. Another thing I like about this whole upgraded view of homebrew is that we as radio amateurs are already familiar with building blocks. We likely don't design a power supply from scratch, or an amplifier, or the VFO circuit. Why improve something that has stood the test of time? In my virtual world, I too can use those building blocks. In FPGA land I can select any number of implementations of a Fourier Transform and test them all to see which one suits my purpose best. In case you're wondering. My Pluto SDR is looking great as a 2m and 70cm beacon, transmitting on both bands simultaneously. It too has an FPGA on board and I'm not afraid to get my keyboard dirty trying to tease out how to best make use of that. What homebrew adventures have you been up to? I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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169 - SDR++ with Alex Rouma

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 16, 2021 55:09

Free SDR webinar! Our new webinar will introduce you to Software Defined Radios. "Why Every Scanner User Needs an SDR: The #1 Underrated Tool that should be in your setup" will be March 23, 2021. Register now at www.scannerschool.com/webinar --------------------------------------------------------------- A cross platform, open source, free SDR software! In this episode, Phil talks to Alex Rouma, author and creator of SDR++. They discuss how Alex got into SDRs, where SDR++ is now and where he hopes it can go, and how you can contribute to this open source software’s development, whether you’re a programmer or not. What You Need To Know SDR++ is free, open-source, cross-platform software for your SDR. Alex got into SDRs after watching a video of someone receiving weather satellites, piquing his interest in radio in general. Alex is currently building SDR++ as general purpose SDR receiver software with more modern functionality like multi-VFO and multi-platform support. SDR++ supports anything Alex has or that companies have sent him, including SDR Play, HackRF, RTLTCP, and more. Alex considers the software still in beta, but thinks he’ll have stable code with the features he wants within 3-4 months. He wants to add audio filtering features and more options for the file source. SDR++ is fully modular so you can add plugins as you need them. Alex aims to make the software as automatic as possible. All session notes with links to the items we talked about can be found on our website at www.scannerschool.com/session169 --------------------------------------------------------------- Would you like 1 on 1 help? If you need help with your scanner and are looking for some one on one tutoring, I'd love to help you out. Visit www.scannerschool.com/consulting to book your one hour appointment today! Help support Scanner School You can help support Scanner School by visiting our support page at www.scannerschool.com/support

Getting Ahead Of The Curve With The Due Diligence Project - Alex Sonkin

The Due Diligence Project™ Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2021 68:55

Alex Sonkin founded the Due Diligence Project, the Virtual Family Office Hub, and originated the idea that sparked GoMacro. The Due Diligence Project is an open-source, global community of 500+ peer-selected CPA Firms, Law Firms, Family Offices, and Specialists who participate in a revolutionary vetting system to independently analyze, rate, rank, and make ongoing improvements to sophisticated tax strategies and world-class resources designed for the most discerning Tax Advisors and CPAs on the planet.What you will learn from this episode:What the future holds in terms of how successful business owners and families truly want to engage with their CPAs and their supporting team of specialistsSome of DDP's biggest success stories from this past year - a newly minted BILLIONAIRE featured on the cover of Forbes magazineWhen the next Due Diligence Project Summit will take place and what to expectWhat unique value a VFO (Virtual Family Office) provides and understanding the difference between a virtual CFO, your local CPA, and a VFO.What the entry-level is for someone who's interested in working with the Due Diligence Project.Connect with Alex SonkinLinkedInLearn more about The Due Diligence Project™ at:https://duediligenceproject.com/

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Episode #37: How Affluent Investors Can Benefit From Having Their Own Virtual Family Office

Your Money Manual with Vince Annable

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2020 23:43

In the part 4 of our a 5-part series on building Your Optimal Financial World, Vince Annable and Russ Alan Prince continue their conversation about the Virtual Family Office (VFO) and discuss the benefits of VFOs to the average wealthy investor. Remember, compared to the traditional single family office of the past, individual investors or families no longer need a minimum of $150 million to qualify for such a high level of service. VFOs are springing up all over the country to help investors of "average wealth" better manage their wealth and essential strategic financial decisions. Vince Annable is the CEO of Wealth Strategies Advisory Group and Creator and CEO of The Household Endowment Model®, while Russ Alan Prince is a consultant to the Super Rich, family offices, and select fast-tracking entrepreneurs, in addition to being the author or co-author of over 60 books including the latest release, Everyone Wins! On this episode of Your Money Manual with Vince Annable, you'll learn: A review of the differences between a VFO and traditional single and multi-family offices (02:44) Why more successful and wealthy investors are turning to VFO’s for their wealth management needs (05:53) How stress testing works and why it’s useful in determining if an investor may be well suited for a VFO (09:11) About the biggest obstacles for successful and wealthy individuals in setting up a VFO (03:42) What it means for everyone involved in a VFO to win, and why it’s important that everyone does win (16:26) Coming up on the 4th installment of this 5-part conversation with Russ Alan Prince, Vince Annable will go into a little more detail on the stress test we talked about and exactly what that entails, and more importantly, what it reveals about your existing wealth management plan. Russ and co-author John Bowen Jr. have been kind enough to make available a great book entitled Your Optimal Financial World—How Driven Entrepreneurs Can Benefit from High Performing Virtual Family Offices. You don’t need to own a business to benefit from info it contains. The digital flip-book version is available for immediate download at no cost or obligation simply be visiting VFOAG.com. Just complete the short form at the bottom of that page with just your name and email address and you’ll get instant access to that book as well our free quick-read Your Optimal Financial World white paper. On top of that, we’ll also provide you with the financial stress test we talked about at no cost or obligation to help you make sure your wealth management strategy is on the right track toward achieving all that’s important to you. Once again, for the free white paper and Russ’s book, Your Optimal Financial World and the free stress test, visit VFOAG.com. Your Money Manual is brought to you by Wealth Strategies Advisory Group and is now available on video! We invite you to subscribe to our Wealth Strategies Advisory Group channel on YouTube so that you’ll be alerted whenever a new episode is posted. You can also listen to our audio podcast on all of the popular services including Spotify, Pandora, i-Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts available on iTunes, where we would appreciate your rating and review.

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Episode #35: How the Virtual Family Office is Helping the Average Affluent Investor

Your Money Manual with Vince Annable

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2020 16:32

In the second of our a 5-part series on building Your Optimal Financial World, Vince Annable and Russ Alan Prince begin a multi-part discussion of the Virtual Family Office. No longer must individual investors or families need a minimum of $150 million to qualify for the elite level of service that the old Single (or Private) Family Offices required. Virtual Family Offices (VFO's) are springing up all over the country to help investors of "average wealth" better manage their wealth and essential strategic financial decisions. As you may know, Vince Annable is the CEO of Wealth Strategies Advisory Group and Creator and CEO of The Household Endowment Model®. For his part, Russ Alan Prince is a consultant to the Super Rich, family offices, and select fast-tracking entrepreneurs, in addition to being the author or co-author of over 60 books including the latest release, Everyone Wins! On this episode of Your Money Manual with Vince Annable, you'll learn: 1. What a traditional single family office is and the types of services it provides its wealthy clients (02:55) 2. What options are currently available to you if--like most of us-- you're net worth is not in the hundreds of millions of dollars (04:48) 3. How the VFO came about and why so many people are taking an interest in them (06:06) 4. About the key drivers (or major components) of VFO's (07:42) 5. What is required of an individual or family who is interested in having a VFO (10:34) Coming up on the 3rd installment of Vince Annable's 5-part conversation with Russ Alan Prince, we’re going to continue this discussion of Virtual Family Offices by talking about the many benefits of having a VFO as part of long-term wealth management plan. For more detailed information about the Virtual Family Office, click over to www.VFOAG.com, and complete the short form at the bottom of that page with just your name and email address. You’ll get free and immediate access to 2 documents that go into greater detail about VFO's: Our free white paper entitled your Optimal Financial World, and as a special bonus you’ll also receive access to the book on VFO’s by Russ Alan Prince and John Bowen, Jr.—also titled, “Your Optimal Financial World.” The information is provided at no obligation with our compliments. Visit www.VFOAG.com.

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Episode #33: "Your Optimal Financial World" Part 1 of 5: How to Build Strong Relationships so Everyone Wins

Your Money Manual with Vince Annable

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2020 13:30

Are you doing everything you can to create Your Optimal Financial World? In the first of a 5-part series, Host Vince Annable and his special guest, Russ Alan Prince, share some ideas from Mr. Prince's new book, Everyone Wins!, that may help you build the success and financial well-being you’re striving to achieve. As you may know, Vince Annable is the CEO of Wealth Strategies Advisory Group and Creator and CEO of The Household Endowment Model®. For his part, Russ Alan Prince is a consultant to the Super Rich, family offices, and select fast-tracking entrepreneurs, in addition to being the author or co-author of over 60 books including the latest release, Everyone Wins! How You Can Enhance and Optimize Business Relationships Just Like Ultra-Wealthy Entrepreneurs. On this episode of Your Money Manual with Vince Annable, you'll learn: 1, How the lessons wealthy business owners can teach us about building relationships can apply to you even if you're not an entrepreneur, a CEO, or a high-powered sales executive. (TImestamp 02:33) 2. What it means to optimize a relationship, and what we should be doing that we're not already doing to help us create winning relationships for ourselves and the people we deal with. (Timestamp 03:28) 3. What it means for you to truly win as it is characterized in this book. (Timestamp 04:20) 4. Some of the specific questions you need answers to in order to build bigger, better, stronger relationships. (Timestamp 05:26) 5. After you've completed your discovery process, how you can continue to solidify your relationships over time to make them even stronger. (Timestamp 07:30) 6. How to deal with challenging or even difficult people when it seems that a situation where everyone wins may be in jeopardy. (Timestamp 08:50) Coming up on our next visit with Russ Alan Prince, you'll learn about an elite level of wealth planning and management available through the Virtual Family Office. The Virtual Family Office is based on the concept of single-family offices. However, unlike the family offices of the old days, Virtual Family Offices are available to more individuals and families who may be considered "merely affluent." If you’d like to prepare for our next episode with Russ Alan Prince, and learn about Virtual Family Offices (or VFO’s) ahead of time, please go to our Virtual Family Office website, VFOAG.com, where you can get access to our free white paper and the book by Russ Alan Prince and John Bowen—both titled, “Your Optimal Financial World.” Again, that’s VFOAG.com. And if you have any questions about what we do and how we can help you build Your Own Optimal Financial World, call us to arrange an easy-going no-obligation consultation at Wealth Strategies Advisory Group--888-635-9724.

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007: Maximizing results and contributing to the community - Sherry Tolbert

The Due Diligence Project™ Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020 19:41

Sherry Tolbert, President at The Tolbert VFO, is a Certified Virtual Family Office (VFO) Professional and CPA with 27+years of hands-on-experience helping business owners, entrepreneurs, and real estate investors rescue millions of dollars in unnecessary taxes. She helps affluent business owners significantly reduce their tax bill using the same strategies that Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have access to via their Private Family Offices.What you will learn from this episode:What Sherry does, the people she serves and what situations they find themselves in when they come to herHow she helps people maximize the results of their workHow things changed since she got started in the businessHow she delivers results very differently from her competitorsHow the best strategies are found through the VFO hub and the Due Diligence ProjectHow curiosity is important to being an elite VFOHow Sherry truly cares about her clients and how she contributes to the communityConnect with Sherry Tolbert: LinkedInWebsiteEmail: sherry@tolbertcpa.comLearn more about The Due Diligence Project™ at:Website

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Episode 324: Retevis RT-52 Steps to Enable the 220MHz Band

Ham Radio 2.0

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2020 12:38

Retevis RT-52 Steps to Enable 220MHz - hacking the RT-52, as I like to call it. These steps will allow you to open up the VFO on the radio and allow it to go up to 260MHz. This will allow it to TX on the 1.25M 220MHz Amateur Radio band.

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Episode 324: Retevis RT-52 Steps to Enable the 220MHz Band

Ham Radio 2.0

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2020 12:38

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No te tiltees. Episodio cuatro bajo cero

No te tiltees

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2019 60:33

Episodio de pretemporada, nos estamos preparando para estar con todos los stats a 99 el día que salga FIFA20. Mientras tanto, hablamos del fin del juego, de VFO, del último presencial, un poco por encima de la escena Pro española y de Volta. Harden nos ilustra sobre el mundo de los que viven de esto y Chito nos explica qué es hacer los cambios "a la rusa".

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Software Defined Radio is fundamentally a different way of looking at radio spectrum

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2019 5:12

Foundations of Amateur Radio We think of radio as operating on a specific frequency. We select an antenna resonant on a single band. We configure the radio for that same band and then turn the dial or the VFO, or Variable Frequency Oscillator to a particular frequency within that band. All of our language is geared towards this concept of tuning, of picking out, selecting one special tuned, resonant frequency and listening to it. I've said this before, but that's not actually what's happening. Your radio is receiving all RF frequencies, all of them, all at the same time, all the time. Your antenna is better at hearing some frequencies than others, but that doesn't stop it from hearing everything at once. Your radio is getting all that RF information at the antenna connector. After that, every step along the way is removing unwanted information, first it removes all the bands you're not listening to, then the VFO selects which part of what remains to let through to the decoder and the result finally arrives at the loudspeaker. Ultimately, all your radio lets you play with is what's left over. Say about 3 kHz bandwidth. Using traditional radio, if you want to listen to two repeaters, you either need to switch back and forth quickly, or you need two receivers. Now without going into how precisely, imagine an SDR with a bandwidth of 3 MHz, one thousand times larger than your traditional radio. Before you think I'm being fanciful, a $25 gadget can do this. This means that you could process most if not all of the 2m amateur band and then pick out which bits you'd like to decode. You could decode all the local FM repeaters, an overflying satellite, the International Space Station SSTV, a beacon, Morse, Packet, RTTY and simplex contacts, WSPR, APRS, EME, whatever is happening on 2m, all at the same time. Let me say that again. All of the 2m band, all at the same time. The point is that all this information is there, all the time. We can opt to decode or ignore the information. In a traditional radio, you can only decode one signal at a time, but on an SDR, you can extract as much or as little as your computer can handle. Some SDR language talks about using multiple receivers, but a better description is multiple decoders. This means that software defined radio is fundamentally a different way of looking at radio spectrum. Instead of filtering out everything we don't want to decode, we select which decoder to apply to which part of the spectrum. With an SDR you could represent the 2m band as a 3 MHz slice of spectrum as a series of measurements. There is no loss if you reuse the numbers, so if you process the same data multiple times, you have no loss of signal, no deterioration, no extra noise. All we do is feed the same data into each decoder, pick out the bit we want to decode and have at it. There is a misconception that you need serious computing power to do this. That's not strictly accurate. A $5 Raspberry Pi single board computer is more than powerful enough to do this. You can argue that this is serious computing power, compared to what we used to land on the moon it is, compared to your mobile phone, it isn't. I fully intend to go into the maths behind this, but it's not scary, despite what you might think or have been taught. My week has been about the maths and it's become clear to me that there are lots of explanations around, each trying harder than the next to scare you away. If you feel the need to run screaming for the hills when you hear the words Nyquist, Shannon and Fourier, then get it out of your system and come back when you're ready. I'd like to mention that I've been working on how to explain this over much of the week, I've lost count of the number of drafts I've written, but it keeps coming back to the words that are almost as old as I am: My god, it's full of stars. No doubt you might be convinced that I've lost my marbles and that I'm going well outside the Foundations of Amateur Radio, but I have to confess, this is what radio is today, and I'm thrilled to be here learning more about how this all works. Hopefully you are just as thrilled. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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#3: Marc Díaz Williams - Katapult y VFO

Esports GO! Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2019 60:48

Tercer programa del podcast de Estudio Jurídico Ejaso ETL Global, sobre el ámbito de negocio de los Esports en el que contamos con la presencia de Marc Díaz Williams, CEO de la Agencia Katapult, y Director de la liga de FIFA (EA Sports) 11 vs 11, VFO. Así como un día más tenemos en el equipo la inestimable colaboración del abogado laboralista experto en Esports Daniel Sánchez Sellas y todo ello conducido por el también jurista especializado en derecho mercantil, Julio Huélamo.

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JobInsightsExtra: Employment Breakouts, Aira on Employment and Zoom Zooms Ahead and a Great Tool in the Indeed App (Transcript Provided)

Blind Abilities

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2018 30:41

JobInsightsExtra: Employment Breakouts, Aira on Employment and Zoom Zooms Ahead and a Great Tool in the Indeed App Full Transcript Below: In this Job Insights Extra Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson talk about the Employment Breakout Sessions at conventions. How Airais focused on employment, education and Bringing more value to their services. Serina talks aboutIndeed, an app for smart phones and a web site that assists one during the job hunt and finding employment opportunities in the field you want. Zoom Cloud Meetingsis becoming the go-to tool for conferenceing and meetings because it just works and Zoom has a lot to offer. We include a small segment from our Blind Abilities podcast, “Aira Workshop on Employment, Education, and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation,” with Michael Hingsonspeaking about Aira and how the Aira service can impact the job search, save time on the job and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation. You can find the entire podcast on BlindAbilities.com We also bring you a conversation with Dacia Vanalstine, employment Specialist at State Services for the Blind. Dacia presented at the NFB Employment Committee workshops and Jeff sat down and asked her about the breakout sessions. We wanted to do this podcast to show how the conventions can be a resource for information, educational and a place that offers opportunities to meet and talk to professionals in the field. Thanks for Listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store Full Transcript: JobInsightsExtra: Employment Breakouts, Aira on Employment and Zoom Zooms Ahead and a Great Tool in the Indeed App Serena Gilbert: Cue fancy music. Jeff Thompson: They had breakout groups that you could go into, one was on resume building, one was on disclosure, another was upward mobility, another was on job searching. Michael Hingson: Aira, by any definition of the Americans With Disabilities Act is a reasonable accommodation. Serena Gilbert: You already know I'm like Aira jealous. Jeff Thompson: Zoom works pretty good, you can record on it, you can do all sorts of stuff with it, it's just always blowing my mind a little bit. Serena Gilbert: You can also live stream to Facebook from Zoom and they'll show whatever you're showing on your Zoom screen in the Facebook Live. This podcast is not brought to you by Zoom. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights is a podcast that is helping you find careers and gainful employment through innovations and opportunities. You can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network. And as part of the Job Insights podcast, we will be bringing you the Job Insights extras, consisting of interviews, demonstrations, and news surrounding employment, careers, and jobs. With hosts Serena Gilbert, and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com. Leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter, @JobInsightsBIP. Serena Gilbert: I use the Indeed website all the time with my clients when we're looking at job openings. I like it because it filters all the scams, and weird Craigslist ads and things like that, and gets right to what you're really looking for. Jeff Thompson: In this Job Insights extra, we'll be talking about Aira, and how they are enhancing the opportunities in education and employment for students and job seekers alike. We tap into a little bit about Zoom. Is it replacing Skype? It seems to have all the features to do so. Give it a try, see what you think. We touch base on an app called Indeed, which is also a website, which will help you along your job seeking journey. And we expand upon how conventions can help you in the job market, employment, and as a student, and the upcoming CSUN Convention as well. Jeff Thompson: So now, please join Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson in this Job Insights extra. We hope you enjoy. Jeff Thompson: Well how you doing Serena? Serena Gilbert: I am doing great, Jeff, how are you? Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good, just got back and I'm settling in back home here in Minnesota. Serena Gilbert: You survived. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep, a lot of employment stuff, and people showed up, and that's one thing about these conventions is not only do you get experience of traveling, different types of adventure through using mobility, getting to place to place, but you meet a lot of people, and you have a lot of opportunity to focus in on the agenda. And I focused in on the employment parts of it. Jeff Thompson: They had breakout groups that you could go into, one was on resume building, one was on disclosure, another was upward mobility, another was on job searching. There was lots of opportunities for people to get involved. And there was even one on meeting the voc rehab panel, there was a panel of voc rehab teachers and professionals in the field, DVIs, lots of good stuff. Serena Gilbert: I know that there was a lot of talk about how Aira fits into everything having to do with employment, from the job search even through to completing job tasks, is that right? Jeff Thompson: Yeah. I was in attendance at a breakout session Aira sponsored, and it was Aira and employment, and Michael Hingson was speaking, along with Patrick Lane. And they were talking about reasonable accommodations, how Aira fits that bill, the things you can do, it saves you time compared to how much it would cost for a reader for some applications, and how Aira has this program where if you are filling out a resume and getting help, and using Aira while you're researching a job, say you're going to an interview, and back again, all those minutes are covered by Aira. You don't have to pay for those minutes, so they're free. Serena Gilbert: That could be a nice way to help with ... I know sometimes there's applications that aren't the most accessible, and something weird kind of happens with it, and you kind of get stuck. So that'd be nice to be able to have the Aira agent help you figure that out, especially when it's a time sensitive employment application you're trying to get in. Jeff Thompson: Exactly, and usually you're doing that on the computer. Another thing with Aira is they have a partnership with VFO, Andrew Joyce and Jos. Serena Gilbert: So Jeff, I know there was an another one that I saw come through that they have just partnered with, do you remember who it was? Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah, more and more partnerships are being developed all the time and being announced. Just lately the 26 YMCAs in the Minneapolis area have come on board as a Aira access point, where you can use Aira services free. And some of the big news coming out is Andrew Cole from Microsoft, he's the senior data scientist that was responsible for developing seeing AI has now joined Aira as head of the artificial intelligence and research at IRA. That's great news, and Chloe is going to be worked on, and enhanced I'm sure. Yeah, where is this going to take us, we only know. But yeah, partnerships are being developed all the time, so stay tuned for more and more partnerships joining the Aira team and making Aira accessible and affordable to all. Jeff Thompson: Another area of growth is, I believe it's six days that their state agencies, vocational rehab, are now offering Aira as a service, and even colleges, their disabilities services office is now providing the service as well. Serena Gilbert: That's very nice to hear, I mean, I know it'll take a little while for the word to get out to the bureaucracy that it is. But I think it's great that that's something that people are considering to help with more accessibility for their clients. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Well, when you think about reasonable accommodation, what is it? Offering a free zone for your company, say you're a voc rehab, or a state agency for the blind and you have five or six people who could benefit from IRA, and if they do have it, why not allow those minutes to be free? I don't know, it's something interesting. I know San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired is considering making their area a free zone as well. So like you said, it's catching on, I think it's becoming more of a household name in the blindness community. It used to be kind of a idea, or people didn't know it was really out there and working, but I believe they're growing. I would have to say they've got to be up to at least 2,000 some users now, especially now that they're worldwide. And even Minnesota. Serena Gilbert: That's a whole nother country there. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. But that puts it more on the clock. So you can turn around and actually have service around the clock. Serena Gilbert: And even before they went international I feel like they had pretty accessible hours, because I believe it was like 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Pacific time, or something like that, that's pretty good. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So now it's pretty much 24/7 and from what I reckoned, when we were ... reckoned, when did I ever use that word? Serena Gilbert: Yeah, who did you hang out with from the south there for a little while? Jeff Thompson: Yeah, there was people from all over the ... every walk of life is there. The blindness doesn't pull you all together, it's just normal people and we just have a common thing of visual challenges. Serena Gilbert: And that was in a free zone too, because I know they made Orlando and ... did they call it an Aira access point or something like that, where it was free for everyone? Jeff Thompson: Exactly. And we're the guest too because if you are down there with the iPhone, you could just download the app, sign up and you could get yourself an agent and use it just like you had it. Just like you were part of it, you were an explorer now, but you're a guest. I heard a lot of people really satisfied and excited about it. Serena Gilbert: I think that's really cool. I mean, you already know I'm like Aira jealous, and I'm just waiting for that price to come down a little bit for me- Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: Before I take that plunge. But I mean, it just sounds really cool. No surprise here, Jeff, so what I most want to do with is go shopping one day. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Well, to tell you the truth, I was in an Aira session, and Michael Hingson had a few words to say, so let's segue right into that right now. Michael Hingson: Aira, if you look at Aira in the general terms of what it is, Aira is an information source. Aira is a way that you can get any visual information that you otherwise would not have access to. When I talk to a lot of people about Aira, they think about the fact that oh, well, I really have good travel skills, so I don't need it. Or I've always got sighted people with me, so I don't have that problem. Let's deal with that in terms of a job. I'm on the job, I'm using JAWS, and suddenly the computer quits working. Now where do I go to get my sighted assistance? I'm in the office, I've got to go interrupt somebody else to get them to come and look at the screen, tell me what the error screen is, or of course the infamous blue screen of death. Michael Hingson: In any case, I have to go find someone. Why should I have to do that today? Because there is a way to do that on my own, namely using Aira. I can use Aira to contact an agent, the agent can look at the screen, see an error code, and if I can't easily move my cursor to where it needs to go, it's possible that I can even enter into a tandem or two way session using Team Voyeur or some other team technology with the agent. That might be a little harder with JAWS not talking, but for a lot of different things that I do where this is an inaccessible webpage, or something that isn't talking the way it should, I can interact with an agent and get their assistance, both in terms of actually having a session, a two way communication session, or at least getting information described. Michael Hingson: If I am an employee and I want to go to lunch, let's say I'm in sales and I want to take people somewhere for lunch for sales, I can more quickly use an Aira agent to research possible restaurants if I don't really know all the options, or when I get to the restaurant, or going to the restaurant using an agent's help to do all of that. Michael Hingson: Aira gives me the opportunity to get anything that I need that I don't otherwise have access to because it's visual. It is that simple, it is that general, and I urge people to look at Aira in that way. Don't limit yourself to looking at it as a travel device. Don't look at it as something that's going to diminish your skills, don't look at it as something that is anything other than what it is, an information source. And all of us, no matter how good our cane skills are, no matter how good our dog skills are, can benefit by having access to Aira, because Aira is the way that I can get more information to better tell my dog where I want to go, or interact with traveling with my cane. Michael Hingson: So you go off and you graduate, and then you go looking for a job. The first thing you should be aware of if you happen to be an Aira explorer is that we have an Aira access network for jobs, a job access network, whatever you want to call it, that will stick it in your memory. If you are doing anything relating to getting a job at all, whether it's writing a resume, writing a cover letter, making sure everything is formatted, getting dressed to go to a job interview, ladies putting on makeup, anything at all related to getting a job, that time is automatically free to you. So for any Aira explorer doing anything relating to getting a job is free. Michael Hingson: We are saying at Aira we want to take that unemployment from 70% unemployment rate among blind people down to 7%, which would be cool. And Aira is trying to help to make that happen by making it possible for you as an explorer to have access to the tools at no additional charge to get that job. Michael Hingson: What does it mean though as far as getting a job, and where does Aira fit into that? The way Aira fits in is really pretty simple. Aira, by any definition of the Americans With Disabilities Act is a reasonable accomodation. It is something that should be usable and used by you on the job. I can take almost any job that you can imagine and find a way Aira can help. Because again, remember what Aira is, an information source. It provides you with what information you need. Jeff Thompson: And this was just a snippet taken from the full podcast that we produced over on Blind Abilities. Be sure to check it out and see how Aira enhances the opportunities in employment, education, and as a student. There's a link in the shown notes, be sure to check it out. Jeff Thompson: So with Aira, it's getting more and more, like we said, a household name, more voc rehabs are aware of it, more counselors are aware of it, so who knows what it'll be tomorrow because they are ever changing. My wife Laurie just received the Horizon glasses, which puts the lens right in the center and gives you more of a fisheye look, so the agent can actually see more and do more. They have a Samsung device that is actually a phone, but it's locked for only Aira to use. So you turn that on and there's wire that goes up to the glasses, and now you don't have any connectivity between the Bluetooth for your phone to the wifi. You have three connections that all had to be in sync, and now it's just one wire, one phone, and I believe it's up to a seven and nine hour battery life. Serena Gilbert: Oh wow, that's pretty good. And I've heard they're pretty stylish now too. Because I guess the previous ones were like glasses with no lenses. Jeff Thompson: And some of these people are getting them with the tinted glass, so ... Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: It seems all right. You know, it's Clark Kent-esque. Serena Gilbert: Oh. Jeff Thompson: Well face it, you do have a charge going to it, you do have batteries going to them, they do have a camera mounted in them, so you're not able to just have wire rims and aviator glasses so ... Laurie told me that they don't fall, they don't move once they're on, so they're real stable. That means a lot. When actually the agent wants you to look at something that you can just turn and you don't have to look like a bobble head in the back of a car. Jeff Thompson: They probably did a lot of research on this, Greg Stillson who was the product developer there, part of the team, did a great job on the Horizon. Good things on the horizon they say. Serena Gilbert: So did she get hers at the conference or did they mail them to her? Jeff Thompson: Before the convention happened they sent out notice that said if you were attending they would then bring the glasses there, and so when she was there she was on the list, and she received them. Serena Gilbert: Oh, that's awesome. Jeff Thompson: So she went up the room, put it on the charger, and later on tried them on and they seem to work really well for her, and she likes the idea that you don't have to use your phone to do it. It's kind of interesting because the wire plugs into the back end of the glasses, so the wire comes down your ... you know, it doesn't hang down your cheek, it goes- Serena Gilbert: So it's out of the way. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it goes down behind your ear, and then down your shoulder. When she was using them I didn't even really recognize the ... well, my blindness helps there, I suppose. But yeah, people were excited about them. Jeff Thompson: You know Serena, we're talking about jobs and everything like that, one thing I noticed was kind of a common denominator, I would say three out of 10 people mentioned it while I was down there, the app and I believe there's a software product for computers, Indeed. Have you ever used that? Serena Gilbert: Yep, I use the Indeed website all the time with my clients when we're looking at job openings. Jeff Thompson: And you use that on the PC? Serena Gilbert: Correct. Jeff Thompson: How do you like it? Serena Gilbert: It used to be more accessible, it used to be when you typed in the job search and everything and you picked a job you wanted to look at, it would open up in a new window. And now it still opens, but it opens up at the bottom of the page. And unless you go adventure and look for it at the bottom of the page, you never would know. So it's still accessible, it's just different now. But I like it because it filters out all of the scams, and weird Craigslist ads and things like that, and gets right to what you're really looking for. You can also set up an alert where it'll send you every day jobs that matched what you're looking for, so you can be one of the first to see them and apply for them. Jeff Thompson: Well that's great because I got a new iPad and I noticed that there's a new upgrade to the Indeed app, so I'm going to try it out on the iPad, and I'm going to try it out on my iPhone because it updated there. Serena Gilbert: No, I do use it on my phone though, it is very accessible on the phone. But I wouldn't recommend applying for a job from your phone. Jeff Thompson: Or setting up a Zoom meeting. We use Zoom on here and it's a very good app, and while I was at the convention, and in the pool I ran into a gentleman, not physically, but we were chit chatting, he was part of a ... I believe it was South Carolina Voc Rehab for the Deaf/Blind, and they had switched to Zoom and he said that because I have the pro that I can actually switch my identification number, you know, when you set up a meeting it gives you an identification number, you can actually change that if you want. You could change it to, I don't know, Volkswagen, or Lovebug, or ... you could change it to Red Pony, anything you wanted to change it to, and that would be your meeting link. Serena Gilbert: I think it has to be a series of numbers still for the meeting ID, but you can customize it to be something that people would remember easier. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, so it's really interesting, a lot of people are using it, they have a business package that they have. And he says that if you had like 15, 20 people in a meeting, he said you can break out into four groups and five people go into each group, and then you can bring them all back again. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, you can do that, I believe it's in the webinar setting on it. That one's like $40.00 a month or something, to have the webinar piece. But you can also live stream to Facebook from Zoom if you have the webinar piece added on to the account. Jeff Thompson: Oh really? Serena Gilbert: And it'll show whatever you're showing on your Zoom screen in the Facebook Live. Jeff Thompson: It's just really impressive to me what Zoom is doing when you've had other companies sitting back on their laurels, let's take Skype for example, it was Skype for many, many years. That's all it was. That's all we used it for, and some others have come and gone, but Zoom seemed to come in all ready and prepared, because it just seems like it keeps growing. Or I keep on finding out more and more of what you can do with it. So people out there are looking for a conference type of, I don't know, walkie talkie communication here that we're using, Zoom works pretty good. You can record on it, you can do all sorts of stuff with it, it's just always blowing my mind a little bit. Serena Gilbert: This podcast is not brought to you by Zoom. Jeff Thompson: But you do like it, right? Serena Gilbert: Oh I love Zoom. I hate Skype, it's a pain to use. Zoom just works. That's really just ... it's kind of like Apple, it just works. Except it really does just work. Jeff Thompson: Really, really works. Except for when we did it today, when we were trying to connect up. I sent a request- Serena Gilbert: I am convinced you sent me a different link. Jeff Thompson: Well, I set it up on the phone and I sent it out, it says, "send request", and so I sent it out, and then I came into my computer, started it up, and I saw the meeting was there so I went into the room, and she went into a room, but we were in different rooms. And for some reason, my phone must be set up for ... what did you say, private room? Serena Gilbert: Yeah, well so when you have a Zoom account you get a personal meeting ID that is the exact same meeting ID every time you send someone that link. And that's the link that you sent me, was the personal meeting ID. I was like I feel special. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. So then I sent another link from my computer and then we got all connected up, so other than that ... Serena Gilbert: Jeff's still on conference time. Jeff Thompson: It is. If people ever get a chance to check out one of the conventions, next year it's in Las Vegas, the NFB, National Federation of the Blind Convention will be in Las Vegas, and I believe it runs from July 7th to July 12th, and ACB will be in Rochester, New York. I believe that will be before that, I don't think they're going to be running overlapping, I think they'll probably be going from ... my guess will be from the 1st to the 9th or something. I know ACB is a little bit longer, but they have a lot more fun activities, lots of walks, lots of, I don't know, boat rides and all sorts of stuff outside the area, a lot of busing around to do things, but they seem to make it a really social type of atmosphere at those. Jeff Thompson: And the NFB is I would say mostly locked into a lot of business and a lot of opportunities to get together with people. Serena Gilbert: And CSUN is in February. Jeff Thompson: End of February, that's right. And this time, it's moving to Anaheim, California. Serena Gilbert: And for those who don't know what CSUN is, it stands for California State University Northridge. From what my understanding is, is it's the biggest assistive technology conference for bling and low vision, at least in the North America, maybe even the world. And very large names come into that, that's where a lot of new technology is introduced and talked about that's related to blind and low vision. It's kind of like a person like my like biggest dream, because I'm just a tech nerd. I've been trying to go there for years, but it never works out. But I think it might work out this year, hint, hint. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, I'm really excited about it because I haven't ever gone to one of those, and you hear about it, and you hear a lot about the tech stuff, that's really what it is. But there's also a lot of breakout rooms, like Microsoft might have three different sessions that they're talking about, Google would be there with sessions that you can go into and they'll talk about their accessibility and the development that they're doing with the Chromebook and what is the ... don't they have Voice Box or something like that? Serena Gilbert: Chromebox. Jeff Thompson: Chromevox. Serena Gilbert: Chrome ... yeah, it's like their built in screen reader for their Chromebooks. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I was talking to them and they wanted to give me a demonstration, but I had to move over to the Amazon because I got an interview with none other than Peter Korn. Amazon's Peter Korn. And there's one thing that I really want to make a point of at conventions, the things that are changing at conventions when you go into the exhibit halls, it used to be where's the JAWS? Where are they? Where's Hinter Joyce now it's VFO, where's Humanware, all these different places that we would flock to. Now you walk in, front and center you've got Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Aira, they've taken over the front of the convention hall. Kind of reminds me of Walmart coming into a small town, Walmart comes in and a lot of the small mom and pop shops disappear. Jeff Thompson: Well, it's not really happening like that to effect, but look how many timers are being sold by Maxi Aids when you can use your Amazon device, your Google device, your Siri, what time is it? Set timer. So a lot of the gidgets and gadgets have gone to the wayside, a lot of these devices, we're changing and it's starting to show in the convention. How many times has Microsoft ever showed up to an NFB convention? Two? Google, once? Now we Amazon, twice. Where's it going to be in five years? HIMS didn't even show up. Serena Gilbert: Oh wow. Jeff Thompson: So I think we're in for a change, more of the mainstream companies are starting to take over the products, making things accessible and that's what we want. So seeing these big companies come in and things might be more mainstream. They send in their people who are involved with the accessibility at the company, Peter Korn, he was an accessibility director, all the way back to Kindle his department went. So it was really neat to see them all there in full force, all about accessibility. Serena Gilbert: That's great. Sounds like you had fun. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Oh yeah. And I even went to convention. No, it was a lot of fun. Serena Gilbert: I even attended some breakout sessions. Jeff Thompson: It's really neat to meet people because that's what it is about networking, you know. You really get an opportunity to meet some interesting people with very like mindedness, people who have overcome the struggles and the challenges ahead of you with blindness as you go through your journey, so a lot of success stories there, and I captured a few of them that you'll be listening to, some job extras. Hey, if we were in the Tupperware, we'd be a Tupperware party, right? Serena Gilbert: Yes. Jeff Thompson: But it's always nice to get back home, you know, after you go to the convention, it's nice to get back home. You get too much of the different foods, different people, different stuff, and all the congestion, it's 2500 canes and dogs, elevators and all that. It's almost like you need more noise, heck, let's bring it to Vegas, that'll be a lot better. And then you have gambling machines going ding, ding, ding. To me it almost gets to a point of aggravation in Vegas. So I don't know, I imagine it'll be quite a trip. Serena Gilbert: Oh gosh, that could be stimulation overload, like, man ... Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah, when you're actually just trying to figure out where you're going and your cane- Serena Gilbert: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: Tapping, how you use all the sounds to identify things and all you need is two people to win the jackpot and you get lost, like it's crazy. Serena Gilbert: Yeah. And that casino ... well, none of the casinos are really very well lit. For low vision. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it's really interesting to meet all sorts of different people. Well it's all over for this year, now we get to wait for the next one, and like you said, it's CSUN isn't it? CSUN 2019. Serena Gilbert: If I have my luck at a yes. Jeff Thompson: There you go. The thing about CSUN, I would in advance try and find a place there because the hotels are pretty expensive, and Anaheim I don't think is any cheaper. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jeff Thompson: Usually when I go to a convention, on January 1st is when I do the stuff for the summer ones, so when you're talking CSUN, when you find out exactly which hotel it is, I would start looking probably around Thanksgiving time, start looking for those hotel rooms, because they fill up fast and then they go to an overflow, and overflow is not as much fun. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, that's not where the party's at. Jeff Thompson: But yeah, CSUN, Anaheim, I think I'll be there. You? Serena Gilbert: I don't know Jeff, will I? Jeff Thompson: We'll have to see. Serena Gilbert: To be continued. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. So stay tuned folks for more podcasts from Job Insights, my name's Jeff Thompson and you can find me at KnownAsJeff on Twitter. Serena Gilbert: And I'm Serena Gilbert, you can find me at BlindyBlog, that's @ B-L-I-N-D-Y, B-L-O-G. Cue fancy music. Jeff Thompson: I'm going to leave that. Thank you for listening to this Job Insights extra. And be sure to check out all the Job Insights podcasts on BlindAbilities.com. Big thank you to Cheechau for your beautiful music. And that's Lcheechau on Twitter. Jeff Thompson: Once again, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed. And until next time, bye bye. [Music] [Transition noise] - When we share, What we see, Through each other's eyes... [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence] ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store: 'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at: info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.

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Aira Workshop on Employment, Education, and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation. Seeing AI Developer Joins the AI Team at Aira! (Transcript Provided)

Blind Abilities

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2018 41:37

Aira Workshop on Employment, Education, and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation. Seeing AI Developer Joins the AI Team at Aira! Full Transcript Below Blind Abilities continues its coverage of the NFB 2018 National Convention from Orlando Florida with this presentation of the Aira workshop on the subject of education, students and employment. Aira team members, Michael Hingson and Patrick Lane present a detailed discussion of how the Aira service can be used by students, both in school and transitioning into the workplace, by Explorers seeking employment, and while actually on the job as a reasonable accommodation. Get an in-depth peek at how Aira Agents are trained and how they find their passion for describing tasks and experiences for Aira Explorers. Hear a live demonstration of a real call to an Aira Agent using the new Horizon glasses and get updates on what has been going on with Aira since the convention ended in July. This NFB 2018 blind Abilities podcast is brought to you by Aira. You can check them out and subscribe to the Aira service on the web, at: www.Aira.IO special thanks to Patrick Lane for his awesome original guitar music. Thanks for Listening! You can follow Blind Abilities on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Full Transcript: Pete Lane: Hi folks, this is Pete Lane welcome back to Blind Abilities. As you know Blind Abilities was in Orlando at the NFB 2018 National Convention. Our own Jeff Thompson attended an Aira workshop on the topic of education, students, and employment. In this workshop, we hear about how Aira can fit the needs of students as they attend college and transition into the workforce. We hear about how Aira can be free for those explorers who are looking for jobs, and we hear about how the Aira service can be a reasonable accommodation and can perform so many tasks for workers on the job. Aira staff members Michael Hingson and Patrick Lane present this workshop courtesy of Aira. Before we join Michael and Patrick just a quick announcement. We have a new addition to the Aira team, Anirudh Koul, founder of Seeing AI and former senior data scientist with Microsoft has joined the Aira team as the head of artificial intelligence and research. We welcome him to the Aira staff. Without further adieu let's join Michael Hingson and Patrick Lane from the Aira workshop on education, students, and employment from the NFB 2018 National Convention in Orlando, Fl. Michael Hingson: I'd like to welcome you all to our seminar today. This is the first of three that Aira will be conducting. This particular one is gonna be on education, employment, students, people in the workplace, employers and employees and our intent is to set the stage for what Aira offers and can bring to you in terms of how it can benefit you in any of those categories. So our intent is to really give you a good idea of what Aira is, what it isn't and how you can use it. I am Mike Hingson, I am the director of Aira explorer special projects and we have a live agent on the stage, why don't you introduce yourself. Patrick Lane: Hey everybody my names Patrick Lane, I am currently an agent analyst here with Aira. I've been an agent with Aira for coming up on two years now. So, I've gotten to see Aira used in all of the specific cases that Mike just mentioned many, many different times in different ways. Michael Hingson: One of my favorite Aira stories is that in Patrick's early days, I happened to call him about 7:00 in the morning California time because I needed to put a laundry cart together that we had gotten in the email. And as the Chinese are learning from Ikea, the instructions were all pictorial there were no text pieces to the instructions at all. So I called, got Patrick and we put it together in a half hour. And that's as good as it gets because that really is what Aira is about. Michael Hingson: Aira if you look at Aira in the general terms of what it is, Aira is an information source. Aira is a way that you can get any visual information that you otherwise would not have access to. When I talk to a lot of people about Aira, they think about the fact that oh well I really have good travel skills so I don't need it or I've always got sighted people with me so I don't have that problem. Let's deal with that in terms of a job. I'm on the job, I'm using JAWS and suddenly the computer quits working. Now, where do I go to get my sighted assistance? I'm in the office, I've got to go interrupt somebody else to get them to come and look at the screen, tell me what the error screen is or of course the infamous blue screen of death. In any case, I have to go find someone. Michael Hingson: Why should I have to do that today? Because there is a way to do that on my own, namely using Aira. I can use Aira to contact an agent, the agent can look at the screen, see an error code and if I can't easily move my cursor to where it needs to go, it's possible that I can even enter into a tandem or two-way session using TeamViewer or some other technology with the agent. That might be a little harder with JAWS not talking but for a lot of different things that I do where there is an inaccessible webpage or something that isn't talking the way it should, I can interact with an agent and get their assistance both in terms of actually having a session, a two-way communication session or at least getting information described. Michael Hingson: If I am an employee and I want to go to lunch, lets say I am in sales and I want to take people somewhere for lunch for sales, I can more quickly use an Aira agent to research possible restaurants if I don't really know all the options or when I get to the restaurant or going to the restaurant using an agents help to do all of that. Aira gives me the opportunity to get anything that I need that I don't otherwise have access to because it's visual. It is that simple, it is that general and I urge people to look at Aira in that way. Michael Hingson: Don't limit yourself to looking at it as a travel device, don't look at it as something that's gonna diminish your skills, don't look at it as something that is anything other than what it is, an information source. And all of us no matter how good our cane skills are, no matter how good our dog skills are, can benefit by having access to Aira because Aira is the way that I can get more information to better tell my dog where I want to go or interact with traveling with my cane. Michael Hingson: Let's talk about students and Aira. As a student, Aira offers an incredible amount of opportunities for you to be able to more independently do things than you otherwise would be able to. The most common thing that we as blind people have to do as students is to read material that otherwise is inaccessible to us. If the average reader is paid, lets say $15 an hour, we an unlimited plan for Aira that's $330 that exists today. Things are gonna change but let's just use what we have today. $330 is equivalent to 22 hours of reading time at $15 an hour. Michael Hingson: I'm submitting that Aira is cheaper than hiring readers. Any office for students with disabilities will save a heck of a lot of money if they independently allow students to use Aira and they pay for the Aira service. Aira will allow me to read when I want to read, where I want to read, and essentially how I want to read. There are incredible examples of different ways that students have used Aira in libraries, have used Aira in the classroom to access the material that a professor is writing on a board or is displaying on a power point presentation. An Aira agent can be describing that to a student who uses Aira plugged into earphones so that they can hear what's going on while the instructor is doing what they do. Never in any way interfering with the class and more important not demanding any change in the methodology that the professor uses to do what they have to do. So, I don't need the professor to do something different for me when I'm using Aira. It frees me up to perhaps better take notes. It opens up an incredible world. Michael Hingson: Of course, I can use Aira to travel around a campus, learn where things are and go off campus and do all the things that I might otherwise do that any other student would do. So, Aira gives you that flexibility that we have never had as students and Aira makes it available in a way that is affordable by any definition to any department of rehabilitation or any office for students with disabilities on a college campus. Both of whom ought to be providing Aira in one way or another because it will make me a better student in theory, if I study and it will also then make me a more employable person. Because as I graduate from school, I'm gonna be going out and I'm gonna be looking for a job. Michael Hingson: While I'm at school, I talked about the fact that we do have departments of rehabilitation starting to look at Aira and some who have signed Aira up and are paying for those services. Some offices for students with disabilities are doing it. But Aira also has another program and this is the second year in a row that it has existed, it's called back to school. Aira will be sponsoring some 500 students for a full year of Aira use. You can apply by going to aira.io/backtoschool, where you can sign up for Aira and once chosen then you'll get Aira with a 400 minute a month plan, I believe is the plan that we're using. Julenna is that right? Are you here? Julenna: Yes, that's correct. Michael Hingson: By the way, Julenna in the back right is the person who's in charge of back to school so, if you're a student and you want Aira, I would be really nice to Julenna just say it. But Aira with back to school means that you will have without any expense from the college or the department of rehabilitation access to Aira. You can apply for that today. And I urge any students in the room to do that. Michael Hingson: Aira uses smart glasses, glasses that contain a camera that transmits images directly to an agent. Agents are hired by Aira, they are paid by Aira. They're hired because they have demonstrated an aptitude to be able to describe and then after they are hired, they go through a significant training period. And once they are trained they go out and start acting as agents in describing things for people who happen to be blind. Aira does not tell you what to do. Aira will not, for example, tell you cross the street. Aira agents may tell you they don't see cars coming if you ask. Aira agents may tell you that the light has turned green, Aira agents will describe an intersection so that you can cross it with full knowledge of what the intersection looks like but Aira's not gonna tell you to cross the street, that's your job because you have the cane or dog skills that you need in order to make the right decisions and cross the street. Aira will give you the information that you need. Likewise, on the job, Aira will do the same thing. Patrick Lane: The agents are not here to teach, and we're not here to tell you a situation is safe. We're here to provide you instant, equal access to information. So, we'll provide you all the information that you need to be more comfortable and know more about your surroundings to paint that rich picture of your environment so you are aware of everything that's around you. The agents are able to have a conversation with you, they can tailor the amount of information and deliver it in a way that you prefer. So we make things as easy to understand as possible. We'll deliver information about as Mike was mentioning intersections, we'll tell you the name of the intersection, the size, and shape of the intersection, whether or not there's traffic signals, stop signs, pedestrian signals, crosswalks present. We give you all the information that you need but we're never here to replace your o & m stills, we're never here to replace your cane or your dog and we're never here to tell you that you are safe or unsafe. Patrick Lane: We just provide you all the information that you need, even if it's simply completing a task that you've completed a million times in the past. We might be able to provide a different sense of independence while doing that task or a different type of enjoyment. Not only can it be used for navigation but we are here to provide all of the information that you need about pretty much any task that you might have in mind. We can help you with online tasks, we can help you planning trips, making online purchases, helping with different types of inaccessible websites. For instance, if you're a student and you do online courses and Blackboard's not cooperating, we read you about the information that you need for your schoolwork for any upcoming assignments, any kind of printouts that are passed out through classes. Patrick Lane: So, just consider us as basically an OnStar for those are blind or low vision. We're not here just to point a camera at something and tell you what you're describing. We are a full service. Our agents are very highly trained and they're very dedicated and extremely patient. We are amazing problem solvers, we're great at troubleshooting. The agents will find the information that you need at all costs. It's situations like that. I've looked up YouTube videos and gone through the entire process. Basically what an agent can do is up to you. Our explorers are called explorers because they are creative in the way that they use our service. They go out there and they test our service to the limits and show us what we're capable of and let us know where we make changes and at this point from my first day till now, it's completely different. Our company is growing exponentially, our technology is amazingly consistent and our agents are there to work as a team with you to complete any task it is that you want to do. Be creative whatever you think of that's what Aira is here for. Michael Hingson: So you go off, and you graduate and then you go looking for a job. The first thing you should be aware of if you happen to be an Aira explorer is that we have an Aira access network for jobs. A job access network. Whatever you want to call it to stick it in your memory. If you are doing anything relating to getting a job at all, whether it's writing a resume, writing a cover letter, making sure everything is formatted, getting dressed to go to a job interview, ladies putting on makeup, anything at all related to getting a job, that time is automatically free to you. Michael Hingson: So for any Aira explorer doing anything relating to getting a job is free. We are saying at Aira, we want to take that unemployment rate from 70% unemployment rate among blind people down to 7%, which would be cool. And Aira is trying to help to make that happen by making it possible for you as an explorer to have access to the tools at no additional charge to get that job. What does it mean though as far as getting a job and where does Aira fit into that? Michael Hingson: The way Aira fits in is really pretty simple. Aira by any definition of the Americans with Disabilities Act is a reasonable accommodation. It is something that should be usable and used by you on the job. I can take almost any job that you can imagine and find a way Aira can help. Because again remember what Aira is, an information source. It provides you with what information you need. How many here in the room have a job? Patrick Lane: A few hands back there. [crosstalk ] Michael Hingson: Raising your hands' guys isn't gonna work, I'm not using an Aira agent right now. Patrick Lane: How many are looking for- Michael Hingson: How many are looking for a job? Patrick Lane: Handful. Michael Hingson: So, for the fun of you for some of you who are looking for a job, tell me some tasks that you might need to perform on the job? Speaker 9: Doing my resume. Michael Hingson: Let's say you have a job what are some of the tasks that you might need to perform? We'll come back to the resume and that as well. But you're on the job. What are some tasks that you might need to perform on the job? Speaker 4: [inaudible] Michael Hingson: Typing and what was the other one? Speaker 4: Filing. Michael Hingson: Filing. What else? Speaker 5:[inaudible] Michael Hingson: Okay. Speaker 6: A handwritten note. Michael Hingson: Handwritten notes. Speaker 7: Finding information. Michael Hingson: I'm sorry. Speaker 7: Finding information. Michael Hingson: Someone up here said something. Speaker 8: I was saying looking at presentations. Michael Hingson: Looking at presentations. Patrick Lane: Powerpoint slides, I've described a handful of those in my day. Michael Hingson: Let me suggest a couple others. Making copies on a copier, anybody try to do that lately? Copiers are touchscreen. Patrick Lane: Oh yeah. Michael Hingson: The one that I love to pick on at Aira, going and getting something from the coffee machine because it's also touchscreen. However, every single thing that you guys have said are all things that you could use Aira to do. You don't have to ask someone else. So let's talk about the coffee machine. I love hot chocolate so I go up to the machine, I call an Aira agent and I do this at Aira. And it's absolutely a great example, I wouldn't have it any other way. I call the agent and I say, need help getting hot chocolate. Now, I'm sure that we could probably mark the machine in some way but the problem is finding the markings you're gonna touch the touchscreen so it doesn't work very well. But, the Aira agent can look at the screen and tell me, move your finger a half an inch to the left, you're right over the button, push it or whatever and I'll find the start button or actually you have a choice of making it with milk or water and I like it with milk. Michael Hingson: So, we need to find the milk button. Move your finger down to the bottom of the screen, over to your right a half an inch, you're over it, push and it's a little longer than just doing it with buttons but it's accessible because Aira agents can help do it. And I don't need to wait until someone else might be available, I don't need to wait until I'm dying of thirst, I can just have an Aira agent do it and give me the information so I can get exactly what I want. And in fact, learn more about that coffee machine than I ever would've learned any other way. Something that sighted people take for granted, the tens of thousands of different ways you can, permutations that you can get out of that coffee machine. Michael Hingson: But, with an Aira agent, I can learn those same things and I wouldn't know that any other way. Copy machines the same way. Most of what you do on copiers these days are touch screen but I can become as good a copy expert as anyone else if I have access to it. And I do because I can use Aira. Filing, obviously, Aira agents being able to read information so that I can put things in the right folder and even creating the tabs to go in folders or whatever. All of those things are commonplace everyday tasks that you should be able to do as well as anyone else. But, you can't if the equipment isn't accessible unless you use Aira. It's all about access to information. Michael Hingson: Somebody mentioned resumes and I want to talk about that a little bit more. There are countless examples and Patrick help out, people want their resume to look good. The Aira agent can help, so let's take a typical example. You're writing a resume, you've got all the facts and you can put them down, now you want to make it look good. So you can call an Aira agent who can describe and help you or what I would do being lazy and being industrious and trying to get it done as efficiently as possible. I would use one of the programs that I mentioned earlier. Michael Hingson: TeamViewer for example which is a way that you can have an agent connect directly to your computer and you can work with the agent and let the agent do the formatting. Because they see what your screen shows. And so the agent can actually format the resume for you or with you because you're still gonna have to tell them what you want it to look like but the agent will be able to format that resume and by the time you're done, you'll have a resume that you would be proud to provide to any employer for them to look at. Patrick Lane: With the TeamViewer, it's not only us being able to see your computer screen but we also have remote control of that computer screen. The agents can do a lot of stuff with TeamViewer. Let's just say you've never actually seen a resume, you don't know what the actual format looks like, how it's set up, its never been described. Agents can input all the information that you've given them into a pre-made template for a resume. Can work on all the different fonts and colors and apply that to a specific type of job that you might be searching for. So really make that resume look unique and noticeable so it stands out when it is viewed by the employer. They can make sure that all of the spelling and the grammar and the punctuation are correct because nobody wants to submit a resume with spelling errors or bad grammar, anything like that. So the agents can apply all that information. They can update old resumes and then reformat them to show the changes. Even your LinkedIn account we can go in there and update that with prior jobs statuses and all of that information. Patrick Lane: So, with the TeamViewer being able to have that remote access to your computer screen it means that you don't have to potentially hold a phone there or lean in really close with the glasses, it makes the whole type of experience more enjoyable for a possible tedious task. So, I have personally assisted in setting up all of what I just mentioned. I've helped somebody build their resume from the ground up and they have successfully used that. I've helped update LinkedIn profiles to reflect what's written on a resume. I've helped people apply for jobs and send that resume automatically though CareerBuilder or Monster, whatever it might be. So, we have assisted hopefully a large amount of people in finding that employment that I know that they're looking for. Not only will you hopefully, potentially find that employment but while using the service for that reason, you're not gonna use any of those really valuable Aira minutes. So, when seeking out a job the agents mark the call as such so you're not gonna use any of your Aira minutes while performing that specific task. Michael Hingson: So if it takes you five hours to build a resume or 10 hours to build a resume that's not a problem. If you need help creating other documentation for job search it's not a problem. It's all part of the job access that Aira has made available for any Aira explorer to use. So that's available to you today. Michael Hingson: Aira just announced a partnership with VFO where if you're doing anything using JAWS or any other equipment manufactured by VFO and you run into any access issues, or you run into any problems with using Aira and VFO products, those minutes that you spend where VFO can't do it without you bringing an agent or someone else in to assist are all free. So, I for example, when I had an issue trying to deal with some Slack messages last week, I contacted an Aira agent, we established a communication sessions through TeamViewer, and we accomplished what I needed to do with Slack. But because I couldn't easily do it with JAWS that meant it was in part a JAWS issue, so those minutes happen to be as they ended up, free because it's part of the VFO access program available from Aira. Now the operative part that we've talked about with all this is that you have to be an Aira explorer. Michael Hingson: On the job you've got a lot of ways to do it in theory, and I realize that this is only in theory because different places operate in different ways and so on. But, typically speaking if you want to get a job even if it costs you money upfront to be an Aira explorer to subscribe to the service, to start that process, Aira can better help you in dealing with getting that job not only from the job access process that we talked about earlier but when you go into an employer's office and are going through an interview, and they ask you, how are you gonna do one thing or another? You can say, I'll show you. Now, technically, I suppose, one could say, why are you asking me how to do things when you don't ask sighted people how to do things? Michael Hingson: And I suppose if you wanted to be a stickler under the law say, that's true. But for me, I want the job and if I have the opportunity to educate an employer and help them understand that I'm gonna be more employable because I'm gonna be using Aira then I will educate the employer any day of the week. And more important I would then say, Aira is a service that costs money and as you provide various different kinds of technologies and methodologies and devices for all of your employees to do their job, this is one that I need to do my job. And under the law that is appropriate to do. More important than that, it's encouraged and most people at least have some sort of a clue that's a valuable thing to do. Aira is a reasonable accommodation. Michael Hingson: And, it's not very expensive compared to lots of other things that an employer might provide an employee and it makes you much more efficient. And if I were really gonna make the case I would say, hey employer you know the unemployment rate among employable blind people is anywhere between 65 and 70%. I gotta tell you right now, it is really hard for me to get a job because people don't think I can do the job although I can. People don't look at what I can do, they think well you're blind cause you can't and so as a result, you can't. Although I've just shown you how Aira helps me do the job better. If you hire me I guarantee you I'm sticking it out here because it is so hard to get a job. If you're gonna have faith in me, I'm gonna have faith in you. The fact is we will be more loyal on the job if we're given the opportunity and Aira can help make that case and sell it for you. And I think that's an important aspect of dealing with looking for a job. Michael Hingson: Is it HIPAA certified? Today, it is not. HIPAA does have standards although we are compliant with the California certification and security standards which actually is even worse than HIPAA but it's a very expensive process to get HIPAA certified. There is a lady in Canada who works at a community college and she deals with a lot of the medical cases and other privacy issues that go around student paperwork on the campus. What they did is they included in the paperwork that you signed to go to that college a statement that basically says that, some of your material may be read by a person who happens to be blind and they will be using reader services including remote reading services, Aira, to read your material. By signing this paper you consent for that to be able to be done. Michael Hingson: Now as soon as you make that consent statement and as soon as they sign it then HIPPA is not even relevant anymore for that person. And they're doing that as a blanket thing for every student that goes to the college. So, the issue is that we know that there are a lot of different kinds of processes, HIPAA is a good one and we are working toward that process. But there are also a lot of situations where our agents are extremely well trusted. There is a lawyer that I know in the United States who works for an organization and there is constant need to read and prepare documents for trial. And there is a lot of stuff in going through and dealing with things for trial, that's pretty confidential stuff. Michael Hingson: It's confidential from the law firms standpoint because they don't want the other side to necessarily know things until they're ready to give it to them. But it's also true the documents that are being used in discovery and acquired in discovery can be very confidential. Agents are really trusted because we know what happens in an Aira connection stays in an Aira connection. It doesn't go further. Many of us use Aira to look at our personal financial documents because it makes it available. Michael Hingson: My wife is sighted but if I don't have to use her to look at stuff I won't because she has her own things to do. And as willing as she is to describe things, to give me data and to help me accomplish tasks like that. Two things, no offense to my wife, but Aira describes better because they do it all the time and they're use to it. By the way, she'll acknowledge that because she's heard some of the agents. But two, I don't have to take her away from other things which gets back to what we said about on the job work right. So, the fact is that it makes for a much better situation all the way around. And Aira can be only positive in a job environment, much less in what we've talked about with students and so on. So, there is a, I think that the job didn't actually happen but for other reasons. Michael Hingson: There's a person who almost two years ago went to a career fair in Los Angeles and one of the companies there was See's Candy and they were hiring people to process orders so she turned in her resume and they said we'd love to hire you but problem is not all of our orders are electronic some come in paper. And she well let me show you and pulled out Aira. And that eliminated the problem. They said, gee solved that for us, great. Sure working in a store think of all the various things that you need to do whether it be, finding material on a shelf, reading a cash register that doesn't talk or excuse me point of sale device that doesn't talk. Whether it be doing other kinds of things. Whether it's filing or whatever. Blind vendors can use Aira and can be more efficient because they can stock their own shelves. They can read all the information that's not accessible to them. Again, I get back to what I said, you're only limited by your own imagination with what you can do with Aira. Michael Hingson: Aira doesn't use volunteers and our general response time is extremely quick, the time to get an answer is usually 10 seconds. Are you a user of Be My Eyes? Speaker 10: Yes, I'm an uses of Be My Eyes. Michael Hingson: So, Be My Eyes is a way that you can call someone and get simple tasks done. The problem is you don't know who you're gonna get in terms of their abilities. You don't know how long it's gonna take you and you can't do something like walk through an airport like you can with Aira. All of those things you can do with Aira. Speaker 11: I read somewhere that Aira can be activated via Siri. Michael Hingson: You can. You can say, make an Aira call or call Aira. You can use Siri to do it. Actually, I think you've got to call Ara because Siri don't talk good. Patrick Lane: There's two different voice commands depending on what device you're gonna be using. You can say Ara video call or Ara audio call and depending on which one you use it will call from either your glasses or your phone and connect to an agent very quickly as Mike said, 10 seconds or less depending on whether or not we have the largest conference going on in the country. Michael Hingson: But you do need to say Ara cause that's what Siri knows. Siri's gotta learn some language skills. What you will get is someone who is highly trained. You will get someone who knows how to describe, we've actually hired a number of new agents over the past months so, you're gonna get some newbies. I worked with one agent yesterday, I was blown away when I learned that at the end of the call, I was one of the first calls and this was her first day on the job. She did great. Aira's available for Android or for iPhones. Anybody with a smartphone can use it. That's the answer that we've been using. That changes too. Michael Hingson: Aira has developed its own glasses, it's the next generation of what Aira will become and that system consists of glasses with a high-resolution camera with a very wide field of view compared to the way it use to be. They actually connect directly to what we call an Aira controller or Aira controller phone. It's an Android phone locked only to Aira stuff. It also because of that it powers the glasses and there's a lot more power available. But, by using that system you don't even need your smartphone so you'll use the Aira system without even using the smartphone. Without even using your smartphone so that Aira will make it possible for you to keep your phone free for making your own phone calls while you're working with an agent. Michael Hingson: Or for example, if you're paging or needing to page or call Lyft or Uber you can ask an Aira agent to do that if you're an Aira explorer. And you link your Lyft and Uber accounts to Aira but along the way, there's a very good likelihood that the Lyft driver or Uber driver will call you and say, how am I gonna know you or where exactly are you? In the past, that's been a problem because you're using your smartphone and you have to disconnect from the Aira agent and then get back on. Now you don't because you're using the Aira controller as the way that you're communicating with Aira so your smartphone is still available. That is the horizon system. Michael Hingson: I am now connecting my Aira- Automated Voice: Unlocked. Michael Hingson: Horizon glasses. Automated Voice: Glass connected. Initializing Aira. Michael Hingson: Can everyone hear that? Automated Voice: Hello Mikel Hingson. Patrick Lane: Mikel Hingson. Automated Voice: Aira ready for service. Michael Hingson: Yeah, it says Mikel. Could everyone hear that? Patrick Lane: Yep. Michael Hingson: So I'm using the horizon glasses. Automated Voice: Battery 73% that's attached connected to Arave four G LT. Hello Mikel Hingson, Aira ready for service. Michael Hingson: I want feedback to support we want Mikel to be pronounced correctly. All right, here listen to this. Automated Voice: Calling Aira agent. Connecting to agent, connecting to agent. Michael Hingson: See how long it takes. Automated Voice: Connecting to agent, connecting to agent Peter. Michael Hingson: Bingo. Peter: Thank you for calling Aira, this is Peter how may I help you? Michael Hingson: Hey Peter, how's every little thing? Peter: Going well, how are you? Michael Hingson: Doing well. So we are in a room and might you be able to tell us anything about where we are in terms of where this room is or anything like that? Peter: I do see you're at Rosen Shingle Creek so I'm assuming your at the NFB Conference. Michael Hingson: And you see that's part of what Peter and all agents get is not only what they can see but they get GPS information and other data that can add value to them in terms of your Aira experience. And you are right we are at the NFB Convention, we are at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel and we are in Pensacola, H3 if you wanted to pull that up so you can really see where we are. Can you maybe describe a little bit of the room for us? Peter: Sure. So you're in a relatively large room with really high ceilings, I want to say they're about 30 feet high at least. The room you're in, so it looks like you're seated on the stage, there are several rows across from you, they're all facing forward and there is a walkway down the center aisle between those rows as well. Michael Hingson: Peter, really serious question. Does anybody look like they're asleep? Those people in the back row, you know what I'm saying, Peter? Peter: I see people waving. Michael Hingson: I just want to make sure because those people in the back rows they usually hide back there because they think they can fall asleep but with Aira they can't do that. One of my favorite stories is about a father who wanted to make sure his daughter was doing her homework, he called an Aira agent and walked in, and just said, how are things, what are you doing? She said, I'm doing my homework and the agent said, no she's playing computer games on her phone. Anyway, does anyone want to ask, while we've got Peter and Patrick, so Patrick's over here Peter? Patrick Lane: Hey Peter. Peter: Hey Patrick. Patrick Lane: Good to see you again. Michael Hingson: So, any questions for either of these gentlemen? Patrick Lane: So, the dashboard that Peter's using, what information does he have access to for him too?- Michael Hingson: So Peter why don't you tell us about your dashboard. Peter: So on my dashboard, I have information like emergency contact info first of all in their profile, and then I do have access to seeing what kind of assisted devices anyone might be using such as a white cane or guide dog. Different preferences they have, if they prefer left and right or clock face for orientation. Just things so we can tailor the experience to each specific explorer since everyone has their own preferences. We also have access to like Michael said earlier the GPS location on the map and I'll be able to utilize public transit, I am, if the explorer connects the Aira app to their Lyft of Uber accounts, we're also able to request those rides for our explorers and then we'll be able to take a look at the driver's info, the name, the car the driver has and spot where they are on the map. And let the explorer know when the driver has arrived and help them spot the car. Michael Hingson: And more important with the NFB ride share test program, for example, if the car comes and it sees that you are blind and have a guide dog, and just decides to drive away, they'll get nailed. Peter: We'll watch them like a hawk. Michael Hingson: They'll get in trouble. Other questions for Peter? Peter, can you read medication bottles? Peter: Yes. Before I became an Aira agent I actually don't think I've ever met or interacted with anyone blind or low vision. So, initial training they start with just explaining what it's like for people who are blind or low vision, getting the what orientation mobility is and what kind of information is important to an explorer versus what I think is important information to me as a sighted person because those things are very different. We learn how to give what's necessary and then also when an explorer wants more detail, we learn what kind of detail to give them and then we start exploring the dashboard that we have with all those things I explained to you and then we do some training. Peter: And the explorers who also [inaudible] who helps us train and we just do exercises like navigating, intersections with different tools. So, Michael has a guide dog and we'll learn how someone navigates with a guide dog and then we'll have another explorer teach us how someone navigates with a white cane and that helps us just get use to all the different things because it's one describing all the visual information that we want to give to the explorer but there's also the technical side of using the dashboard and all the other ways we communicate with other agents and the rest of the Aira team. Michael Hingson: The question was what can Aira do to help people do mobile deposit, bank deposits and so on. Peter: I actually, coincidentally done that a couple times in the past couple weeks. We can help you align your phones camera over the check and make sure that it's face up, whichever side the app wants you to do and for certain bank apps, some of them aren't as accessible as others so it will help get you aligned to where the button is to take a picture of the check and send it off. Michael Hingson: So you've had an agent that wasn't able to make that happen. When you encounter a situation where an agent isn't successful it would be extremely helpful for you to provide that feedback because well Patrick why don't you deal with that. Patrick Lane: We love when the explorers use the feedback form at the end for both good and bad calls. That's why we have both good and poor marked on there. When you leave us feedback about why a call was poor, we as analysts can go provide that extra training to make that all of our standards are being met by the agents and that your standards are being met by the agents as well. Michael Hingson: So, if your having a problem getting an agent to be able to help you with a mobile deposit then it's important that we hear about that so that we can go back and review it and talk to the agent and find out what the problem is. And see what their difficulty is. So, if you took 60 minutes that's a real problem, and you should get that time credited back. But you have to let Aira know to do that. There are any number of factors, the camera could be one, I mean, it could be that on a particular day the cell service wasn't as good as it ought to be. Michael Hingson: Aira is absolutely pushing the envelope in terms of the technology with video streaming and so on and any number of factors can make it less than stellar and its not Airas fault or anyone's fault it's just the way it is. We'll talk about in a moment the new horizon glasses which will make a lot of that better. But those aren't the kinds of things that we do end up dealing with and so Aira can help make it better by understanding when you encounter problems. Those are some of the best things is to do is to be able to really talk about the problems that you're having so please give the feedback okay. Michael Hingson: I want to thank you all for coming. I would appreciate it if you would tell friends and colleagues. We've got more sessions coming up later this week. We will be at the booth. If you sign up for Aira by the way, you can then participate in refer a friend. If you refer someone to Aira, and they sign up, then they will get a free month, and you will get a free amount of credit equal to whatever plan they sign up for. So, get your friends to sign up. Scott White here at our national center has been very good at that, and I think mostly paid for a year of Aira because he got his friends to sign up. Pete Lane: I thought I'd pop in here and bring you up to date on a couple of recent developments with the Aira service. Aira is now available twenty-four seven. This means that explorers can dial up an agent from their Aira app anytime night or day. This not only allows U.S. users to dial Aira during the wee hours of the morning but it also allows folks in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand to get an agent at times during the day when the need was very great in the past. Such as in the afternoon, during rush hour or during the prime time evening hours. Pete Lane: Another brand new feature is the Aira messages feature. Messages allows Aira explorers and agents to communicate via text. There's a text box that pops up right on the Aira app and you can type or dictate your message directly to the agent. This is really useful if you're going into a meeting or library or a church for example where you want to be very quiet. You can text your communication to the agent telling them what you want, what tasks you want performed and things like that without having to talk and interrupt what's going on around you. Pete Lane: There are also about a half a dozen pre-set messages for more common situations that you can just tap on and send. Those pre-sets can be edited or completely changed depending on your needs. Another new feature is called Aira live. Aira live allows an explorer to broadcast the audio from their contact with an agent either to a small group of private listeners or to a larger group through a public live event. This allows others who download the app and either create a guest account or who are already Aira explorers to tap into the app, go to the live tab and see what live events are currently in session. Pete Lane: And finally we have a new edition to the Aira team, Anirudh Koul, founder of Seeing AI and former senior data scientist with Microsoft has joined the Aira team as the head of artificial intelligence and research. Big things are in store for Anirudh and we welcome him to the Aira staff. Thanks so much for listening to Blind Abilities. For more podcasts with the blindness perspective you can find us on the web at www.blindabilities.com we're on Facebook and on Twitter or download our free app from the app store or the Google Play store. That's two words, Blind Abilities. Once again this podcast is brought to you by Aira. Special thanks to Patrick Lane for his wonderful guitar music. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.

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Episode 42: FlickType Developers, Aira and Way Around

Double Tap Canada

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2018 53:59

apple tech developers accessibility wayaround aira steven scott freedom scientific vfo flicktype double tap canada

236: VFO and Jaws, Alexa Routines, News

RNIB Tech Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2018 57:41

This week Tim and Shaun take the reigns to discuss the week's news in tech. There aqre interviews with Eric Damary of VFO and Ruth Gallagher from Sight and Sound to find out about the latest improvements in Jaws. Also Shaun finds out Alexa's routines feature. #RNIBConnect #TechTalk

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#iACast Special – What's New With Aira?

The iACast Network

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2018 8:28

In this #iACast special, Aleeha interviews Greg from Aira at the 2018 National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando. Topics include: the availability of the first 200 pairs of Horizon glasses, the release of Aira messages, Aira's partnership with VFO, Aira Live, the partnership with Intuit (makers of QuickBooks software), and Aira's new feedback websites.

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#iACast Special – What's New With Aira?

iACast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2018 8:28

blind horizon intuit what's new quickbooks national federation aira vfo iacast

Programming Repeaters ... Revisited.

Ham Radio Workbench Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2018 4:33

Foundations of Amateur Radio It seems that when you categorically state something, like I did recently, you get emails and feedback, almost immediately, pointing out the folly of your assertion. Within the context of setting up your radio, an hour before you go away, I intended to convey: "One thing I can categorically state is that programming your radio manually just before your holiday is really something that you should try and avoid." That's not what I actually said. I missed out on the "just before your holiday" in that sentence. The upshot was that I received lots of feedback, some tips and different suggestions on how to do this and do it well. As I hinted at, you should know how to program your hand held. It's almost an essential life-skill. I generally take a copy of my manual with me, either on actual paper, you know, dead-tree variety, or as electrons as a PDF on my phone or other screen-based gadget. That doesn't mean I like programming my radio. In fact I will be so bold as to assert that I hate manually programming any of my radios. The process is tedious, non-obvious, with a process seemingly written for ENIAC in 1946 when you toggled bits on a panel to program a computer. Yes, that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. Anyway, given that this is such a chore, I tend to avoid it like the plague and only in case of an emergency, do I break out the user manual and poke through 17 pages of arcane button pushing-fu, to get the job done, without hopefully clearing a memory I had programmed before. One of the emails I received, in fact the first one, was from Andrew KF7CCC. He very kindly pointed out the error of my ways, and I agree with him. One of the points that Andrew and others have made is that a defining characteristic of being a radio amateur is that we're frequency agile. That's not something that most other radio users are familiar with. They have a list of channels to pick from and switch between them. In amateur radio we have access to a VFO, a Variable Frequency Oscillator which allows us to change frequency at will. Of course we should all be able to change frequency as the need arises. Sitting on two different channels, pre-programmed into our radios is like being users, rather than inventors of radio, shock, horror. Andrew also mentions a book he's written. In one of the opening paragraphs he says: "This book shouldn't exist." and goes on to explain why the "Handheld Radio Field Guide" is a book that should be made obsolete by sanity entering into the process of programming a radio. I agree with the sentiment. We really have this insane configuration where each brand does it differently, and often within a brand, each model is different. Andrew makes a series of suggestions in his book and I think it's a great starting point for discussion. As I started with, I received lots of feedback. One suggestion was that radios should have an on-board GPS and should automatically know, based on location, which repeaters are nearby. That in turn will create a debate about where the list of repeaters comes from. Such a system appears to exist. At least one manufacturer, Icom does such a thing, but opinions appear to differ on its effectiveness. Another was that you should program the repeater networks into your radio, so when you head away from your home, you have access to the widest range of options. All this talk of repeaters started a lament by some that repeaters are dead and that they are not being used. Others said the opposite and welcomed new calls regularly. I am an IT geek. I wonder if we could create a ping of sorts where a radio transmits a broadcast request for nearby repeaters and that each in turn sends a response, collected by the radio and neatly added to the list of local repeaters. If it sounds familiar, that's because in computing we do this all the time with all manner of different gadgets like printers on our local network. In fact, your radio could just listen for repeater idents and store them. Given that a repeater identifies itself regularly, that's a way we could create a repeater map locally. What ever your poison, as-in, choice of radio, figuring out what to use it for is part of the adventure. You should know your radio inside and out. Read your user manual once in a while, I know I do, every couple of months or so, and each time I learn something new. "One thing I can categorically state is that programming your radio manually just before your holiday is really something that you should try and avoid." I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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HRWB049-Understanding RF Receiver Specifications

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2018 152:24

Eric Swartz WA6HHQ, co-founder of Elecraft, joins us to guide our understanding of RF receiver performance specifications. Eric introduces us to common receiver specs such as Sensitivity, Noise Floor, Dynamic Range, Intermod Dynamic Range, Phase Noise, and RMDR. He tells us what they mean in real-world receiver performance terms, how they are tested, and whether it’s better to have a higher or lower number in each one. It’s also the final episode before the 2018 Hamvention and George and Jeremy share our plans for our Booth, special offers, and exclusives for show listeners who stop by booth 3104 in Xenia. Show Topic Begins at 1:09:36 Our Website - http://www.hamradioworkbench.com/ Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/hamworkbench Contact us for feedback and ideas - http://hamradioworkbench.com/contact Connect with us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/hamradioworkbench/ Hamvention DMR Hotspot - 439.3125 TG 31075 George will be giving a forum presentation - Saturday, May 19 - 2:45 Room 3 - “Quick tips for setting up your workbench, HamRadio Workbench Build Projects” Want to be on the show? Come to the booth and tell us what’s on your workbench! Project documentation will be indexed and available on this page - http://hamradioworkbench.com/ham-radio-workbench-project-board-index PowerFilm Solar 30Watt Foldable Solar Panel giveaway - http://bit.ly/WorkbenchPodcast We will announce the winners via our company Facebook page on or around June 1. Save $100 on the Digilent Analog Discovery 2 Package by using code “HamRadioWorkbench2018” in your cart prior to checkout - https://store.digilentinc.com/ham-radio-workbench-bundle/ Visit Digilent at booth 3002 QRP ARCI - Four Days in May - http://www.qrparci.org/fdim QRP Labs - https://www.qrp-labs.com/ Arduino Projects for Amateur Radio - https://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Projects-Amateur-Radio-Purdum/dp/0071834052 W6DQ QRZ Page - https://www.qrz.com/db/w6dq Sam Zeloff - Garage Chip Fab https://hackaday.com/2017/02/25/the-fab-lab-next-door-diy-semiconductors/ https://hackaday.com/2018/04/24/first-lithographically-produced-home-made-ic-announced/ https://hackaday.com/2018/05/03/more-details-on-that-first-home-made-lithographically-produced-ic/ Amp Hour Interview with Sam - https://theamphour.com/390-an-interview-with-sam-zeloof/ Sam Zeloff Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7E8-0Ou69hwScPW1_fQApA Bletchley Park - https://bletchleypark.org.uk/ Update on George’s Projects on his blog - http://www.kj6vu.com/ Anker Powerline Cables - https://www.anker.com/products/110/Cables USB In-Line Multimeter - https://www.amazon.com/Eversame-Multimeter-Chargers-Capacity-Banks-Black/dp/B01D9Y6ZFW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1525531260&sr=8-3&keywords=usb+meter Randy K7AGE YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/K7AGE Eric 4ZIUG QSO Today Podcast - https://www.qsotoday.com/ Jeremy’s Workbench made from IKEA Algot Shelving - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Db6TKjGUQAAfvQ8.jpg:large IKEA Algot Shelving - https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/bedroom/22798/ IKEA Bekant Desk - https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S09022804/#/S19022808 RF Receiver Specifications Guide from Eric Swartz WA6HHQ Elecraft Mailing List - http://www.elecraft.com/elist.html Sensitivity - How well can the receiver hear weak signals? Minimum Discernible Signals - noise is generated inside the radio from the amplifier stages and how much amplification is available in the receive chain to bring a signal above the radio’s internal noise floor As sensitivity increases, you can degrade dynamic range To measure, start by injecting weak signals until you observe the signal level out of the speaker roughly double in amplitude (3dB) Lower values are better (bigger negative number), allowing you to detect weaker signals Most HF radios are between -125 to -130 with -135 to -138 being on the higher side of performance Noise Floor The internal noise figure generated by the radio with the antenna removed Dynamic Range Strong Signal Handling - how does the radio perform when there are strong signals adjacent to where you are tuned? IMDR3 - Intermodulation Dynamic Range When multiple strong received signals overload the first receiving amplifier in your radio, the signals get clipped When the radio has a broad banded receiver, this clipping begins to act as a mixer and creates intermodulation showing up at different frequencies Additional unwanted signals are created in the receiver when multiple strong signals are present To measure, begin with two signals apart - the difference between the MDS/sensitivity and the level required to set the signal generator to to cover up the weak signal Higher values are better - 90dB range above noise floor is average, mid 90’s to 100 dB is on the higher side of performance Blocking Dynamic Range A strong signal overloading your receiver thereby reducing the gain of the receiver. Receivers can have challenges when a strong signal is physically near the radio To measure, inject a signal until it causes receiver overall gain to drop one DB Higher values are better - typical better than 130dB of BDR, mid 130s to 140s is on the higher side of performance Phase Noise An indication of the quality and “cleanliness” of local oscilator (VFO, or Crystal Master Oscillator) Denotes whether they introduce jitter or noise to the received signal Lower is better Reciprocal Mixing Dynamic Range (RMDR) RMDR is tied to phase noise Impacted by how clean your oscillator is To measure, listen in 500hz bandwidth and measure how strong an injected signal has to be to raise the noise floor on the freq you are tuned to (1-3dB noise floor increase) This ratio is the RMDR Higher values are better - 110-115 dB As multiple signals get closer, the RMDR drops Sherwood Engineering Receiver Comparison List - http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

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AT Banter Podcast Episode 87 - Grumpy Old Men And A Cowbell

AT Banter Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2018 69:04

This week Ryan, Steve, Rob, and Mr Cowbell sleepily enter the Guitar Dungeon and tackle a few news stories including some local Accessibility news, how the first wave of HomePod reviews have looked, and the acquisition of Enhanced Vision by VFO. Show Notes Blind B.C. woman's access to audiobooks threatened by political flap http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/blind-b-c-womans-access-to-audio-books-threatened-by-political-flap TransLink unveils accessible fare-gate program for SkyTrain, SeaBus http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/translink-to-unveil-accessible-transit-fare-gate-program-for-skytrain Apple's HomePod delivers on brilliant sound, but Siri still has room to grow https://www.digitaltrends.com/smart-home-reviews/apple-homepod-review/ Enhanced Vision and VFO, with the Freedom Scientific and Optelec Brands are Joining Forces in Assistive Technology Merger https://www.freedomscientific.com/About/News/Article/192 AT Banter is brought to you by Canadian Assistive Technology, providing sales and training in Assistive Technology and Accessibility with over 30 years of knowledge and experience. Visit them online at www.canasstech.com or call toll-free 1-844-795-8324. Need repairs on your device? Chaos Technical Services offers service and support on almost any piece of Assistive Technology, while also providing parts and batteries. Visit them online at www.chaosstechnicalservices.com or call 778-847-6840.

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Episode 177 Jeff Damm WA7MLH

QSO Today - The oral histories of amateur radio

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2017 88:08

Jeff Damm, WA7MLH, designs and builds his own amateur radio receivers, transmitters, and transceivers using the ugly construction method based on the work of his amateur radio mentor and friend, Wes Hayward, W7ZOI. Jeff shares his ham radio story and his electronic construction philosophy with Eric, 4Z1UG, in this QSO Today.

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FSCast Episode 145 - Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2017 34:37

Microsoft will begin releasing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update this week. VFO and Microsoft have collaborated closely during this release cycle. We hear from Glen Gordon, VFO’s Chief Technology officer, discussing things you need to know about access to Microsoft Edge in the Fall Creators Update, and the importance of JAWS® 2018 public beta 3 in this regard. Jonathan Mosen then speaks with Jeff Petty and Brett Humphrey from Microsoft, regarding Microsoft’s accessibility commitments, and how VFO and Microsoft work together. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

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How does RTTY work?

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2017 2:32

Foundations of Amateur Radio The continued discussion in our community about Digital Modes got me thinking about what a Digital Mode actually is. At the most fundamental level, it's about encoding information into discrete chunks to exchange information. Morse Code is an example of a Digital Mode, made up from combinations of dits and dahs. If you change frequency whilst sending dits and dah's you invented RTTY or Radio-teletype. There are two frequencies involved, 170 Hz apart, where the lower frequency is the SPACE frequency and the upper frequency is the MARK frequency. If someone gives you a RTTY frequency, they're talking about the upper frequency. Instead of using Morse Code to send messages, RTTY uses 32 different codes, 5 bits, to exchange information. This isn't enough for the entire alphabet, with digits and punctuation, so two of the codes are used to swap between Letters and Numbers. Some radios can change frequency between the lower SPACE and upper MARK frequencies in a single transmission. This way of transmitting is called FSK, or Frequency Shift Keying. It's a lot like moving the VFO around whilst keying a Morse-key. Not something you'd do manually, since in Amateur Radio, this is generally happening 45 times a second. If your radio can't do the frequency shifting, then another way is to use Audio Frequency Shift Keying of AFSK, where instead of changing the frequency, you change an audio tone by 170 Hz. Without getting technical about how this works, if you've ever listened to Morse Code with a radio, you'll have noticed that as you change frequency, the sound changes. If you were to change the frequency of your radio by 170 Hz, the sound would also change by 170 Hz. So with that in mind, if you were to change the sound by 170 Hz, the receiver wouldn't care if you were changing the transmit frequency or the audio frequency, since it both sounds identical at the other end. Most of the time a computer is generating two tones, a tone for the SPACE, or lower frequency and a tone for the MARK or the upper frequency. It comes out of the speaker of the computer, which you feed into the microphone of the radio and your radio then generates a normal SSB signal that is experienced by the listener at the other end as a Radio-teletype. Pretty nifty and if you understand this, then most of the other Digital Modes in use today use similar methods. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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Archive-NCBI Technology Podcast-2017-8-August

NCBI Labs

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2017 60:40

Technology Podcast Episode 63: August 2017We tell you how you can still participate in our up-coming seminar with VFO, even if you didn't manage to get a ticket to attend the event.Amie Hynes Fitzpatrick is here to talk about the recently launched ViaOpta suite of apps, from Novartis.NCBI's Junior MasterChef group bring us a very special report from our offices in Carrick-on-Shannon.Sharon Lyons is along to show us how to use Gmail with NVDA.Finally, Amie Hynes Fitzpatrick is back once again to tell us all about OrCam.Support the show (https://www.ncbi.ie/supporting-us/donate-now/)

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Braillecast, Episode 4 – Orbit Reader

BrailleCast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2017 22:55

In this episode, we have a detailed chat about the Orbit Reader 20, the long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated low-cost Braille electronic reading device. In Braille News: a variety of discounts and pricing information due to site village: Sight and Sound Technology have announced discounted pricing for VFO products for the duration of the exhibition season. Humanware ... Read more...

FSCast Episode 141 - Win one of 3 free upgrades, specials available at summer shows, and a complete demonstration of ElBraille 14

INCOBS - Audioinformationen

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2017 59:04

FSCast is giving away three upgrades to JAWS, ZoomText or Fusion. Listen to this episode to find out who is eligible and how to enter. The national conventions of the American Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind are just weeks away, with Sight Village soon to follow in the UK. VFO has the best bargains in assistive technology. Learn about the substantial discounts available on hardware and software. Jonathan Mosen then presents a comprehensive demonstration of ElBraille 14, which will be available for purchase at the conventions. Learn about how this product finally offers note taking without compromises, offering notetaker-level battery life with the power of full Windows and JAWS, the world’s most powerful screen reader. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen Win one of 3 free upgrades, specials available at summer shows, and a complete demonstration of ElBraille 14

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SightCity 2017: Window Eyes to be discontinued, says Eric Damery and explains the VFO approach

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2017 8:49

Freedom Scientific's vice president says "It makes sense to provide a single screen reader under the VFO umbrella" and announces Fusion11, a JAWS and ZoomText package.

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VIP: In With the New, Out With the Old

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2017 46:57

The Cool Blind Tech team is on top of the news in the world of accessible technology. This week, Joel, Jessica and Nelson discuss the latest happenings from Google, NVDA and say goodbye to an old friend. Make sure to download the podcast or press play to listen to this week's information filled show. Topics This Week Include the Following What We Liked From Google IO 2017 The team shares its opinions on the most recent developers conference from Google. There is a lot of great features in the works and Joel, Nelson and Jessica share their favorites. It's So Hard to Say Goodbye By now the news of the screen reader Window Eyes being discontinued by the VFO group has been heard by most. But, how will it impact the blind community? The team discuss this and provide some links below to alternate screen readers that are available for the PC. NVDA Jaws Windows Narrator ScreenReader by Dolphin Computer Access System Access NVDACon 2017 One of those alternate screen readers discussed by the team is NVDA. The team discuss its development and how it is used by the CBT team to bring you such great content as these podcasts. If you wish to listen to recordings of the conference, take a look here. If you wish to contribute to the future development of NVDA and projects like Osara, you can donate here. Cool Picks This Week Include the Following Audio-Technica AT-LP120-USB Direct-Drive Professional Turntable Joel is digging in the crates for old school vinyl with his cool pick this week. It's a new twist on how to play records via USB. The Google Assistant for iOS Jessica might be switching to a new virtual assistant on her iPhone with the latest release of the Google Assistant on the app store. Aura Luxury Wireless Bluetooth Speaker with Airplay Nelson claims to have found the ultimate Bluetooth speaker with his Cool Pick this week. The way he talks about the speaker, it must sound incredible!

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VIP: In With the New, Out With the Old

VIP by COOL BLIND TECH

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2017 46:57

google iphone pc bluetooth usb cbt google assistant nvda vfo window eyes osara cool picks cool picks this week include ios jessica aura luxury wireless bluetooth speaker

VIP: In With the New, Out With the Old

AccSell -- Accessibility Central

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2017 46:57

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第115回: 「文字の印象だけからいくと、生ハムな印象があります」

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2017 43:24

今回はAccSellクリッピング拾い読みで、iOS VoiceOverを紹介した記事、ノーマライゼーションの考え方を紹介した記事、VFOによるThe Paciello Groupの買収について話しています。ポッドキャスト内で出ていたマイク・パチェロ氏とのインタビュー記事のキャプチャー画面です。オープニング・トーク今回のizuizuからのお題は「血圧」です。 Accsellクリッピング拾い読み AccSellクリッピングで紹介した記事の中から気になった話題を取り上げる「AccSellクリッピング拾い読み」、まずizuizuが「iPhoneのVoiceOverを使ったらKindleが超便利になった」という記事を取り上げています。つづいて中根が、「ノーマライゼーションとは？ノーマライゼーションの歴史や時代背景、身近な例を紹介します！」という記事を取り上げて、実はアクセシビリティーとも深い関わりがある「ノーマライゼーション」の考え方について話しています。そして中根は、これこそがアクセシビリティーを確保する目的だと主張しています。最後に植木が、VFOがThe Paciello Groupを買収したというニュースについて話しています。メール・マガジンのご案内そして、たまにはメール・マガジンの宣伝もしようということで、先週発行した第113号の内容を少し紹介しています。なお、その第113号のインタビュー記事でご登場いただいた守谷絵美さんには、ポッドキャスト第61回にもご出演いただいていますので、こちらも併せてお聴きください。収録後記収録の後で思い出したのですが、The Paciello Groupは本の1年ほど前にNV Accessとの提携という話がありました。その後、この話に関して目だった動きがあったということは聞いていないのですが、今回の買収でNV Accessとの関係がどうなるのかも気になるところです。この話を思い出して、益々今回の買収に対する印象が悪くなりました。 (中根雅文）いやあ、まさか十何年前の写真を発見されるとは！　もう十年近く更新しないまま放置された昔のサイトですが、写真はともかくインタビューの内容などは今読んでも興味深かったりして。パチェロさんとは十五年近いお付き合いなのですが、彼はニューヨーク・ヤンキースの大ファンで、会うたびに「ヤンキースタジアム、いつ行く？」と聞いてきます（笑） (植木真）安心してください。キャプチャーはぼかしています。 VoiceOverに関わらず、実際に読み上げられるのを体感することで、どうやって情報を伝えていこうかを考えるきっかけにもなるからいろいろ普及するといいなぁ。映画館でUDCastを試してみてね！ (山本和泉） AccSellクリッピングの関連記事 The Paciello Group Joins VFO (VFO™) ノーマライゼーションとは？ノーマライゼーションの歴史や時代背景、身近な例を紹介します！ (LITALICO(りたりこ)発達ナビ) iPhoneのVoiceOverを使ったらKindleが超便利になった (週刊アスキー)

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Sound Prints - May 7, 2017

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Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2017

Lyft guide dog policy; more visual impairment among children; successful fundraiser from the Alabama Council of the Blind; more accessibility for airline passengers; VFO acquires another company

Sound Prints - May 7, 2017

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2017 57:19

Lyft guide dog policy; more visual impairment among children; successful fundraiser from the Alabama Council of the Blind; more accessibility for airline passengers; VFO acquires another company

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Sound Prints - April 23, 2017

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2017

Continuing saga of accessible online audio and video from University of California Berkeley; interview with Allison Flanagan, retiring Director of Kentucky Office for the Blind; new scholarships, VFO tech sessions at the 2017 ACB convention, runner uses technology as a guide in Boston Marathon, and proposed law in Texas related to service and guide dogs

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Sound Prints - April 23, 2017

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2017 59:18

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ONYX OCR and the ElBraille Overview by VFO's Richard Tapping

Blind Abilities

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 10, 2017 7:30

Richard Tapping gives our listeners an overview of the ElBraille and the ONYX OCR devices from VFO. These new devices are shipping soon and Richard covers each along with pricing packages from VFO. Descriptions from the VFO web site are posted below and Richard gives a great overview in this podcast. Join Richard Tapping and check out the new products from VFO. You can contact Richard Tapping 800-444-4443 or 727-803-8000 Sales: Info@vfogroup.com Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. The ElBraille A cutting-edge, extremely portable Braille computer The ElBraille is a portable device designed for users who are blind or deaf-blind and want to stay connected at school, work, or home as well as on the go. The twenty-first century, take anywhere replacement for the dedicated notetaker, ElBraille combines the power and flexibility of a modern mainstream computer running the Windows® 10 operating system with JAWS® and a Braille display with a full Braille keyboard to offer a fully accessible compact computer. JAWS provides the best screen reader experience with either Eloquence speech output or the highly responsive and life-like Vocalizer Expressive Compact voices as well as full Braille output. Type text into documents or perform JAWS and Windows® commands right from the Braille display’s keyboard using the JAWS BrailleIn® feature. Run any Windows application such as Microsoft Word®, Excel®, PowerPoint®, or Outlook®. Use FSReader to read DAISY books from sources such as Bookshare.org or browse the internet with Microsoft Internet Explorer® or Mozilla® Firefox. ElBraille also includes a set of specially designed apps for performing popular actions such as the creation of voice or text notes, listening to audio content, and more. The ElNotes application developed by Elita Group is designed to create, store, and manage text and voice notes on the ElBraille Notetaker. ElNotes allows a user to quickly create text and voice notes using a set of special keystrokes and then export them to TXT or MP3 files respectively, if needed. These files are saved to a user-specified folder and then are available to be read and listened to using other ElBraille applications. Save by upgrading your current investment - Compatible with your existing Focus 14 Blue or Focus 40 Blue Braille Display and your existing JAWS license. Features •Runs Microsoft Windows® 10 ◦Latest JAWS version with Eloquence comes preinstalled •Braille display: 14 or 40 refreshable Braille cells, an 8-dot Perkins-style Braille keyboard •Microprocessor: Intel® Atom™ x5-Z8300, Quad-Core 1.84 GHZ CPU •160 GB of internal memory, 2 GB RAM •2 stereo speakers •Built-in Microphone •An additional system speaker with sound and vibration feedback •Wireless WLAN802.11 A/B/G/N/AC networks support (2.4 and 5 GHz) •Bluetooth V4.2 •A built-in 4G LTE modem supporting 7 cell networking standards: TDD-LTE, FDD-LTE, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA, CDMA1X/EVDO, GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Download speed up to 150 Mbps, upload speed up to 50 Mbps •GPS 1/8" (3.5 mm) headphone jack •Memory card slot supporting SD, SDHC, SDXC up to 256 GB •USB 3.0 port •Mini HDMI port •Rechargeable 10,400 mAh battery •Approximately 17 to 20 hours on battery, even with wireless networking turned on •Powered with an AC adapter (110 to 240 V) or from battery ◦An AC adapter with replaceable plug (UK, US, EU, AU) •ElBraille-14 dimensions: 7.4×4.7×1.5 in (189×118×38 mm) •ElBraille-14 weight: 27 oz. (750 grams) with battery Software •Microsoft Windows 10 operating system •Supports Microsoft Office 2016, 2013, or 2010 •Available with JAWS for Windows 18.0 screen reading software including high-quality Vocalizer Expressive voices •A specially designed self-voiced and self-Brailled emergency menu allows recovery of the device without system reboot or loss of data in case speech and Braille output is interrupted The ONYX OCR LOW VISION SOLUTIONS: ONYX® OCR Portable Video Magnifier The ONYX OCR magnifies and reads aloud any document. The clear voice, magnification and high contrast makes reading so much easier. Comfortably change your focus from reading magnified texts yourself, to letting the ONYX OCR read them to you when reading becomes too tiring. Just place your document under the fixed OCR camera on the left and activate the speech function. Enjoy listening to any document as it is read aloud by a high quality voice, without straining your eyes. This four-in-one solution integrates two separate cameras: one for transforming text to speech output and one for magnifying documents and observing the room around you. This way, you can clearly see what you want, whether it is across the room or at your desk! The ONYX OCR is a video magnifier for users who want to combine magnification and speech. The self-contained design integrates two cameras and a 24-inch touch screen. It allows you to view a full letter page on screen, and to magnify materials up to 131 times. The ONYX OCR combines the perks of several video magnifiers in one design. With this four-in-one solution, you can magnify text on your desk, write, work on hobbies, view images from a distance, view yourself, and even listen to documents as they are read aloud! You can comfortably switch between reading magnified text and listening to documents. Just place your document under the fixed OCR camera on the left side of the magnifier, tap the touch screen and enjoy listening to the text, without straining your eyes. Features •Four-in-one video magnifier with two separate cameras for distance, document, self view and OCR functionality: ◦Flexible camera to observe objects across the rooms or auditoriums in sharp focus (distance view), to magnify documents such as reading materials, daily business tasks, classroom assignments, product labels and craft projects (document view), and to get magnified true mirror image (self view) ◦Convenient fixed position OCR camera to listen to documents effortlessly – Always place the document in the same place •Touch screen monitor: Tap the screen to begin reading at any point and from any place in the document •Displays full pages and automatically identifies the document layout Free In-home Demo Documentation GSA Information Advanced Features •Autofocus HD camera •OCR camera – 13 Megapixels •Magnification Range: 24-inch monitor: 1.7x to 131x •24-inch full color TFT widescreen display •Point & Read functionality: intuitive touch interface •Overview: full letter page viewing •Assistive reading with automatic text zone recognition •Fast text recognition (OCR) •Over 60 reading voices in 31 languages •Saving and opening documents on a SD card or USB stick •Large icon and large font menu •Volume control •Speed control •Digital photo viewer •Built-in stereo speakers •SD card slot •USB port •Headphone connector •Weight: 24-inch – 25.8 lbs / 11.7 kg •Working height under camera: 16.4 inches / 41.6 cm

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Checking your On-Air signal...

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2017 4:36

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day I managed to achieve a little personal milestone. I heard myself on-air. Before you get all misty-eyed, yes, I've heard myself on-air before - probably on thousands of occasions over the years, but that's not what this was. This was my own transmitter, in my shack, transmitting my voice via SSB and it being received and me hearing it. In broadcast radio this is a common thing. Every radio station I've ever been in pipes the audio from a normal radio receiver into the studio, so you can confirm that your transmission is in fact going to air as expected. There are funny stories associated with experts who decided that they didn't need to wear headphones and promptly broadcast silence because their microphone volume was turned down or not plugged in - gotta love the helpful announcer in the previous shift. So, what was so special about hearing myself this time? Well, for the first time I heard my SSB voice. Not AM, not FM, SSB. I'd tried this before using two radios and a dummy load, but that just ended up in distortion, not much fun. Let me tell you how I managed this and what I learned along the way. Online I found a local Software Defined Radio, or SDR, that had the ability to tune to a frequency that I am allowed to transmit on. That seems pretty straightforward, but in actual fact getting those three things, Online, Local and Frequency all together has proven to be a bit of a challenge. I started listening to the station to see how their signal compared to mine. I have a project sitting on my shelf to put together my own SDR, but that ran into some procurement issues, so I've been limited in my ability to experiment. I started out trying to listen to the local HF beacon, part of the Northern California DX Beacon network. Turns out that the SDR and I can hear that pretty equally. I did notice that there was about a five second delay between what I heard off-air and what the SDR sent to me across the Internet. I don't know if the delay is because the Internet signal travelled back and forth across the country a couple of times, or because this particular SDR has some delays. I tuned the SDR to 28.490 and my radio to 28.490 and after checking if the frequency was in-use started some test transmissions. Nothing was working. No noise, nada. It does help if you plug the right antenna into the radio. Tada, look Ma, it makes noise! I could hear myself. It became clear that there was a difference in what I was expecting to hear and what I actually heard. Playing with different modes didn't seem to make any real difference, so I was a little stumped. I recalled that during a contest I had been advised that I was off frequency, so I played with my Tuning Dial, known as the VFO, and adjusted my frequency to 28.489.50 and there I was, just like I expected. Five second delay and all. At that point I wondered if this meant that the SDR frequency was wrong, or mine, or both - how could I prove it? Some hunting around for suggestions revealed the idea of tuning the SDR to one of the time frequencies, on 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 MHz, better known as WWV and WWH. On these frequencies a 24 hour a day transmission happens that encodes the time. You'll hear a ticking clock, voice indicating time and it has all manner of extra information encoded in the signal. It's used as a time standard but also as a frequency reference. Best results are when you use AM and you can use it to get a sense of propagation between you and Colorado in the United States. Mind you they are using a few extra Watts. Zooming right in I could see that the SDR was indicating that it was bang on frequency, so I'm about 50 Hz off, high as it happens. Which just means that I need to tune a little lower than the frequency I want to be on and I'm good to go. Only I'm not yet convinced. I came across settings on my radio, the TX Carrier Point for USB, menu 18 on my Yaesu FT-857d. Other than various wild guesses by others, I still don't know what it actually does, all I do know is that it was set to 150 Hz. Setting it back to 0 didn't make the problem go away, but it did appear to improve things. Not sure yet if my radio is in need of a doctor, or if I am in need of some instruction, either way I'm sure you or a friend knows and is willing to share. Turns out, I sound just as sexy on SSB as I do on FM. At least my wife thinks so. I'm Onno VK6FLAB.

CBT Live From #CSUNATC17: The Fusion of ZoomText and JAWS for Windows

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2017

Hugo Gallegos speaks with Douglas Gerry of VFO about a new product called ZoomText Fusion, which combines ZoomText and JAWS for Windows to create a powerful magnifier and screen reader that can be controlled with a keyboard. AI Squared is offering a 60day free trial, which you can download here.

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CBT Live From #CSUNATC17: The Fusion of ZoomText and JAWS for Windows

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2017

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FSCast Episode 137 - 2017 CSUN, Glen Gordon discusses Microsoft Edge support in VFO Products and Ron Miller discusses next generation ElBraille, the notetaker powered by JAWS

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2017 41:20

The 2017 CSUN conference on technology and persons with disabilities is fast approaching. There are plenty of great VFO presentations to attend. Learn about them in this episode. Glen Gordon, our Chief Technology Officer, joins us to discuss forthcoming support in VFO products for Microsoft Edge, the browser built-into Windows 10. And Ron Miller describes the next generation ElBraille, the notetaker that is powered by JAWS and runs full Windows 10 applications. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen 2017 CSUN, Glen Gordon discusses Microsoft Edge support in VFO Products and Ron Miller discusses next generation ElBraille, the notetaker powered by JAWS

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FSCast Episode 135 - 10 years of FSCast, Andrew Zeman gets his wish from Make a Wish Foundation, Ryan Jones talks about his 10,000 light Christmas display

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2016 76:59

We published our first episode of FSCast back in December 2006. To celebrate, Jonathan Mosen discusses how the podcast got started, and shares just a few highlights of the past decade. A number of listeners join us to mark this milestone. We then speak With Andrew Zeman and his Mom Karen. Andrew has been granted a wish by the Make a Wish Foundation, and we’re honoured that his wish is to visit us at VFO in Florida. Ryan Jones has an even bigger, better Christmas light show running at his home in Lexington Kentucky, with nearly 10,000 lights. He tells us how and why he does it. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen 10 years of FSCast, Andrew Zeman gets his wish from Make a Wish Foundation, Ryan Jones talks about his 10,000 light Christmas display

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FSCast Episode 130 - Jonathan Mosen speaks with Tom Tiernan, the new CEO of VFO

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2016 22:54

Jonathan Mosen speaks with Tom Tiernan, the new CEO of VFO. We learn about Tom's considerable experience as a leader in tech companies, as well as his connection with low vision. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen Episode 130 - Jonathan Mosen speaks with Tom Tiernan, the CEO of VFO

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FSCast Episode 129 - Microsoft Mail Accessibility, New rules on local and state website accessibility

AccSell -- Accessibility Central

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2016 56:40

VFO has partnered with Microsoft® to make the free Windows® 10 Mail app more accessible. Jonathan Mosen speaks with David Gorelik from Microsoft about Windows 10 Mail, Microsoft Office®, and the improved accessibility of both. Jonathan then demonstrates our JAWS® screen reading software with Microsoft Mail. The US Department of Justice is looking to make rules on the accessibility of local and state government websites. Parnell Diggs from the National Federation of the Blind tells us why the regulations are significant, and how you can share your experiences to help draft the rules. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen Episode 129 - Microsoft Mail Accessibility, New rules on local and state website accessibility

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第96回: 「リーさんの名前は知ってたほうがいいし」

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2016 42:42

今回はAccSellクリッピング拾い読みで、Webアクセシビリティーに関する対談記事、JIS X 8341-3:2016の訳語に関する記事、そしてアメリカのスクリーン・リーダー業界の最近の動きについて話しています。写真：オープニングの小ネタ（？）の「記念日」をイメージして今回はカレンダーの写真をチョイスしてみました。みなさんの記念日はいつですか？オープニング・トーク今回のizuizuからのお題は「記念日」です。記念日とは縁が薄そうな中根、それぞれ記念日がある植木とizuizuの話に加えて、記念日が命取りになりそうなとある人の話をお聞きください。 AccSellクリッピング拾い読み AccSellクリッピングで取り上げた話題の中からAccSellの3人が気になったものを取り上げるAccSellクリッピング拾い読み、まずizuizuが、ITproに掲載されたWebアクセシビリティーに関する短期連載から、「徹底対談前編：“想像力の欠如”がアクセシビリティを阻害する」と「徹底対談後編：適切なHTMLタグを使うことのメリットを知ろう」という記事を取り上げています。つづいて植木は、「JIS X 8341-3:2016の訳語見直しのこぼれ話」というブログ記事を取り上げて、WCAGやその関連文書の翻訳について話しています。そして中根は、アメリカの2大スクリーン・リーダー、JAWSとWindow-Eyesが同じ企業グループの傘下に入ったというニュースを取り上げています。収録後記都民になって早10年。すっかり東京ナイズされました（どや！）。というのとは関係ないですが、なんだかアクセシビリティーの新たな章がはじまったような気がしないでもなくはないようなそんな雰囲気を感じている初夏を過ごしています。みなさまはいかがお過ごしでしょうか？ (山本和泉）オープニングも区切りとなる第100回目まで、カウントダウンが着々と進んでいます。次回からも緊張感を持って、オープニングを聴いてくださいね～ (植木真）先週の土曜、多くの方にご参加いただいて、AccSell Meetup 012を開催しました。手前味噌ですが、なかなか内容の濃いイベントにできたのではないかと思います。さて、次はどんなテーマで企画しようか……。ご要望などあればお聞かせください。 (中根雅文） AccSellクリッピングの関連記事 JIS X 8341-3:2016の訳語見直しのこぼれ話 (水無月ばけらのえび日記) Ai Squared joins VFO, home of Freedom Scientific and Optelec (Freedom Scientific) FSCast Episode 127 - Jonathan Mosen speaks with David Wu (Freedom Scientific) そのWebサイト、使えません！ (ITpro)

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FSCast Episode 128 - Incredible summer conference pricing from VFO, MathML, National Organization of Parents of Blind Children

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 24, 2016 24:31

If you're attending NFB, ACB or Sight Village, learn about some incredible pricing on VFO products for conference registrants. Ron Miller tells us about innovations in JAWS that make MathML accessible in Braille. And we meet VFO's Mike Wood, who tells us about our work with the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children. Show Host: Jonathan Mosen Episode 128 - Incredible summer conference pricing from VFO, MathML, National Organization of Parents of Blind Children

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Main Menu for Fri, 17 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Main Menu

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2016

WWDC recap, thoughts about the VFO merger sling tv and more on this episode of Main Menu.

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FSCast Episode 127 - Jonathan Mosen speaks with David Wu