S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
S1: August the 1st, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
S1: you with us wherever you're listening, perhaps through Vision Australia Radio,
S1: associated Stations of Australia or maybe the Community Radio Network,
S1: there is also the podcast. If you haven't caught up
S1: with that yet, all you need to do is search
S1: for the two words talking tech and Diana can all
S1: come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced.
S1: Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart
S1: speaker to play Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech Podcast. Vision
S1: Australia Radio Talking Tech Podcast. With me. Someone who can
S1: explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's National
S1: Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. David, let's start with
S1: a little bit of unfinished business from last week. You
S1: were talking about the various ways people can use technology
S1: when the internet is not around. What we didn't get
S1: to talk about was the world of the computer, the desktop,
S1: the laptop, etcetera. When you can't use the Internet.
S2: No. And the really good thing about, of course, your
S2: desktop or your laptop is the fact that you can
S2: plug it into lots and lots of different things. So
S2: all the other offline stuff that I talked about, yes,
S2: you can still do it on your desktop. You can
S2: do your word processing, you can take notes, you can
S2: even offline voice dictate. If you also choose, you can
S2: listen to music, audiobooks, podcasts, etcetera. But what you can
S2: also do, of course, is plug in things like scanners,
S2: which we use in particular as blind people to do
S2: optical character recognition. So you can get your piece of
S2: paper out of the post box, whack it on the
S2: scanner and hey presto, you can read what's on the
S2: thing at your mailbox. And of course the other thing
S2: to do with printers is also print stuff. So if
S2: you have to print out a form or an application
S2: that somebody gave you, then you can do all that
S2: sort of stuff as well. And then all the other
S2: myriad things that you can do is when you can
S2: plug in different peripherals such as SD cards, cameras, and
S2: that's really what a desktop in a notebook's for is
S2: the fact that it's extremely expandable. And of course, if
S2: you're a low vision person, not only can you use
S2: the tiny screen in your notebook or laptop, you can
S2: plug in a much bigger screen. And of course, when
S2: you're on your desktop and you're really getting into things
S2: like graphics design and all that sort of cool stuff
S2: and coding, you can run even multiple screens at the
S2: same time. So again, just because the thing's not on
S2: the Internet or the superhighway doesn't mean you can't do
S2: all these other amazing things. And I think I mentioned
S2: this last week when you're not on the Internet and
S2: that's one way of being completely secure about what you're
S2: working on.
S1: Last week you conducted another of your Vision Australia exploring
S1: tech webinars.
S2: I did, and this was called Accessing the Printed Word.
S2: And what I was meaning by that was that, you know,
S2: you get these bits of paper in your life or
S2: you go to the shop and you want to read
S2: the print on the packaging or you want to find
S2: out what's in your pantry. Well, there are different options
S2: from a blind person's point of view to do what's
S2: called optical character recognition. So that's basically taking the printed
S2: text stuff on packaging and converting them into speech output
S2: through image processing called OCR object recognition. And then we've
S2: also got things like video magnifiers which magnify the print
S2: so that doesn't translate it. And that magnification stuff again
S2: of course comes up in very, very large font, high
S2: contrast and depending on what sort of colour, foreground and
S2: background draft as well. So we did a whole range.
S2: We went through it really quickly and there was a
S2: lady who reminded me at the end of it, she said,
S2: I'm new to this stuff. I lost you guys half
S2: the way through. So that was a good reminder to
S2: me that and that's why we explain stuff. And Stephen,
S2: you always asked me to explain stuff on this show
S2: because we know what it is, but sometimes people may not.
S2: And that was just a good reminder to me that
S2: I really have to be careful when I talk about stuff,
S2: that I start from the basics and let everybody know
S2: what we're talking about.
S1: So how can we get hold of this? And a
S1: lot of the other stuff you've done.
S2: There's two ways. So at the moment the printed word
S2: exploring tech webinar is only available on YouTube or the
S2: other web demos are, and of course on my ESI
S2: podcast feed as well, which is David would be I
S2: how it sounds.podbean.com. And when I get a hold of
S2: the audio file for the print word webinar, I'll put
S2: it up on my seed feed as well.
S1: And how do we get to them on YouTube? It's
S1: a big.
S2: Place. We just stick in Vision Australia YouTube channel that
S2: will pretty much find it straight away. And in fact
S2: that's what I did over the weekend. I wanted to
S2: see if it was up on the the YouTube channel
S2: and there it was with a couple of likes already
S2: in about 80 or so downloads already. So but that's
S2: really the fastest way to do it. Stick in your
S2: favourite search engine Vision Australia YouTube channel and you'll definitely
S2: come up with the right page.
S1: Now some very different territory. Tell us about asMr.
S2: I only discovered this over the weekend. One of my
S2: friends who uses it quite a lot and what it
S2: actually stands for is autonomic sensory meridian response, but everybody
S2: just refers to it as asMr because that's too complicated.
S2: And what it is, is it's any sort of tingling
S2: sensation on your head or through your arms or your
S2: hands in response to certain visual or audio or both
S2: stimulation in the world. So on YouTube, for example, there's
S2: about 13 million videos on asMr. Spanning people, doing crafting.
S2: So all you're watching and listening to is just basically
S2: somebody crafting in their room. So you're watching them and
S2: you're hearing the sounds of the crafting and the cutting
S2: and so on through to people pretending to role play.
S2: So because of they're using a camera, of course some
S2: of the role players are the person they've been saying,
S2: you know, do you mind if I touch your face
S2: or your head to give you a massage? We're going
S2: to pretend to do a role play. So we're doing
S2: an eye test, all sorts of things. And of course
S2: you can hear them, you know, supposedly taking notes and
S2: typing on the computer and all that sort of cool stuff.
S2: Then you've also got things like which and I really
S2: can't stand this one. It makes me cringe whispering. So
S2: you've got people I'll try and do so now when
S2: I go today, we are talking about technology. I find
S2: that really creepy, but some people like the really spoken
S2: word and then you've got all sorts of other different things.
S2: So what it's really supposed to do is for you
S2: personally and of all those 13 million videos to find
S2: sort of the trigger that you get that physical response
S2: to from either visual stimulation or audio. Now for me particularly,
S2: I know there's certain songs that I listen to, particularly
S2: with ladies that reach that really high frequency when they're singing.
S2: That sometimes gives me a bit of a physical, tingly
S2: feeling at the top of my head. But besides that,
S2: I think I'm more of a white noise person rather
S2: than an official asMr person.
S1: Then tell me about the My Noise app.
S2: This app which I got recommended to me. So because
S2: when I posted the fact that I'd come across as
S2: people say, Oh yeah, but that's fantastic. But for audio people,
S2: why don't you try out this thing called bi noise
S2: or one word? And what it does is let's say
S2: you're listening to a track that's got bird sounds in it.
S2: It's got water sounds, it's got the sound of a
S2: boat up against a wharf and it's got people talking. Now,
S2: each one of those sounds in that overall track has
S2: their own way or own slider of adjusting that sound.
S2: So if you want the bird sounds to be louder
S2: and you want the boat against the dock to be softer,
S2: you want the people talking to be softer and you
S2: want some other things louder or softer as well. You
S2: can do all that so you can really get the
S2: noise of the track where you want it. And I
S2: remember there was a back in the the mid 2010
S2: 20s that, you know, last decade basically there was a
S2: really good app called Sleep Machine, which did a similar thing.
S2: And apparently this has over 200 sounds really amazing and
S2: you can get it for both iOS and Android. And
S2: of course, if you want to get more sound, there's
S2: in-app purchases, but you've certainly got a lot to choose from.
S2: So that's my noise or one word in the app
S2: or the Google Play store. And of course I'll have
S2: the link in the show notes for both play stores.
S1: We used to know them as aftershocks, now just shocks.
S1: Tell us about the latest product that you've been looking at.
S2: The new company name is Now Shocks, and they've brought
S2: out this new pair of earbuds. So remember, shocks are
S2: very famous for bone conduction. So that's where you'd have
S2: the little pods on your cheekbones and the sound would
S2: go through your cheekbones into your inner ear. Well, now
S2: they've invented this new system called air conduction. So what
S2: it really is, is and these are on my Bose frames,
S2: by the way. So what they do is they put
S2: the speaker near your ear hole. So on the glasses,
S2: it's basically on the back of the glasses near the
S2: front of your ear on these ones. They've got a little,
S2: little rectangular bit that fits just above your ear hole
S2: and that has two little speakers in at one pointing
S2: down to your ear hole, one pointing above you to
S2: cancel out a bit more noise. Then if you can
S2: imagine coming up and around the front of you and
S2: coming over the back of it, there's a hook. Now,
S2: of course, they don't call it the hook. They call
S2: it the dolphin hook because it looks like a dolphin
S2: jumping out of water and it's got a tiny little
S2: white behind it, which is all part of sort of
S2: the plastic silicone membrane type stuff. So that's supposed to
S2: hold them in place. Now, I've been using them quite
S2: a lot over the whole weekend, and here's what I
S2: found out about them. It's very sluggish with voiceover. So
S2: I Stephen I can actually flick left or right with
S2: voiceover with the speech screen reader on iOS and I
S2: can count up to just below one second before it
S2: actually moves the focus onto the next item. Number two
S2: is when I tap on that little rectangular thing above
S2: my ear hole to play pause or go to the
S2: previous and next track, that takes about another second to respond.
S2: And this skip forward and skip back. You have to
S2: hold your finger down on the little thing left and
S2: right for about three seconds for it to activate, which
S2: is part of its design. But I find when I'm
S2: moving around and walking and I've got my guide dog
S2: or my cane, I don't want to have to hold
S2: my my finger on something for that length of time.
S2: So it's a little bit annoying. And I guess the final.
S2: Because I'm such an airpod user. I don't like the
S2: fact that when you take these off your ears, the
S2: audio is still going out to your Bluetooth headphones. I
S2: prefer to have the audio stop because I've taken them
S2: off and I just want to use my my phone,
S2: whether it's my iPhone or Android phone is as usual.
S2: So look, sound wise, they're pretty good phone call wise.
S2: They're also excellent. But if I was going to sort
S2: of have an opinion, I'd say I'd always recommend the
S2: bone conduction version of Shox versus these air conduction version
S2: of shocks. And we're also not particularly cheap. I think
S2: they're round about, I want to say about 200 and
S2: something dollars or a bit more. So, you know, not
S2: cheap shocks.
S1: That's shock. Still a little bit of work to be
S1: done to get it right, particularly for people who are
S1: voiceover users.
S2: I think so, yeah.
S1: We've got to talk about this. Twitter is now X indeed.
S2: So what you're find out now is when you run
S2: the app, particularly if you've updated the app in the
S2: last week or so, when you go through your home screens,
S2: whether on Android or the iPhone, it'll now be called X.
S2: Now your screen is not going to say X because
S2: it's a capital X, it'll say cap X. But the
S2: weird thing about it is you can still say with
S2: your favorite personal assistant on your smartphone or your iPhone,
S2: open Twitter or open X before work quite nicely. And
S2: then just to add more confusion, when you go into
S2: the app, when you see your items, you'll still see
S2: your quote tweets. And when you post something, you'll still
S2: be posting a tweet. So I guess what they're sort
S2: of done there, they've updated the outer shell, if you like,
S2: with the X logo and that sort of stuff. And
S2: I'm assuming one day we'll be able to read our
S2: X feed list and we'll be able to post our
S2: X posts as well.
S1: Samsung have announced some new products.
S2: That's right. So this is the yearly unboxed or whatever
S2: they call it, event for Samsung, new phones, watches and tablets.
S2: So with the the phones they've updated the new Z flip.
S2: So that's the flip phone remember like the old Nokia
S2: phones that you could open up from the bottom to
S2: the top. So it was a flip phone. Then we've
S2: got the new version of the fold. And the best
S2: way to remember the fold is that it opens up
S2: like a book. So you're going from a smartphone, if
S2: you like, to it pretty much a tablet type size screen.
S2: There was an updated the Galaxy Watch and they've brought
S2: back the famous bezel. So the bezel on the watch
S2: is where you can turn it to mechanically switch between
S2: different things on the the watch, which I absolutely love.
S2: And then finally, the S9 tablet, which is the new
S2: version of Samsung's tablet, and that's got a faster processor,
S2: a better looking screen and so on. So overall, they're
S2: updated tweaks. I wouldn't get too excited about it if
S2: you've had versions of these things in the last year
S2: or so.
S1: Now just before we go, a reminder of where people
S1: can find details of what you've been talking about in
S1: this and previous editions of the programme.
S2: Indeed. So as always, you can check our show notes
S2: on my blog site, which is David would be a
S2: dot podbean podbean.com.
S1: David would it be accurate been podbean to write to
S1: the program?
S2: You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work,
S2: which is David Woodbridge, how it sounds at Vision Australia.
S1: Org. David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Org This has
S1: been talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's National
S1: Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care.
S1: We'll talk more tech next week. See you.