Listen to SeroTalk Podcast 163: Soft Tiger, Warm Tiger
The team of Jamie, Ricky and Joe are back to discuss the top news stories for this week’s SeroTalk Podcast. Lisa Salinger joins us after the news to demonstrate using the timer feature of your iOS device as a sleep timer.
President George H. W. Bush: Statement on Signing the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
The Death Of Screen Reader Innovation
The NFB of Massachusetts is Partnering with Square to Make their Apps More Accessible
New Braille Edge 40 case from Executive Products Inc.
Austin blind baseball team headed to World Series
Apple ‘completely overhauling’ developer site after intrusion
Apple’s iPhone activation servers experience downtime
BlackBerry Fires 250 More Employees in Turnaround Effort
Microsoft releases final version of Office 2010 SP2
Why Bill Gates isn’t coming back to run Microsoft
U.K. ISPs to Filter Porn by Default by Year’s End
Seven reasons to buy the new Google Nexus 7
Motorola now exclusive Droid partner to Verizon
Chromecast isn’t a Roku/Apple TV killer — but at $35, it doesn’t need to be
Leery about the cloud? Chances are you’ve been using it for years
Mailbag
From Mike Arrigo
Great show! Thanks for promoting my pod cast comparing the 2 GPS apps. It was actually a lot of fun to do. Hopefully everyone found it helpful. I love the comments about my email and all the phones! That was great, and I was laughing right along with you. I’m actually enjoying my new iphone 5. Admitedly, some of the restrictions in IOS drive me nuts, I do like IOS and Android for different reasons, fortunately it’s very easy to switch my sim card between them. I loved Lisa’s comment, person found trapped under a mound of smart phones. Actually, I will list all the phones I have, to be honest, I’m not even sure of the total. You are welcome to read all of these on the next show, but I think everyone would get bored with that, so perhaps you could just total them up. I guess for everything out there, there is someone to collect it, and cell phones is one of mine. First, let’s start with the Nokia Symbian phones. I don’t use these much anymore since Symbian is a dying platform, but at the time, Symbian was probably the best accessible platform. e50 e51 e63 e65 e66 n73 n78 n79 n82 5320 express music 5620 express music 5720 express music 6110 navigator 6120 classic 6210 navigator 6220 classic 6710 navigator 6730 classic Ok, quite a few there. Now for the windows mobile phones, have not used these in quite a while, and they’re also in my night stand, only 2 of them. t-mobile dash 3 g htc s643 I have 2 iphones, the iphone 5 that I just bought, and I still have the iphone 3gs that I bought from Mike Calvo. Ok, last but not least, android phones. htc nexus one htc chacha htc desire z htc my touch 4g slide sony xperia pro sony xperia mini pro samsung captivate glide samsung galaxy relay Well, there you are. That is my smart phone collection, I’m actually considering getting the galaxy s 3 or s4, or perhaps the htc one or htc one x, not sure yet.
From Jenine Stanley
I’m with Lisa here on the wearable tech for dogs. Though it might be neat to find out specifics about what the dog is seeing in terms of obstacles, does this take the place of good old fashioned dog handling skill, reading your dog and knowing when the dog is indicating what.
Yes, I do think there are applications, such as seizure response, blood sugar alert and such that might be helped with technology for the dog. We already use alert buttons and rescue phones for some service dog tasks.
A friend recently was working with a commercial dog trainer to help find her guide some extracurricular activities as the dog is brilliant and gets bored if they don’t traverse Manhattan’s craziness regularly. The trainer thought it might be fun to teach the dog to trigger a button on an IPad. They used good old clicker training to target and pattern. Then they had to pair the button with a specific thing. They are still working on that part, trying to figure out what the handler wants to know, black sock versus white sock, etc.
They did succeed in teaching the dog to take her own picture, mostly of her tongue. The highly amusing part of this whole experience though was that they also had one of those Staples Easy buttons that you press and it says “That was Easy!”
The first time the dog pressed the icon on the IPad, she reached over and poked the Easy button. I’d love to have had video of that.
I truly do think that in real time, the tech we have now isn’t fast enough to allow my dog to communicate to me while guiding, the things I need to know. Heck, when commercial GPS apps can’t really necessarily keep up give me the info I want, and I’m not a lightning fast walker, having my dog stop to trigger something on his gear to alert me to a hole or wet paint is just too slow. I can feel that he’s looking at something and making decisions to go around it.
Now, what would be cool is a small device the dog could carry or wear that would have Bluetooth connect ability. Let’s say then a convention hotel or other venue had maps or directions, or someone within that convention had written up such things with geocoding and indoor GPS. The device could then grab those maps automatically and you could query it as to the location of relief areas and such. It would communicate with your phone or other devices.
And finally, how about Buddy Finder! This app would allow guide dogs at conventions to know where their canine buds are without all that annoying butt sniffing! Yes, Buddy Finder would locate any other dogs connected to Buddy Finder in a room, using Bluetooth of course. Now you can know if that snarly dog who hates conventions is in this room, or if your dog’s BFF is at the relief area!
Seriously though, what would be really cool is an app that detects just the presence of a microchip on an animal and alerts you so you know when walking, hey, there’s a dog about 50 feet away and it’s not making noise at all but it’s there. Again, this gets into basic dog handling, is your dog reacting yet, but knowing helps.
I did have one convention experience where this would have been really helpful.
The beauty of having a convention in the city where you live is that you can actually just go home any time you want. So one day I was done and decided to take the bus home. The bus stop I needed was about 4 blocks south of the hotel. Fine. It was also pouring rain. Yep, you in Orlando weren’t the only ones rained on.
I hit the up curb and all was fine. My dog veered slightly left but I thought he was just moving to get out of the main downpour. Then I heard that familiar sound. No matter which school, guide dog instructors can’t mask that instructor voice.
This man was saying to his charges, “Keep them moving. It’s just another guide dog.”
Then the handlers issued various commands. And we all just kept on walking. Turns out this was a Pilot Dogs class out working, going the opposite direction. This happens frequently in downtown Columbus and we all smile and walk nicely past each other. It sure would have been nice that day though to know they were coming so I could remind my dog to just keep walking. Granted, he did, mainly because he just wanted to get somewhere dry too, but …
Roundabout
Meditate Without Sitting Still: Turn Everyday Actions into a Practice
Visually impaired children touch sedated tigers at Oregon Zoo
Join Serotek as we take part in an Access chat via Twitter which takes place on August 6 beginning at 8:00 PM Eastern. The event is sponsored by Fedora Outlier. Use the hash tag #accesschat to participate in the event. You can also follow Fedora Outlier on Twitter.
Join Lisa Salinger on August 19 at 8 PM in the Pat Price Tech Talk Training room over at Accessible World to discuss our exciting new SAMNet Socializer. We look forward to seeing you there.
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