A watch, a scholarship, an event... and more

00:21S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from May the 28th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated stations of RPH Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and down. It can all come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia Radio talking tech podcast Vision Australia Radio talking tech podcast.

With me, someone who knows all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. David, let's start with the product minute from the vision store of Vision Australia. An old favourite of yours, but you haven't explained it for a while, so let's hear about it. The Bradley watch.

01:20S2

That's right. So this is called the E one as in E-1, the E one Bradley Watch. The simplest way I can describe this beautiful tactile timepiece, because it sounds a bit silly to call it a a watch because it's smaller than a watch is, it's got two ball bearings and you've got one ball bearing on the face, which is actually your minutes, and you got a ball bearing on the side that, again, is in a course in a slot, because the ball bearing has to sort of roll around if you like, and that does the hours. And then on the face of the watch where I said, you've got that ball bearing that, you know, goes around the groove on the face of the watch. Of course, then you've got the tactile markers for 12, one, two, three, four, five, six and so on. 

So what you effectively do, you get your finger and you touch the face of the watch. You find out where the ball bearing is, which is quite easy to locate. And then of course line it up with the little tactile marker. And then you can put your finger over the edge and just basically, you know, swish your finger around the groove if you like, on the outside of it to find the little ball bearing on the outside and then bring your finger back up and over and feel what the closest tactile marker is, you might think, oh well, if I'm using my finger, I'm not going to actually, you know, put the little ball bearings out of alignment. If you do do that, you can just shake your wrist gently and the magnetics will actually put it back into the right time. It's a really nice watch. 

People often come up to me and they say, what's that really interesting watch on your wrist? And I say, it's it's a tactile timepiece that just uses, um, ball bearings to tell the time. And everybody says to me, where did you get it from? Because I want one, or wouldn't this be a really great gift to give somebody for a, you know, a five year or a ten year work anniversary or some other anniversary? So it really is a beautiful, very solid, elegant timepiece. And if you haven't felt this, go into your local Vision Australia office, because we've got practically Vision Australia Vision stores across Australia. And get your hands on one, because I can guarantee it'll blow you out of the water about how amazing this watch is. So the E one Bradley timepiece is still certainly my favorite timepiece.

03:46S1

How much is it?

03:47S2

It's about $330, so which is a good solid price for a good solid timepiece. So if you want something that's a bit ageless and stands out a lot, then this is a beautiful designed watch to wear.

04:02S1

And it'll last a while. Will it?

04:03S2 

It will. It's one of those things that it's not dated by time. So you buy it now. It'll still look really, really snazzy and modern even into the future.

04:15S1

You've been talking I recently and you've recorded your conversation. It was with Professor Toby Walsh, who's chief scientist at the Eye Institute of the University of New South Wales. Tell us about that conversation.

04:28S2

So people might have noticed that we're starting to sort of like do special podcasts on the same Talking Tech feed that you normally get this show on Talking Tech. It was a discussion with Professor Toby Walsh, who's actually done lots of books. My most favorite one is called Faking It, which is all about how artificial intelligence actually fakes on being intelligent and the fact that it's not a human being, it's an artificial software bit of program that tries to pretend it's got intelligence and humanity and feelings and emotions, but we all know it doesn't. And it was just a really nice discussion on how, from a blindness and low vision perspective, how artificial intelligence would assist us in, you know, getting information. 

A famous question that always people ask is about, um, self-driving cars. How I could assist us in navigating, uh, you know, outdoors and indoors, how we could get faster access to information rather than just using our screen reader voice input, to AI systems, all that sort of really great stuff. So I think the interview went for about 35 minutes, but it was just a really fascinating thing. And if you'd like to read all Toby Walsh's books, they're both on Kindle, and I think there's only one which is the Faking It audiobook. And what he did with that one was actually, it was Professor Toby Walsh reading it, but then he also did a little bit of cheekiness and actually got the computer to also read part of the book as well. So that was just a bit of a nod to, you know, how artificial intelligence uses synthetic speech, to tell you what is on the screen or in this case, the audiobook. So it was a really, really great chat.

06:17S1

Now we've got a message recently from Ramona. Mandi, who's now based at Monash University. And as you would expect, she's very much embedded in the world of assistive technology. And her message is about some PhD opportunities in the field of assistive technology to improve the lives of people with disabilities. And it's from the Monash Assistive Technology and Society Centre at the university. It's in partnership with the Faculty of Information Science and some PhD opportunities where people could really make a difference doing that sort of work.

06:57S2

It is. So there's two PhD opportunities, and absolutely, they're encouraging people with disability to apply for the two PhD positions. Rough, rough information is you're looking at about a three and a half year PhD, which is pretty standard. You'll get a research grant while you're doing a PhD. Um, you've got to have and of course, you can read this on the link that I've got in the show notes. You've got to have some, um, academic background and, you know, the more academic type research and publications and all that sort of good stuff that you've done in the past will hold you in good stead. But I really think it's great that this program is looking at assistive and mainstream technology and how it can impact upon the lives of people with a disability. 

So if you've got, you know, an academic background, you want to do a PhD and you've got some interesting ideas that you can chat with the main contact about, to do your PhD on this would be a really great way of getting your ideas into a bit more of a, I guess, a practical outcome. So it does look really, really interesting. Great places like Monash University are investing so much time and effort in doing these types of programs.

08:18S1

So you've got to get yourself organised. Applications close on July the 3rd. They do some interesting work, the Monash Assistive Technology and Society mats mats. So we look forward to progress with this project. Now Microsoft, they had an event recently.

08:35S2

They did. So this was a build conference, from last week as we go to air this week, and it was practically entitled Copilot plus PCs, which is really all about the fact that there are new PCs coming out from, you know, major manufacturers such as Acer, Dell, HP, and so on. And these are going to be all runnin ARM processors. They've got of course, they're going to have neural processing cores. They're going to have 16 gigs of memory as a minimum, 256GB hard drive, solid state drive as a, as another minimum, all aimed around running artificial intelligence software. And I think from memory another thread said there's 40 different AI systems that these computers will be running in the background. 

So it's not just, you know, when people think about, you know, AI or artificial intelligence, they think about ChatGPT, whereas lots of other stuff that AI systems can do in the background. So things like photos, document processing, spreadsheets, data management, computer vision, of course, that will, you know, of course, we're very interested in, and there's a very interesting bit of software that's got people a little bit concerned. It's called Recall. So you can recall anything you've done on your PC. From photos to documents to emails to web browsing to everything else. And you can literally ask the system, you know, what was I doing three weeks ago on that project to do with some programming to get a robot to turn left rather than right, for example. Which is a pretty, I think, coding exercise. 

And I'll come back and let you know what documents and videos and media will be available. And of course, as part of the co-pilot PC thing, these computers will have a dedicated key for co-pilot itself. But as I said, it's everything running in the background, neural processing engines, because one of the things about large language models is becoming because they come off the cloud, they're a little bit slow, but the NPU or the, the neural processing unit, it'll be doing a lot of stuff on a local level. So that's what speeds up the whole process. So I think for the article, they said there was going to be about mid June when these machines will be available. Not too pricey I think us wise we're starting at about $1,000. 

So you know, not too bad, but it's really going to be interesting to see where Windows 11 goes moving forward with all this AI processing, particularly locally. And let's not forget the fact that in about two weeks time, it'll be Apple's turn to talk about their artificial intelligence stuff as well. So the world is going to be looking very interesting in the next six months or so.

11:31S1

Now we talk about these new computers that we need in our lives. But you don't want to necessarily discard the old one.

11:39S2

No. And it's a good idea to remember the stuff that you don't need, um, sometimes a really powerful computer to just do things like web browsing or get your email. So, you know, if you've got a computer that's, I don't know, six, seven years old,then, you know, it's it's fine to just use a web browser and email client. Some people use their old computers as a media server, so they just put all their, um, movies and TV shows and music on, and then all the other computers in the household just use that as their quote server to get off your, your media content. Of course you can always add more memory, hopefully to an older computer. You can add in, you know, a faster solid state drive. 

But the other one that I keep forgetting about is particularly on PCs that use fans that may or may not be working very well is just the amount of dust that ends up inside your PC. So I'm talking about mainly your windows computer, and of course a desktop, not a laptop. And the more filthy inside these computers get, the worse they actually operate, the more prone they are to overheating and damaging themselves. So it's always a good idea to open up your PC every now and again, every couple of years or so and give it a bit of vacuum out, or even take it into a computer shop. If you don't want to do it yourself and get your PC support person. If you like to clean up your computer a little bit.

13:11S1

You're not going to tell me now that people still use floppy disks though, are you?

13:15S2

I am indeed, they probably have for consumers, but for things like medical, medical equipment, um, some airlines with aircraft and also things like... some light rail systems use floppy disks to control different types of systems. So even though you may have not personally touched a floppy disk for, you know, 10 or 15 years, they're still available and they're still around being used.

13:43S1

How long do people keep their iPads for?

13:46S2

The basic number that I've been seeing in most articles these days is around about three years minimum. Again, it's one of those things that if you feel like your iPad in particular is still doing the same thing, then keep using it. Because tablets are a lot different to smartphones, smartphones improve a lot. Tablets don't really improve remarkably. So I always say to people, if your tablet from 3 or 4 years ago was still doing the same job, that it was always done for you, then don't worry about upgrading.

14:16S1

Yeah. Before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

14:23S2

Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog site which is David Woodburn dot podbean Podbean.com

S1

David would be our dot podbean pod b e a n.com to write to the program.

14:36S2

You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David dot Woodbridge - how it sounds - at Vision Australia dot org.

14:42S1

david.woodbridge@visionaustralia.org ... This has been Talking Tech - with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.