Clocks, conferences and wearables

00:21S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from April the 2nd, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley, great to have you with us listening through Vision Australia Radio Associated Stations of Australia or maybe 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 download 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 can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. David will start with our Product Minute, an item from the vision store of Vision Australia. You've got a clock this week.

01:13S2

I do. This is the ten inch alarm clock with 30 reminders. So it's basically a ten inch screen. It's a digital screen, nice and crisp to have a look at of course. And the 30 alarm reminders or just 30 reminders is really for those situations where you want to get reminded about things. So, you know, whether it's to take your medication, whether it's to remember to put the the bins out on a Tuesday evening, which I have a reminder on because I always get forgetting and so on. It's actually very, very useful. And I just like the fact from a low vision point of view. I always used to imagine there was nothing like having a clock on the wall that you can just glance at, because I know my wife often glances at our Amazon Echo to check the time. She never looks at her phone or a smartwatch or anything else. 

So I just think the fact that you've got this lovely, low vision accessible, high contrast, very useful clock that you can have a quick look at if you want to, um, is actually really, really good. So I think sometimes Stephen, it's the, it's it's the good old things. I mean I know this is not a manual clock, but sometimes just having a clock that does what it's supposed to do is a lot better than having these all singing, all dancing, make your breakfast type of thing in the morning stuff.

02:30S1

With a large display. This ten inch that's about 25cm comes from the United States. That's why it's ten inch.

02:37S2

Indeed.

02:38S1

Yeah. And it's available from the vision store of Vision Australia. Shop dot Vision Australia. Org. How much does it cost?

02:46S2

It's about $120, so that might be a little bit pricey. But considering what it does it's not a bad price certainly.

02:54S1

Now let's talk Sony. They're doing some interesting things with accessibility.

02:59S2

They are, they've done a few things now which you know, people say Sony you think are sort of like musical movies or the PlayStation five, which is all fantastic, but they actually do a lot more things. And I think it's season this year. So the, you know, the Centre for Disability, the annual conference that were there two weeks ago... what they did was not only did they show off the, you know, the PlayStation five and all the accessible games and so on, and they're accessible controller for people who got a physical disability. But they also showed off their course, their Sony Bravia range of smart TVs. So of course that's got the screen reader in it. Um, and all the other type of accessibility stuff, large print, speech access, input and output. They also talked about the camera that I know that was on display last year, where it literally takes what the camera is being looked at and transposed it straight onto your retina, which is fairly interesting technology. 

And I spoke to a few low vision people, and they said that it's amazing the clarity that they can see through using that type of mechanism. So I think that's something to keep an eye on, uh, so to speak. I just, I just just did a pun then. So that's actually very interesting. The other thing, they also have now, I haven't got the the correct name about this, but I might put it in the show notes is it's a set of earphones, but they're not ones that are bone conduction. These ones sit in front of your ears. I think they're called floating earphones. The speakers sit in front of your ears, so of course they leave your ears alone for you to be able to hear your surroundings. But I thought that was actually really interesting that, you know, they can see a niche for those particular headphones in the disability market, particularly blind and low vision. 

And the other really cool product, which I think some people were sort of going, oh yeah, who wants this thing? It's a robot dog. Now, this might sound a bit weird, but it's a dog that will respond to being petted, to being talked to, it'll also greet you at the front door. If you wanted to do that, you can sort of train it in little basic robotic commands, but it's designed for people that may want a. In this case a little robot dog, but don't want the real thing or that have other needs that the you know, the little robot would satisfy. So, you know, because taking care of a real animal is a lot different from taking care of a of a robot dog, but apparently also very cool. You can actually buy, like, little false bones for it, a little, uh, a little food bowl, a little drinking bowl. So people might remember those. Do you remember those Tamagotchi games that were around in the 90s, Steve, where there were little animals that were a little virtual animal in the key ring? You had to take care of it?

05:56S1

No, but I believe you.

05:57S2

Right. Well, this is like. This is the robot version of a little Tamagotchi one's back in the 90s. So rather than taking care of a virtual pet, you can now take care of your robot dog. So I think it's really, really cute.

06:08S1

I wonder whether it would be of interest, maybe for people who can't see to be able to alert them to something happening, or for people who can't hear very well, to alert them to the doorbell ringing by coming and wagging its tail or something.

06:23S2

Yeah. Look, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, you could certainly do that sort of stuff. I mean, that there's a lot of senses in it. Mind you, it's not cheap. I think it's around about 2500 dollars a year, so it's not cheap. But yes, I mean, there's hopefully there's certain things that could be programmed into it. So if the doorbell goes, it can come trundling over and wag its tail furiously and get your attention. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

06:47S1

There going to be some events in the next few weeks. In May we've got the Google I o event.

06:54S2

Indeed, it's crazy season coming up yet again. So, Google has got its IO input-output conference and surprise, surprise, let's just say they're probably going to be talking all about artificial intelligence, large language models, of course, their Gemini system. And then along with that, they'll be talking about the next version of Android coming out. And of course, I'm definitely be sure there'll be new pixel phones, uh, high end and low end and of course, a new Pixel Watch. That'll be also out as well. But I'm really looking forward to, of course, the chat about Gemini and what may be happening in the future. That's going to be really exciting.

07:34S1

So Gemini again, what's it going to be?

07:37S2

I have a funny feeling it's going to replace, you know, your okay Google stuff in your phone. So rather than using your personal assistant just for turning things on and off and asking the time and date which most people do, um, you will actually be using Gemini to do that, plus all the other large language model stuff that you can really get involved with.

07:57S1

Hmm. Very interesting. That's going to be on May 14th, the Google event in date.

08:03S2

So it'll be on Tuesday. Their time in the US so very early in the morning our time.

08:08S1

And four weeks later pretty close to anyway on June the 10th is the Apple event, the WWDC. Tell us about that one.

08:18S2

Indeed. So again, as I just mentioned, Gemini, the gossip is at the moment that I want to get this out of the way is the fact that Apple may be using the Gemini model. So the large language model from Google as it's backend to Siri or whatever else they may produce for the large language model for for iOS and for the Mac, of course, as well. But we'll see what happens. But it looks like iOS 18, which will start being in the beta version as soon as WWDC is underway. There's going to be a lot of changes. So in not only just to do with the AI type stuff, uh, but they're saying, you know, this will be the big change. We haven't had a big change in iOS for a long, long time. This is going to be it. So we'll have different multiple screens. Um, the phones might be slightly different. Adding new hardware functionality, not just for the camera, um, when they come out in September or October. So and there'll be also other stuff to do with the iPad and so on. 

And let's not forget the Vision Pro as well. Hopefully we'll get that in Australia this year. So there's going to be a lot of stuff coming out of Apple. And I'm I'm really looking forward to seeing how all this stuff sort of integrates with each other. So it's not just Google and Apple, but it's also how those platforms will then integrate with all the other platforms around, of course, things like Amazon and Microsoft. So that's what I'm really looking forward to, to seeing how all these platforms behave together.

09:49S1

More and more wearables are going to be part of our lives. And you saw an interesting article recently about ethics of wearables.

09:58S2

That's right. And I have a funny feeling this article sort of slightly originated from some person who decided as a groom he would go into his wedding wearing his vision pro, which I believe didn't go down too well with his new wife, but it sort of really brought to this person's attention that wrote the article about, particularly with wearables, not so much a watch. And you. Smart rings and that sort of stuff. But it's your glasses that now that are almost the same as wearing a pair of, quote, normal glasses. And because these things have got a camera in them, that leads me on to think about things like the Ray-Ban glasses, the envision glasses, which you can now get proper lenses for. And there's also other smart glasses coming out for blind low vision this year as well, which is similar technology. 

And I have a funny feeling that we're going to have to start behaving the way that the general community behaves, because you just can't say, I've got the right to wear this camera, um, in a public bathroom just because I need orientation and mobility, because everybody else, when you would go into a restroom to avoid people being uncomfortable, you would probably take off your smart glasses. And when you've finished with the restroom, you go out the door and then put your smart glasses back on again. So I just think from a disability point of view, we need to be aware that this is how the rest of the population behaves when they're using the smart tech, particularly camera based wearables. And I think we also have to be or acknowledge that that applies to us as well.

11:40S1

And that reminds me of conferencing. And sometimes we as blind people might tend to think, oh, I don't really need to use my camera. I don't, I don't look at things and I'm not preaching here. I'm just saying what my experience is that I found it useful to use my camera in those sorts of activities, because it normalises my participation in the meeting. Otherwise it's, oh, Stephen doesn't use a camera, but everybody else does. So I try to keep that in mind so you can take that or leave it as I say.

12:16S2

That's right. That reminds me of a person, a supplier back in the 1990s that used to sell computers without a monitor because blind people didn't need a monitor. He forgot about the fact that people that repair computers need to look at the computer screen to show off the computer's working or not.

12:29S1

Yeah, that's that's a good one. And now you've got a little bit of Microsoft news... 

12:35S2

I do. So a couple of little bits and pieces to do with Microsoft. So Windows 11 notepad, you can now spell check in the little text editor, which I think is pretty pretty cool because lots of us use notepad for sort of quick, very fast notes if we're a bit a bit of a hurry rather than launching up, you know, for Microsoft Word. So that was number one. Number two, I guess we can say goodbye to the applications key in the new Surface Pro range coming out now, because that's now been changed to the co-pilot key. And I can remember seeing on social media what Microsoft is saying is the copilot key is using your computer with AI rather than using a computer that you then run AI on, apparently having a key on the keyboard made this really AI for some reason. I don't quite know why, but apparently Microsoft's very definite on that message, so they'll probably the two main things for this week that I wanted to mention about Microsoft in particular.

13:34S1

And so Co-pilot, for those who are not aware, is just another of the AI facilities that are around. And it's they're built into Microsoft Windows. Correct. Before we go, a reminder of where people can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

13:50S2

Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog site, which is David, would it be our Podbean pod band?

13:56S1

Com-David would be our podbean,  podbean.com to write to the program.

14:02S2

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

14:09S1

davidwoodbridge@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.