What's in David's bag?

00:21S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from June the 4th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia radio associated stations of RPA 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 that 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, let's start with the product minute, maybe product minutes from the vision store of Vision Australia. There's a sale on.

01:16S2

There is, this includes I think all up around about 16 different products. So it's up to 15% off. I know we don't quite often talk about low vision stuff, so I'm going to give a plug to three particular low vision products I always see recommended for home, school or work. So I'm talking about the three different types of explore video magnifiers. So you've got the Explore 5, which is the five inch screen with a handle that you can pull out to hold on to really, really good at when you're shopping the explore eight, which is like almost like holding it because it's an eight as an eight inch, it's almost like little holding a little iPad mini in your hand. Really good for being at school, going into the library, reading stuff at your desk, that sort of stuff. 

And then the explore 12, which is almost good for everybody. But, it's got, it comes with a stand, so you can actually pop the explore 12 on a stand. One of the benefits of having on the stand is you can put stuff underneath it and read it, quote, hands free. And of course you can handwrite underneath it because it's being held up by the stand. The explore 12 is highly recommended in lots and lots of workplaces for low vision folks. That's the Explore 5, Explore 8, and Explore 12, which is currently in that sales sequence, up to 15% off till the end of June or until stocks run out.

02:49S1

Shop visionaustralia.org and for the specials shop visionaustralia.org slash sales. The blind shell phone, the Classic 2. Been a bit of a scare about what happens when the 3G network disappears.

03:07S2

Yes, I know some people have been concerned about when the 3G network shuts down. I think Telstra's turned his 31st of August and I think it's followed by Optus and so on. So different carriers are closing down their 3G network at different times. I've double checked that with Vision Australia Vision store itself. I've checked it with Quantum technology, and everybody 100% assures me that you stick a 4G SIM card in your phone, your blind shell classic two, and it will absolutely work. So don't panic. All you need is just is pop in a new 4G or 5G sim card, if you've got 5G in your region, and it'll work.

The revolutionary Be My Eyes app with Be My. I been around for a little while on iOS and Android. You can now run it through Windows. Which is actually pretty exciting because this will actually use your camera, which you go, yep, well, it does it already. I can take a picture and, uh, have it look at stuff, but it's also the live camera, so you can literally hold up something in front of your camera and get it to identify whatever you're holding in front of your camera on your laptop, which is actually really exciting because it's bringing that thing about AI object recognition closer and closer to that particular time when we'll be able to just theoretically, hopefully, practically as well wave anything in front of your camera on your laptop, in this case windows, and have it identify stuff. 

So I'm really looking forward to see how this goes, particularly in the next six months or so.
Which is actually pretty exciting because this will actually use your camera, which you go, yep, well, it does it already. I can take a picture and have it look at stuff, but it's also the live camera, so you can literally hold up something in front of your camera and get it to identify whatever you're holding in front of your camera on your laptop, which is actually really exciting because it's bringing that thing about AI object recognition closer and closer to that particular time when we'll be able to just theoretically, hopefully, practically as well wave anything in front of your camera on your laptop, in this case windows, and have it identify stuff. So I'm really looking forward to see how this goes, particularly in the next six months or so.

04:48S1

There's been a lot happening in this area with freedom Scientific's great work with the Smart Picture features, and now with the Be My Eyes.

05:00S2

Indeed. So, you know, we've got our famous thing coming up next week, which we'll talk about in a minute. So I think the next six months is going, like I just said, is going to be very explosive, I think, in the AI world across all the different platforms.

05:15S1

So let's talk about the event coming up next week. Apple's worldwide. Developers Conference and the keynote address, which will be 3 a.m. our time on Tuesday morning.

05:25S2

I shall be popping up for it, as I'm assuming you will be too, Stephen, to have a listen to it. And look, I'm really hoping that all the chit chat about Siri and, you know, teaming up with OpenAI or Google Gemini or or doing something like that really comes to fruition because I really want a Siri AI. I've got ChatGPT on my Mac, I've got it on my iPhone, I've played with Gemini, all that sort of stuff. But I really want to see Siri do well. So out of all the updates next week, iOS 18, the new Mac operating system, etc., etc., etc. um, I'm really looking forward to see what's going to be happening with iOS 18 and Siri.

06:09S1

So let's put this one into context for people who aren't as close to it as some of us are. This is the Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple talks about what's going to be happening in the software area, and amongst other things, we'll be waiting to hear what's happening with iOS.

06:26S2

Correct. So iOS always seems to get sort of the, you know, the flagship waving of the flag type stuff. So that's why everybody's excited about iOS 18 and see what Siri does. And, you know, supposedly a new home screen, new this and new that. But it's also to do with the software on the Apple Watch, the software on the Apple TV, the software on the Mac. Let's not forget the software and the Vision Pro, which we sort of haven't talked about for quite a long time. And of course, the software in the HomePod. So there's quite a few different things. I think last year they sort of snuck in a few hardware things. 

The chat this time is they probably won't talk about any hardware at all. It'll be purely software. Although I wouldn't be surprised if we talk about an M4 Mac because we've got the M4 chip and the iPad Pro. I wouldn't be surprised if they sneak in a bit of a chat about the M4 chip in a new MacBook Pro or something like that.

07:21S1

So what happens is this new software goes into a protracted beta phase, and it'll become public sometime in September, October, etc., won't it?

07:33S2

Correct. So iOS 18 sort of drops around about the middle ish of September. And then I think normally, if I can remember correctly, it's about October for macOS. And who knows what new silly name in California Apple will come up with next for Mac OS 15.

07:50S1

We talk about the good things with AI. There are some silly things and not so good things, and Google's had to protect itself a bit.

07:59S2

It certainly did. Just a bit of a point. I want to say first thing to do is remember that all AI or the large language models doing is absolute word prediction. So it can do word prediction on word, sentence, paragraph, etc. but literally all it's doing is word prediction. So it's not, you know, particularly fascinating type stuff that's doing. And so what's happening when you use Google's Gemini, it's coming back with weird stuff. So for example, it says something like you should at least eat one rock per day or you should glue your pizza together. Now, obviously some silly person on the internet or some training data has written those particular words. And obviously somebody typed in something a bit weird in the Gemini search, and that's what it's come back with. 

So it just goes to show you that this thing is not intelligent, it's purely word prediction. And it's looking up data that it's been trained on. So always take what Google I ChatGPT comes back with with a grain of salt.

09:07S1

Now this is an odd one, but uh, it could well happen that you might not necessarily buy another iPhone, but it could be an iPad mini.

09:17S2

What they were sort of like getting towards, I think is and this is probably more for people that are in the Apple universe, not so much in the Apple slash Android universe, but if you're used to ringing people up via FaceTime in particular, um, and I guess also WhatsApp and zoom and all the other different platforms now I'm thinking about it, is that the times you really need to make a phone call in quotes, like a real mobile phone call, is quite minimal. The only thing I could probably imagine, although my system can do it here, is if you want to send a quote SMS text, but normally you can get your um systems to generate an SMS if you really want to. Anyway, so I was thinking, you know, why spend over $1,000 when you can? You know, if you've got a cheap iPad mini that will do everything? So the only thing an iPad can't do is make, like I just said, a real quote, phone call. So anything else you want to do with. iOS, your iPad, or your iPad mini can do exactly the same thing. So that's just one way of saving a bit of money.

10:28S1

David, I have a little tip for Sonos users who are screen reader people like I am. The app is still not very good, not as good as it should be. I had a discovery recently when I went back to the windows app for Sonos, and I found it was working pretty well. I could do a lot more with it than I can do with the app. So if you're struggling with Sonos at the moment until they get it right, the accessibility for screen reader users try the the windows app and it might do the trick for you.

10:59S2

So the thing to remember sometimes is, don't think you're doing yourself any disservice by using the web version of an application. So, for example, I my sensibo air conditioner, I sometimes will use the web version of that as well, rather than the the iOS app version, just depending on what I'm doing. So if the Sonos actually works for the moment and gets you through the wait time that we're waiting for for the app to be fixed for accessibility, then that's a really good alternative.

11:28S1

I'd like to talk Braille now. The International Council on English Braille completed its general assembly in Auckland last week in New Zealand, and they came out with a tweet at the end talking about the importance of Braille. Even today, more and more Braille is used.

11:47S2

Exactly. The big thing about bras that everybody forgets is literacy. Everybody thinks, oh, look, you can just use a screen reader. The screen reader talks to you. Well, that's all well and good, but you don't learn how words are spelt. You don't learn about punctuation, capitalization. Braille, to me, is one of those things that's ultra important. And speaking about Braille, my daughter had the sadness of going to the hospital over the weekend. She's all well now, but on the nurse call button in her room, there was an odd symbol on the call button, and it was actually the letter N in braille for nurse. And I thought, wow, that's just absolutely amazing. Yep.

12:32S1

Very impressive. You were playing with 11 labs recently and discovered something interesting with sound effects.

12:38S2

So as with the the other application that I talked about quite a long time ago, there's no I the application for generating music. Well, this is actually 11 labs itself generating sound effects. So if you type in "train going through a railway crossing, formula one cars zipping past", etc., etc., it'll generate the sound effects. Now, what it's doing is looking up a whole library from Shutterstock, which has got all these public domain, different types of sound effects, and it normally gives you about 5 or 6 samples. So the trick is you choose the one that you want, then you download the one that you want to use. So pretty, pretty good. 

13:20S1

I'd like to spend more time on this one day, but just quickly tell us about the technology that you use these days, your personal technology in a minute or two.

13:29S2

So this is my personal stuff. And I guess the couple of things that really jump out for me, and I've got the whole list in the show notes, if you want to have a read of them, is, first of all, the versus slate, which is a really quick way of jotting down Braille with a stylus that's really, really cool. The BT Speak Pro from Blazey Technologies for taking notes, and the third one, which is what I've used for quite a long time now, I almost want to say about eight years now is the Revo concept keyboard, which allows me to use both my iPhone and my Android phone, switching between them with the interface keyboard because it's such a tiny little credit card size keyboard. So there are three of the main things that stand out for me when I think about my computer bag. But like I said, if you want to read the whole list, it's in the show notes.

14:17S1

Just 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.

14:24S2

You can check out the show notes on my blog site, which is David Woodbridge Dot Podbean pod Cbn.com.

14:31S1

David Woodbury Podbean Podbean For.com. To write to the program.

David Woodbury Podbean Podbean For.com. To write to the program.

14:37S2

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

14:43S1

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 - take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.