[access-uk] Re: Penfriend and PTX1
- From: "john coley" <johncoley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 16:47:05 +0100
The label will only read back correctly using the penfriend that created it.
John.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jackie Cairns" <jackie.cairns@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 4:17 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Penfriend and PTX1
Hi Carol
I may well do. Up until now, audio labelling has never done anything for
me, or I've not needed something like that, and used my memory instead. But
we all get older ... (smile).
Having read most of the messages on this thread over the last week or so,
could you or someone just clarify one point for me, as I've kind of got lost
somewhere in the traffic!
If you have a Penfriend, and label say a business card, if someone else
comes along with their Penfriend, would a swipe of that same card enable
them to read it? So, in other words, is the information you record linked
to that particular label size?
I apologise that I'm asking for repetition of something that has been
covered, but there has been so much stuff about it that I'm struggling to
get some definity.
Many thanks.
Jackie Cairns
Braille Specialist
Email: jackie.cairns@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sight and Sound Technology Ltd
Welton House North Wing
Summerhouse Road
Moulton Park
Northampton
NN3 6WD
Tel: 01604 798024
Mob: 07887 883815
www.sightandsound.co.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Carol Pearson
Sent: 03 August 2009 15:32
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Penfriend and PTX1
Jackie,
I definitely think you should take a look at it at some point ... because
you could even be converted! <Smiles>
I definitely think it has a good place in a home where there's a blind
person and certainly when you have no sight at all! <Smiles>
--
Carol
carol.pearson29@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/songbird49a
---- Original Message ----
From: "Jackie Cairns" <jackie.cairns@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 1:43 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Penfriend and PTX1
Well done John for the explanation, I'm kind of warming to it!
(smiles).
Jackie Cairns
Braille Specialist
Email: jackie.cairns@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sight and Sound Technology
Ltd Welton House North Wing Summerhouse Road Moulton Park Northampton
NN3 6WD
Tel: 01604 798024
Mob: 07887 883815
www.sightandsound.co.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John
Sent: 02 August 2009 13:24
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Penfriend and PTX1
Hello Everybody,
Here's some comments on the latest Access UK digest I have read. I
subscribe to the list through the digest version and I don't get to
read it everyday so I won't always be able to comment quickly but I'll
give information to help the debate wherever I can. For those who
don't know I am on this list as a private individual using my home
email address but when I'm dressed I'm Head of Products and
Publications at RNIB and a long cane carrying blind person.
First the PTX1. The player has the capability for wireless and wired
connections. You can use the USB slot to connect to a PC if you want
to and the player becomes a drive just as if you had directly
connected a stick or card. The capability is currently disabled. This
is mainly because we are waiting for the international daisy
consortium to define and agree something called the "Online Daisy
protocol". Now don't ask me to describe this in technical details to
all the techies but basically we're looking for a standard that will
work all around the world to permit a whole range of different daisy
devices to "talk to" the content that is downloaded to them. The
international agreement is taking much longer than we had hoped but we
are keen to get everybody to agree and use one standard rather than
lots of incompatible standards in different countries. We also
currently have our technical experts focused on re-developing our
website and e-commerce functions so there will nee d to be some
further work at our end after the protocol is agreed before any of us
can download and buy daisy books. We had originally hoped that
everything would be ready for this November but right now I haven't
been given a timetable so I can't promise a launch date to you. but
when i can, i will.
Now the Penfriend.
Well, first I'm so pleased that some of you have actually received
your penfriends and that overall the response is very positive. I
really like the great ideas that have come in for inventive ways of
using the product and labelling all sorts of things. Don't be
surprised to see some of these played back to you in future product
instructions or on our website. You can either say we've nicked the
ideas or you could see us as learning from the "early adopter"
customers. I don't know of any company or organisation who ever gets
any product or service right first time. For one thing there never is
a "right" as discussions on this list show - one person's meat and all
that. We all know that if you are among the first to buy anything you
will find yourself in a position where next year or even next month,
somebody else has bought something remarkably like what you bought but
that works better, has more features and is cheaper. Well I certainly
won't say you will find people buying the Penfriend cheaper next year
but certainly by our learning from what customers actually say, we
will have improved things about it.
You might ask why we couldn't get things right before customers get
things? do we not test or ask people? well of course we do but it is a
fact that what comes out in tests never quite matches with real life
when people start using things regularly outside the test environment.
The volume issue will be sorted and as soon as I know how and when
I'll let you know.
I am just sorry and distressed to hear about the Braille mistakes on
the sheet explaining the problem with the sockets. I will get a copy
tomorrow and read it myself
and get it sorted. I won't comment further now as I'm
not sure what the nature of the mistakes are but they shouldn't be
there. It is just true that too few people involved in services for
blind people actually read Braille. This doesn't just apply to RNIB. I
have just visited a very big organisation that provides products in
another country and they don't even offer Braille instructions for
anything. You may like to know that in most other countries people
look very enviously at the RNIB for providing letters, statements and
instructions in Braille, large print and audio. However I'm not
offering an excuse. no point in offering Braille if it's poor quality.
The issues around the other penfriend modes is an interesting one. For
most of the people who will buy the Penfriend it will just be a low
cost (simple labelling device with a straightforward use at home. That
is partly why the compartment with the mini USB and headphone and
microphone jacks is covered up. As soon as you mention
MP3 or connecting the Penfriend to a PC you literally do scare off
lots of people. However we have another quite different customer group
- represented very articulately by people on this list - who will want
to squeeze every bit of use they can out of anything and will try out
all sorts of different ways of using something. So the Penfriend has
its"mode" button which can be left well alone by most users but for
some opens up a couple of options.
The MP3 player is simple and it's basically there because it just can
be. But if you want to you can copy a book or music onto it. You move
through tracks by holding down the volume up for forward and down for
back buttons but it won't resume where you left off if you turn it off
but if you are travelling somewhere you could, if you wanted, plug
your penfriend into a USB connection and put some music or spoken word
MP3 onto it.
Some people will wonder why anybody would want to do that but one
thing I have learned in my job is that there is no such thing as
something some people won't want to do.
Folks just are different and think and act very differently. So the
people I have come to ignore are those who state with great confidence
that they know exactly what all blind people want because there is no
such thing as a standard blind person and I know i just can't please
them all all the time.
The publications function isn't ready yet. I think we may have been
better to just not mention it but we knew that some people would lift
the cover to plug in a headphone and then find the USB connection and
speculation would run wild about what it was for. But the little clue
in the text on the website is in the phrase "RNIB are developing..."
in other words we haven't yet actually developed anything. We are
working on it. So there is no content there at present.
But one potential publication could be a diary in large print or
braille with dates on and with Penfriend "labels" on the paper where
people can make notes of appointments on that date. We all know that
for both Braille and large print bulk can be a problem. For people to
be able to write in big enough print you need lots of blank space so
you have a big diary that won't fit easily into a bag. for braille not
only do you need big bits of paper you also need a device to write
with which, before our little Braille King would have to be a Perkins
or a back to front fiddly frame. So a Penfriend diary could be very
small and hidden right next to the printed or brailled date would be
two "hotspots" (that's a penfriend label not stuck on but actually
embedded in the paper). One hotspot would contain pre-recorded
information which you download from us and which would have things
like saints' days, moon phases and all the other stuff you get in
diaries and the other would be blank f or you to make your own
appointment notes. So touch one and you know that day is St. George's
day and the other to remind you to meet fred in the George and Dragon
at 7 o'clock.
How would your individual Penfriend be able to read the label created
by us? Because the penfriend reads a unique number code from each
label and associates it with a file stored on it. We will reserve
whole ranges of numbers (into the millions) for us and other
organisations to create pre-recorded publications.
That is why you have to buy pack A and Pack B (and no doubt pack C and
D) label packs so you never have the same number twice on your pen.
The technology the pen uses isn't actually RFID - that would be much
more expensive - but something called OID or optical identification. I
imagine we will see many more devices in everyday life using this
technology soon.
If we can do it cheaply enough we will produce our next year's product
catalogue using Penfriend hotspots. So you can have a publication
which is quite small and just has key informationn in Braille or giant
print and then further details read by the pen. Just to be clear,
anything like this will be an additional option for customers. As I
read through my words here it struck me that somebody out there will
start to see a conspiracy for getting rid of Braille and forcing
everybody to buy a penfriend so we can line our pockets with the
profits!
Well, fooey! I can't guarantee of course that some mad idiot somewhere
won't say something like "blind people won't need braille any longer
because they've got this penfriend thing." When I was registered blind
in 1964 they debated about teaching me Braille because there was a
fantastic new technology called the compact cassette which would mean
I'd never really need Braille but I think i read as much if not more
Braille now than I di d back then and RNIB has just spent £1,000,000
upgrading our braille embossing equipment. Anyway, back to the
Penfriend ...
So we also hope that as people get used to the pen that some museums
and other places people visit will begin to produce guidebooks with
hotspots or lend out penfriends to visitors who could read information
by touching penfriend labels stuck to exhibits.
So there is the option of being able to download content and read it
with your own pen as you go round somewhere or borrow a pen at the
information desk and use that. I'm sure some places will adopt one
method and some another and I'm equally sure some users will say one
method is the only right one and others will take different stances.
For things like small restaurants they could buy a pen - after all
they aren't blisteringly expensive) and stick labels to a menu and
just make their own local recordings which customers could read. They
could use different shaped labels for different bits of the menu or
indicate vegetarian options by using a square label for example.
We created the different sizes and shapes of labels so that all the
different folks and organisations out there could play around and
choose for themselves what works for them. In our tests some people
found the little round labels very easy to use, others thought they
were fiddly so we have provided some variety.
You may stick two different labels on to one item to denote different
kinds of information. For example, a little round label on a CD just
gives the basic album title and the big square label gives all the
track information - or you may think that's daft. Perhaps somebody
like Barry will impress us all with a use for the different sizes and
shapes that none of us had dreamt of but which we all think is
brilliant. Well if we don't give you the choices to play with we won't
get the inventive ideas!
As more and more feedback comes to us we may find that there is a
pattern of responses and preferences that we
can turn into different options to sell but I want to
wait for a bit to see what people say and in the meantime give
everybody some choice.
Finally the comments about the Penfriend packaging. We hadn't
anticipated that people would do anything with the packaging other
than take the penfriend out and then just leave it on one side so it
isn't designed to be particularly robust and certainly not for keeping
the Penfriend in or carrying it around. As we get more feedback we
will re-design it. The plastic box is just an off the shelf product
which is cheaper than designing a special item but if enough people
comment unfavourably on it we'll look at changing it. I just think
it's too big but that's just me.
Sorry this has been long but I hope it has helped to explain some of
our funny old ways.
John
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