RE: Announcing the Orion Smart book

  • From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 21:00:05 -0500

ON the Icon the only two methods without doc is abc mode and a mode called
Thumb Braille that uses the key pad. It's a APH patented method.  Now if you
want the Icon with 6 key entry then what you want is the Braille + it's the
same hardware as the Icon but add a control, a shift, a space bar and the 6
braile keys to type if you turn it sideways.

As for the Smart Book it is much much much more than just a book.

ken

-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dale Leavens
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:45 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book

I take your point Ken and I was premature in my conclusions. I went to the 
LevelStar Site and all they show there is the Icon. On further research I 
gather that the Orion is intended to be more of a book reading solution, I 
couldn't find out anything about the platform they/you are basing it on.

Just for my own satisfaction though, the Icon, is there some other form of 
input besides the docking station or is the dock necessary for text use?

LevelStar does not really provide much information on their Site about their

equipment, not nearly enough to help one decide how useful it might be.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:25 PM
Subject: RE: Announcing the Orion Smart book


>I understand your argument and know it has merit.  I also know there is a
> market for these devices.  The one thing that all the cool touch screens 
> do
> not have is a quick and easy input method.  I personally use both an 
> IPhone
> and a G2 right now.  The main thing I hate about both is having to write
> documents and take notes.  You can record with them fine but if you're
> trying to use it as a document or even a good messaging system the input 
> is
> terrible.   This new device improves on the input by 100 % and the output 
> I
> will leave that up to the people as they try it.  I can tell you this 
> though
> Ivona speech engines are the stuff dreams are made of.
>
>
> Look we can all argue that one thing is better than the other.  We can all
> say it's too expensive even though I am working on the project and don't
> know the cost yet.  One thing we all have to agree on is that the more
> accessible devices the better.
>
> Ken
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dale Leavens
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:10 PM
> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>
> But so far we don't have the price for the braille display.
>
> What I quoted was the current hardware as shown on the LevelStar Site.
>
> Unless they have some new refreshable braille technology the Orion will be

> a
>
> lot more than two grand and you can have braille on any number of devices
> these days.
>
> I agree. A netbook and at least you have a fully compatible word 
> processor,
> one used by the rest of the world assuming one shares documents with the
> rest of the world.
>
> for a hundred bucks you can buy a 32 GB card for your Stream. Modern SSD
> drives are used these days maybe the Orion will upgrade to a solid state
> drive. Even that on the Icon wouldn't justify $1,300.
>
> I will say that I approve the use of braille but for the speed of speech 
> it
> will have to get a bunch cheaper before I'll be buying int.
>
> I guess there is a market but I don't see it.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Alex Midence" <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 7:00 PM
> Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>
>
>> Well, if it does braille output, it's got my vote sight unseen.  At
>> the price it's selling for, it looks like you can have a little
>> braille display for under 2k.  That's really cool.  I still can't
>> afford it, mind, but it's really cool.  I wonder if you can use it as
>> an external speech synth and/or braille display for a screen reader on
>> a laptop or desktop.  That would be really nifty.  The note taker
>> stuff isn't really that exciting to me.  I can grab a $150 netbook off
>> of craigslist and load up soemthing like Vinux on there and I have a
>> powerful note taker right there and then.  You don't even need all the
>> stuff Vinux comes with pre-installed really.  All you really need is
>> Pico, abook, tudu, mplayer and Lynx running on something with speakup
>> installed and you got a decent note taker.  Couple of megs more gets
>> you emacspeak and you have something that is just as powerful as any
>> word processor out there, imho.  Add a menu feature of some kind which
>> launches what you want at the press of a key and you don't even need
>> to have the command line come up to bring up your stuff.  That braille
>> display and that speech synth though are very attention grabbing for
>> me.  Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking all the nice apps featured
>> on there.  I just can't see myself going into debt for them when I can
>> get a comparable set of them for ffree on a much much cheaper machine.
>>
>> For daisy, I have a victor reader which also stores songs.  I don't
>> need 40 gigs of songs.  IN fact, I have a 2 gig mini flash card for my
>> music and an 8 gb one for my audio books.  Podcasts, I get through my
>> android phone and stitcher but a braille display, that for under 2
>> grand is not to be sneezed at.
>>
>> Alex M
>>
>> On 3/9/11, Dale Leavens <dleavens@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Well, I don't get it.
>>>
>>> The LevelStar Site doesn't give much information on the Icon, look like
>>> you
>>> don't get any input other than audio without the docking station which
>>> means
>>> $1,300 for the Icon and $600 for the keyboard, $1,900 altogether. For
>>> that
>>> you get 8 more gigs of hard drive than you get on an iPhone.
>>>
>>> I presume you can do input in some way outside of the docking station 
>>> but
>>> they don't tell you anything about that.
>>>
>>> Having braille output albeit only 18 cells will add to the capability of
>>> course but it seems redundant to me to have yet another isolated note
>>> taker.
>>>
>>> The iPhone and come to that the iPod touch already does all that stuff
>>> and
>>> more for less.
>>>
>>>
>>>   ----- Original Message -----
>>>   From: Littlefield, Tyler
>>>   To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>   Cc: Ken Perry
>>>   Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 5:36 PM
>>>   Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book
>>>
>>>
>>>   I seen that! And even with no price tag, it's already making my wallet
>>> clench up in fear.
>>>   On 3/9/2011 1:39 PM, Ken Perry wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     I can now show you what I am helping to work on.  Here is the
>>> announcement that was put out today.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
//www.freelists.org/post/accesscomp/Fw-icondiscuss-A-Glimpse-Of-The-Lev
> elStar-Orion-SmartBooks-At-CSUN-2011
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ty
>>>
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