RE: Announcing the Orion Smart book

  • From: "Homme, James" <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:57:06 -0500

Hi,
One of the ideas that keeps this whole thing going is that we have those of us 
who, for whatever reason, believe that we need products specifically designed 
for the blind, and we have people who work in the blindness field, who are 
sighted, who feel this way. Both groups could step back and realize that it's 
really the features we need, not just the specialized products. I'm definitely 
in favor of having specialized stuff such as screen readers and Braille 
displays. I'm less in favor of software that has screen reader features. Now 
that things like smart phones have gotten so powerful, I'm less in favor of 
specialized hardware than I used to be. At the same time, though, I like the 
Braille  and differently shaped buttons on my digital talking book player. So I 
guess I'm not totally sure what I want. :)

Jim

Besides that, there is the human nature factor that we like convenience. We may 
not want to put together our own mix of features by getting a piece of hardware 
here and downloading and installing software from this sight over there. We 
want stuff to just work, and we want to get it in one place.


-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels Roos
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 4:03 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Announcing the Orion Smart book

Point taken Cina, point taken.

I'm assuming you are referring to the blind community as being the most
uneducated consumer base ever documented. Well, this is probably the
key. From a local perspective I can definitely say that here in South
Africa blind people seem to be very well informed about assistive
technologies, and if compared to abled bodied individuals the blind
community is on average way more tech savvy. The problem is, the AT
space is so complicated and full of all sorts of options. I consider
myself fairly well informed, yet every now and again Ihear about
something I've never heard about ever before.    We should really strive
to inform everyone better.

So, I think any new AT device or software is a good thing in itself, the
problem is with the system at large, the lobsided market, greedy
companies, government interferance -- you named it. Imagine everyone
would just back off and let the market sort itself out. I don't know, I
just know things could be way better and benefit many more than are
benefitting right now.

The encouraging and amazing thing is, amidst all of the injustices
individuals arise that break the vicious cycle by offering their second
hand AT devices at fair prices,by contributing to efforts like Vinux,
and some companies asking reasonable prices.

I salute you / them!

On 3/10/2011 8:42 AM, Sina Bahram wrote:
> There's a market alright. Fed by world governments, insane trade agreements, 
> blood sucking AT companies, and the documentedly most
> uneducated consumer base ever to exist in the history of consumer bases.
>
> I so should not get involved in this thread.
>
> Signing off.
>
> Take care,
> Sina
>
>
> -----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-LevelStar-Orion-SmartBooks-At-CSUN-2011
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ty
>>>
>> __________
>> View the list's information and change your settings at
>> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>>
>>
> __________
> View the list's information and change your settings at
> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>
> __________
> View the list's information and change your settings at
> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>

--
Kerneels Roos
Cell: +27 (0)82 309 1998
Skype: cornelis.roos

"There are only two kinds of programming languages in the world; those everyone 
complains about, and those nobody uses."

__________
View the list's information and change your settings at
//www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind


This e-mail and any attachments to it are confidential and are intended solely 
for use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.  If you have 
received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and then 
delete it.  If you are not the intended recipient, you must not keep, use, 
disclose, copy or distribute this e-mail without the author's prior permission. 
 The views expressed in this e-mail message do not necessarily represent the 
views of Highmark Inc., its subsidiaries, or affiliates.
__________
View the list's information and change your settings at
//www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind

Other related posts: