00:00:34
S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from April the 18th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio associated Stations of 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 Dan and welcome. 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, to get things started, you mentioned last week a fitness app. You can tell us a bit more about it this time I can.
00:01:29
S2: Last week I said I couldn't remember the actual name of the app itself and that's when we were talking about, you know, Global Access Awareness Day coming up in May. Since then, I've actually probably had a look at the app name. I've actually used it a lot more in the app name is called Gentler Streak Fitness App. As the name implies, you can really tailor make this to fit your level of fitness, i.e. going from a gentler to a medium to a more robust fitness type workout. And I must say I get a lot more information from this app than I do from sort of the workout slash activity slash health app itself. On my iPhone being an iPhone app. It also has an Apple Watch version which works fairly nicely. I can also get on my course, my notifications on my iPhone and my watch as well. So if you're a bit, what's the word for it? Oh, let's just say dissatisfied. Why don't we be honest with what the Apple Watch fitness stuff actually gives you in view of, you know, your cardio workout and all that sort of stuff. Then give this app a go and I've got the link in the show notes for it as well.
00:02:41
S1: The Esafety Commissioner has a website, EA Connect. Tell us about it.
00:02:47
S2: This website has been around for quite a long time and it's aimed at seniors who want to get connected to the internet, teaching people about devices, software and online safety in particular. Now this podcast that I just stumbled across last week is up to podcast. I think it's number 15 or 16. And what they seem to be doing is branching out into other areas of sort of quote, online safety. So their latest one was about who is watching you and this was about face recognition being used in public places or shops to recognize your face and gather data on you. The previous one before that was about artificial intelligence, because as we know, that's all the rave at the moment. It's a great resource because it starts from someone who maybe does not know anything about technology to quote advanced stuff. And I always say to people, it doesn't matter if something's aimed at beginners, intermediate or advanced people, you always learn something. And every time I engage with this website or indeed this podcast, which comes out monthly, it's absolutely fantastic. So if you have friends, families, relatives, any of any age, not just for seniors, I really think you'll find the beat connected website really, really exciting. And also these podcasts that are coming out monthly. So go and enjoy and be safe online.
00:04:15
S1: So this is from the East Safety Commissioner and it's the E! Connect website. Staying with Safety, tell us a little bit about USB cables and a data blocker you've discovered.
00:04:29
S2: When you come across these wonderful USB A or C charges in airports and in hotels. What you may not be aware is that nasty people, as in hackers, can actually use that port connection to hack into your PC or personal computer or your smartphone or tablet. And what happens is that they transfer malware over. They can steal your data, all sorts of horrible, nasty things. Now there's two types of cables. There's a cable that we use as smartphone users, which is for both data transfer and charging. But when you just want to come along to a, you know, a USB, A or C port and just charge your phone, you really need to do this in two ways. You get yourself a charging only cable, so no data or malware can be transmitted. So that's one way to do it. If you want to be more fancy. They talk about these things called data blockers. Now there's another name that I'm not going to use because people might find it. A bit strange. So at the moment the official term is data blockers. And what that does, it stops data being transferred from the charging port into the PC or smartphone or tablet that's being used. So you can use your standard cable that you get in the box with your, you know, your Mac or your PC laptop windows or your smartphone or tablet. And what happens is it sits between and this is why it's called a block. It sits between your, you know, your data charging cable and the computer, whatever it might be. You've got it plugged in. So it stops that malware. And the other thing when I'm on that topic, Steve, is that if you're using a public Wi-Fi network, which is highly dangerous thing to do, particularly if you're doing banking, use a virtual private network or VPN because that's like you then using a tunnel into the Internet and nobody can break into you. So two things you need to do get yourself a data blocker and get yourself a VPN and then you'll be completely safe from both hardware malware attacks and of course, software attacks via the internet.
00:06:35
S1: Let's go for something brighter now. The Blind Shell classic phone, which we've talked about for some time, and you've found some new apps for the Blind Shell Classic two.
00:06:45
S2: I have. I actually saw it originally announced on Top Tech Tidbits the other day. And they just mentioned Spotify, which is, you know, absolutely fantastic cause that's the online streaming service that I absolutely love myself. So that being available now on the Blind Shield Classic two, which is great, you log in with your username and password and hey presto or your playlists and everything else come up. But they also did another two apps which I think should have been mentioned. And I'll get to the most important one in a minute. The second one was of course, tic tac toe, as you call it. I think Steve Noughts and crosses back in the old days. Of course, I don't I don't know quite why. No, it's why it's called tic tac toe, because when you play it, it's got crosses and circles. So who knows? Just a warning about that, though. You have to use your keys to navigate the actual three by three grid when you're playing tic tac toe. Of course, I tried to play it like you would normally do on a on a normal board. You know, I'll put down one, I put down five and I put down nine in a diagonal. That's not the way the game's played. It uses four and six, two and eight to navigate horizontally and vertically and blah blah, blah. So I'll let you work it out, but don't play it if you think it's a normal physical game board, it's not. Number three. Most importantly for the app is GP's points. Now this is not a navigation system as such. It's like the old lodestone on the old smartphone Nokia days where you could put in a location, so a GPS point and then you can navigate to that point and that's what GP's points is. Don't try it inside because it will not work. I can tell you that right now it works outside and it will navigate to your point that you've put in previously quite nicely.
00:08:25
S1: Quite an interesting one to play with. It is the Blind Shell Classic is very popular, isn't it, because it's a smartphone with physical buttons?
00:08:34
S2: It is. And look, even though it's called a blind Shell Classic two, it's also got low vision features as well. And you can turn off the switch completely. And it's just a nice, straightforward, safe phone to use.
00:08:46
S1: Tell us about Color Star from Chaotic.
00:08:50
S2: So what it is, is it's a color detector that can apparently detect up to, well, let's just say lots and lots and lots and lots of different colors. And then it also has a light detector function in it, which also is interesting because it gives you the intensity of light as well, which is what sort of normal smartphone light detectors also do. And the color version of the of the mode, you can get it to be sort of like standard colors or you can get it to be artistic colors such as, I don't know, fuchsia sunrise over a tropical island or something weird like that. My suggestion is when you have a look at the color star and by the way, it's American spelling at Koloa Star, I would take your smartphone along, which is also got color detectors and light detectors even as with the blind show classic too. And maybe do a bit of a comparison between the color star and your smartphone because you've already got your smartphone already, or maybe you're thinking about a smartphone and it might be a good comparison because the color star in Australia, which is supplied by Pacific Vision, is roughly in the price of $900 Australian. So it's fairly pricey. And for that price you would want it to work extremely well. Remembering color is an output of light, so you've got to hold this thing right up to the thing that you want to get the color for. So yes, I would do a really good solid comparison between other color detection apps in particular and the Color Star hardware, one.
00:10:22
S1: That one color star from Chaotic and they're sold by Pacific Vision. Tell us about Braille doodle.
00:10:30
S2: This is a really. Cool device so people might with young children quite a few years ago. Now remember the Magna doodle? What the magnet doodle was was a whole bunch of little magnets that were under sort of like a very thin membrane. And you could, you know, get your finger and you could draw, I can't remember with a proper pencil and not Steve, but you could literally draw lines and that sort of stuff and shapes and everything else. So what this finally is, is you can with a little stylus thing, you can pull up little pins or they're actually little round ball bearings up to tiny little holes to produce Braille. And of course, being a tactile form, you can make lines, circles, diagrams, bar charts, Braille, etcetera, etcetera. And apparently there's hundreds of dots in this sort of square thing, I'm assuming. So I would imagine it would have to be at least 2 to 300 pins across and down to get hundreds of dots to be available to do your drawing and so on. It's a Kickstarter and I believe it's restarting again on May 2nd in the US $70 to pre-order it's not electronic is purely mechanical to me. It sounds like an inside out hand frame or slate, but rather than pushing the pins to make Braille out the other side, you pull them up. So I'm just intrigued how this is going to work in the wild.
00:11:52
S1: Let's talk about Braille now. The big vision books from Vision Australia are an example of this kind of Braille, which doesn't quite meet it for everyone.
00:12:01
S2: This is a common way of mass producing Braille, or it seems to be these days. So it's not just the big vision books I've seen in some other books that have done this same thing and what they do. There's a printing process apparently called UV printing, which my wife, as a crafter, knows quite well. And it's a way of embossing or raising tactile stuff on a surface without punching into it, i.e. embossing in Braille, if you like. So these are raised dots on paper and the way these books work is that you'll have both a print text and a print ink Braille version on the same page. So you get Braille words and normal print words as well. The problem with this type of ink print Braille is because it's not embossed, it tends to get a bit flat over a period of time. So whilst you can read some of the Braille in the book, you can't sort of read all of it. So what I suggest to people is, number one, this is an absolutely great way of showing people what Braille is like, but if you're giving it to somebody who really does need to read or tactile as in feeling the book in Braille, then you really need to get a proper embossed version of the book. And of course you can get that from here in Australia for big vision books from the Vision Australia Library. But as a general rule, this is just seems to be the way now, Steve, of mass producing both print and Braille books. And I just think it's a way of showing sider people in particular what Braille is like for children.
00:13:37
S1: How do you catch up with David Woodbridge on social media these days?
00:13:41
S2: I tend to share out to both Twitter, so that's actually at Woodbridge and I also share to Mastodon, and that's actually Woody, as in WWE at Dragons cave.space, as in the word Sparky. And then of course, because I've got my podcast starting up again properly on David would be.podbean.com. That's where I'm also putting more and more content.
00:14:08
S1: Just before we go a reminder of where people listening can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.
00:14:16
S2: Check out our blog site which is David would it be r dot podbean pad?
00:14:21
S1: Com David would be a pod bean pod bean to write to the program.
00:14:28
S2: You can write to me at Virgin Australia where I work, which is David Woodbridge, How it sounds at Vision Australia. Org.
00:14:35
S1: David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Dawg 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.
S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from April the 18th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio associated Stations of 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 Dan and welcome. 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, to get things started, you mentioned last week a fitness app. You can tell us a bit more about it this time I can.
00:01:29
S2: Last week I said I couldn't remember the actual name of the app itself and that's when we were talking about, you know, Global Access Awareness Day coming up in May. Since then, I've actually probably had a look at the app name. I've actually used it a lot more in the app name is called Gentler Streak Fitness App. As the name implies, you can really tailor make this to fit your level of fitness, i.e. going from a gentler to a medium to a more robust fitness type workout. And I must say I get a lot more information from this app than I do from sort of the workout slash activity slash health app itself. On my iPhone being an iPhone app. It also has an Apple Watch version which works fairly nicely. I can also get on my course, my notifications on my iPhone and my watch as well. So if you're a bit, what's the word for it? Oh, let's just say dissatisfied. Why don't we be honest with what the Apple Watch fitness stuff actually gives you in view of, you know, your cardio workout and all that sort of stuff. Then give this app a go and I've got the link in the show notes for it as well.
00:02:41
S1: The Esafety Commissioner has a website, EA Connect. Tell us about it.
00:02:47
S2: This website has been around for quite a long time and it's aimed at seniors who want to get connected to the internet, teaching people about devices, software and online safety in particular. Now this podcast that I just stumbled across last week is up to podcast. I think it's number 15 or 16. And what they seem to be doing is branching out into other areas of sort of quote, online safety. So their latest one was about who is watching you and this was about face recognition being used in public places or shops to recognize your face and gather data on you. The previous one before that was about artificial intelligence, because as we know, that's all the rave at the moment. It's a great resource because it starts from someone who maybe does not know anything about technology to quote advanced stuff. And I always say to people, it doesn't matter if something's aimed at beginners, intermediate or advanced people, you always learn something. And every time I engage with this website or indeed this podcast, which comes out monthly, it's absolutely fantastic. So if you have friends, families, relatives, any of any age, not just for seniors, I really think you'll find the beat connected website really, really exciting. And also these podcasts that are coming out monthly. So go and enjoy and be safe online.
00:04:15
S1: So this is from the East Safety Commissioner and it's the E! Connect website. Staying with Safety, tell us a little bit about USB cables and a data blocker you've discovered.
00:04:29
S2: When you come across these wonderful USB A or C charges in airports and in hotels. What you may not be aware is that nasty people, as in hackers, can actually use that port connection to hack into your PC or personal computer or your smartphone or tablet. And what happens is that they transfer malware over. They can steal your data, all sorts of horrible, nasty things. Now there's two types of cables. There's a cable that we use as smartphone users, which is for both data transfer and charging. But when you just want to come along to a, you know, a USB, A or C port and just charge your phone, you really need to do this in two ways. You get yourself a charging only cable, so no data or malware can be transmitted. So that's one way to do it. If you want to be more fancy. They talk about these things called data blockers. Now there's another name that I'm not going to use because people might find it. A bit strange. So at the moment the official term is data blockers. And what that does, it stops data being transferred from the charging port into the PC or smartphone or tablet that's being used. So you can use your standard cable that you get in the box with your, you know, your Mac or your PC laptop windows or your smartphone or tablet. And what happens is it sits between and this is why it's called a block. It sits between your, you know, your data charging cable and the computer, whatever it might be. You've got it plugged in. So it stops that malware. And the other thing when I'm on that topic, Steve, is that if you're using a public Wi-Fi network, which is highly dangerous thing to do, particularly if you're doing banking, use a virtual private network or VPN because that's like you then using a tunnel into the Internet and nobody can break into you. So two things you need to do get yourself a data blocker and get yourself a VPN and then you'll be completely safe from both hardware malware attacks and of course, software attacks via the internet.
00:06:35
S1: Let's go for something brighter now. The Blind Shell classic phone, which we've talked about for some time, and you've found some new apps for the Blind Shell Classic two.
00:06:45
S2: I have. I actually saw it originally announced on Top Tech Tidbits the other day. And they just mentioned Spotify, which is, you know, absolutely fantastic cause that's the online streaming service that I absolutely love myself. So that being available now on the Blind Shield Classic two, which is great, you log in with your username and password and hey presto or your playlists and everything else come up. But they also did another two apps which I think should have been mentioned. And I'll get to the most important one in a minute. The second one was of course, tic tac toe, as you call it. I think Steve Noughts and crosses back in the old days. Of course, I don't I don't know quite why. No, it's why it's called tic tac toe, because when you play it, it's got crosses and circles. So who knows? Just a warning about that, though. You have to use your keys to navigate the actual three by three grid when you're playing tic tac toe. Of course, I tried to play it like you would normally do on a on a normal board. You know, I'll put down one, I put down five and I put down nine in a diagonal. That's not the way the game's played. It uses four and six, two and eight to navigate horizontally and vertically and blah blah, blah. So I'll let you work it out, but don't play it if you think it's a normal physical game board, it's not. Number three. Most importantly for the app is GP's points. Now this is not a navigation system as such. It's like the old lodestone on the old smartphone Nokia days where you could put in a location, so a GPS point and then you can navigate to that point and that's what GP's points is. Don't try it inside because it will not work. I can tell you that right now it works outside and it will navigate to your point that you've put in previously quite nicely.
00:08:25
S1: Quite an interesting one to play with. It is the Blind Shell Classic is very popular, isn't it, because it's a smartphone with physical buttons?
00:08:34
S2: It is. And look, even though it's called a blind Shell Classic two, it's also got low vision features as well. And you can turn off the switch completely. And it's just a nice, straightforward, safe phone to use.
00:08:46
S1: Tell us about Color Star from Chaotic.
00:08:50
S2: So what it is, is it's a color detector that can apparently detect up to, well, let's just say lots and lots and lots and lots of different colors. And then it also has a light detector function in it, which also is interesting because it gives you the intensity of light as well, which is what sort of normal smartphone light detectors also do. And the color version of the of the mode, you can get it to be sort of like standard colors or you can get it to be artistic colors such as, I don't know, fuchsia sunrise over a tropical island or something weird like that. My suggestion is when you have a look at the color star and by the way, it's American spelling at Koloa Star, I would take your smartphone along, which is also got color detectors and light detectors even as with the blind show classic too. And maybe do a bit of a comparison between the color star and your smartphone because you've already got your smartphone already, or maybe you're thinking about a smartphone and it might be a good comparison because the color star in Australia, which is supplied by Pacific Vision, is roughly in the price of $900 Australian. So it's fairly pricey. And for that price you would want it to work extremely well. Remembering color is an output of light, so you've got to hold this thing right up to the thing that you want to get the color for. So yes, I would do a really good solid comparison between other color detection apps in particular and the Color Star hardware, one.
00:10:22
S1: That one color star from Chaotic and they're sold by Pacific Vision. Tell us about Braille doodle.
00:10:30
S2: This is a really. Cool device so people might with young children quite a few years ago. Now remember the Magna doodle? What the magnet doodle was was a whole bunch of little magnets that were under sort of like a very thin membrane. And you could, you know, get your finger and you could draw, I can't remember with a proper pencil and not Steve, but you could literally draw lines and that sort of stuff and shapes and everything else. So what this finally is, is you can with a little stylus thing, you can pull up little pins or they're actually little round ball bearings up to tiny little holes to produce Braille. And of course, being a tactile form, you can make lines, circles, diagrams, bar charts, Braille, etcetera, etcetera. And apparently there's hundreds of dots in this sort of square thing, I'm assuming. So I would imagine it would have to be at least 2 to 300 pins across and down to get hundreds of dots to be available to do your drawing and so on. It's a Kickstarter and I believe it's restarting again on May 2nd in the US $70 to pre-order it's not electronic is purely mechanical to me. It sounds like an inside out hand frame or slate, but rather than pushing the pins to make Braille out the other side, you pull them up. So I'm just intrigued how this is going to work in the wild.
00:11:52
S1: Let's talk about Braille now. The big vision books from Vision Australia are an example of this kind of Braille, which doesn't quite meet it for everyone.
00:12:01
S2: This is a common way of mass producing Braille, or it seems to be these days. So it's not just the big vision books I've seen in some other books that have done this same thing and what they do. There's a printing process apparently called UV printing, which my wife, as a crafter, knows quite well. And it's a way of embossing or raising tactile stuff on a surface without punching into it, i.e. embossing in Braille, if you like. So these are raised dots on paper and the way these books work is that you'll have both a print text and a print ink Braille version on the same page. So you get Braille words and normal print words as well. The problem with this type of ink print Braille is because it's not embossed, it tends to get a bit flat over a period of time. So whilst you can read some of the Braille in the book, you can't sort of read all of it. So what I suggest to people is, number one, this is an absolutely great way of showing people what Braille is like, but if you're giving it to somebody who really does need to read or tactile as in feeling the book in Braille, then you really need to get a proper embossed version of the book. And of course you can get that from here in Australia for big vision books from the Vision Australia Library. But as a general rule, this is just seems to be the way now, Steve, of mass producing both print and Braille books. And I just think it's a way of showing sider people in particular what Braille is like for children.
00:13:37
S1: How do you catch up with David Woodbridge on social media these days?
00:13:41
S2: I tend to share out to both Twitter, so that's actually at Woodbridge and I also share to Mastodon, and that's actually Woody, as in WWE at Dragons cave.space, as in the word Sparky. And then of course, because I've got my podcast starting up again properly on David would be.podbean.com. That's where I'm also putting more and more content.
00:14:08
S1: Just before we go a reminder of where people listening can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.
00:14:16
S2: Check out our blog site which is David would it be r dot podbean pad?
00:14:21
S1: Com David would be a pod bean pod bean to write to the program.
00:14:28
S2: You can write to me at Virgin Australia where I work, which is David Woodbridge, How it sounds at Vision Australia. Org.
00:14:35
S1: David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Dawg 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.
