STAR Point Transcript - Freedom Scientific
Guest: Scott Hegle, North Central Regional Sales Manager
Host: Earle Harrison
Intro music and ID:
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EH: Hi, and welcome to another edition of STAR Point. STAR Point is a project of the Minnesota STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. My name is Earle Harrison on this August 15th, 2003, and we're pleased to have Scott Hegle from Freedom Scientific in the studio. We're going to be talking about some pretty time-sensitive stuff here today, because there's a lot of exciting new developments going on at Freedom Scientific these days, aren't there?
SH: There are. I think one of the most exciting things or most exciting items that is available now is the PAC Mate. PAC Mate itself came out probably in December and early January, depending on whether you're referring to the BNS, which is the Braille version or Braille keyboard version of the PAC Mate, or the TNS version. TNS, or QWERTY, keyboard came out about a month later, sometime in January. Well, just now the portable PAC Mate Braille display is shipping, and it's an exciting situation because PAC Mate is a PDA. It's a true PDA, or personal data assistant, that allows you to sync e-mails and contacts and Internet Explorer information, et cetera, notes, Excel spread sheets, all of that, just by plugging a cable into your computer. And, finally, those of us who are blind or visually impaired are able to do what people who are sighted have done for a few years with their iPACS and their Palm Pilots and so forth. Well, that device did not have Braille, but now it does, so that's -- that's exciting.
It also uses JAWS, true version of JAWS. It's called JAWS for Pocket PC, and for those of you who use iPACS or PDAs that are running Windows CE or Pocket PC, you know that the operating system looks very, very similar and acts basically like Windows does, but it is a scaled-down version of Windows called Windows CE or Windows for Pocket PC. I guess I've heard it mentioned in both ways.
EH: Uh-huh.
SH: So Freedom Scientific decided that this would be a great way to get a device out that allows those of us who are blind to do so what everyone else was doing on the iPACS. So JAWS was developed to work with Pocket PC. So, in essence, we've got a device -- actually, two devices, one being the BNS version, which is a small device that has about 14 keys. That's it. Six of those keys are your Braille keyboards keys. For example, dots 1 through 6, plus there's a dot 7 and a dot 8. For anyone who knows Braille or knows what -- what the Braille writer looks like, basically, it looks like a small little Braille writer with eight keys, six used for writing your letters and numbers, dots 7 and 8 used for backspacing and return, and then there's some function keys, and that's it. And it will do everything that you would ever want to do on, for example, a Pocket PC, such as surf the Web with Internet Explorer, get your e-mails with Pocket Outlook, work in an Excel spreadsheet. If you want to work with Pocket Word, you can do all of that just by firing up the unit.
And what's really neat about PAC Mate is, like a PDA, it turns on immediately. As soon as you push the switch, it comes on. So PAC Mate allows you to reach over and just turn a switch on and you're ready to go, and you're instantly at the spot that you were last time you used it, and that's what's so valuable -- one of the things that is so valuable about the PAC Mate is that you're able to instantly gain access to whatever information you're working on or using.
EH: So that's an advantage over a laptop.
SH: Over a laptop, exactly. And the PAC Mate is so much like a laptop, because it runs so many things or so many applications that you would run on a laptop. The only difference is they work under Pocket PC or Windows CE, but as soon as you turn on that unit, it's ready to go.
Another glaring difference between a PAC Mate and a laptop is, there's no screen, and there are a couple reasons that there's not a screen on the PAC Mate. Of course, number one --
EH: So there's no glare.
(Laughter.)
SH: -- there's no glare.
EH: So that's the glaring difference.
SH: Ooooh.
EH: Huh? Huh?
SH: Very good. All right. That's right, there's no glare on the PAC Mate. Obviously, PAC Mate is something that is developed for a person who is visually impaired, so why have a screen. But another reason for that is, your battery life is incredible on a PAC Mate, and, frankly, on a PDA, because a PDA is so small and it has such a small screen. Well, the PAC Mate can't be quite as small as a PDA or as small as an iPAC, for example, because you need a Braille or QWERTY keyboard in it. Well, to compensate for that, no screen. So when I turn on the PAC Mate, I've got between 16 and 20 hours of use on a battery.
EH: Really?
SH: If I use it eight hours for -- let's say in a day, I've got two days of use on the PAC Mate before I have to get back to plug it in. So very, very powerful device in that regard.
One -- another exciting aspect of the PAC Mate is that you can use off-the-shelf applications. By that I mean, if I want to go to MSN, download MSN Messenger for Pocket PC and load it on the PAC Mate, I'm ready to go. If I want to go to my local Best Buy and buy a wireless Internet card for the PAC Mate, I don't have to go to Freedom Scientific and get that. I can just pop it in based on knowing that if I get a CompactFlash-sized card that has drivers that I can load on the PAC Mate, I'm ready to surf the Web wirelessly, or if I want to buy an Ethernet adapter, I can use my broadband cable modem if I want, or I can just buy a 56K modem and plug that in.
EH: What if you want a sighted person to see what's going on on a PAC Mate, is there a way to do that?
SH: Yeah, there sure is. One of the pieces of software that is out there that works very well is something called Remote Display. Remote Display is an item that the iPAC users use. It's a -- it's a piece of software that you load on your laptop or desktop and then you install it onto your PAC Mate, and as soon as you load your PAC Mate or open or start your PAC Mate, the PAC Mate itself appears on your screen of your computer. Not only does it appear, but, if you'd like, you can control the PAC Mate from your laptop or your desktop.
EH: A lot of notetakers in the past have been very proprietary, haven't they?
SH: Uh-huh, very much so.
EH: And now people are just having a blast being able to download software that everybody else uses. As a matter of fact, there's software being used on the PAC Mate that hasn't even been tested but -- how do people find out about the stuff that really does work on the PAC Mate?
SH: Well, there's a -- there's a website that Freedom Scientific doesn't maintain but watches. The website is pacmategear.com, and people post hardware and software items -- well, you can't post a hardware item, but post information about hardware that works, put software up there. For example, one of the -- one of the items you really want to use is ActiveSync, which is a Microsoft product, and you can get that from all kinds of websites, but if you want to go to PAC Mate Gear, you can get it right from there at no charge, because it is a freeware -- a shareware product. Or if you want to get the remote VSP that I talked about.
But there's another page on that website where people share information about what is up there, what is available, what works, what doesn't work; lots of information up there. I recommend that if you end up with a PAC Mate, try it. If you find an item out there that you want to try, go ahead and load it, see if it works. And what's really neat is, as we record this, PAC Mate 1.10 is going to be released, and, hopefully, by the time you listen -- are listening to this, it is released, which will allow scripting. And scripting, for those of you who might be JAWS users, you're very familiar with. It allows you to customize JAWS to work with applications that may not be as easily accessible without those scripts being there, and that is going to be made available for the PAC Mate so that you can script for items that the PAC Mate may not be handling as well as maybe it should out of the box.
Also with PAC Mate 1.1.0 -- or 1.10 -- we have scripts built in for a lot of applications, like MSN messenger, like the new bar code reader where you can take a PAC Mate with a $500 off-the-shelf -- and don't quote me on the price, everybody, but a $500 off-the-shelf bar code reader that you can go in and look at the back of CDs or look at the boxes that are in the store and find out what the contents are of, for example, the Spaghetti-O can or the -- or the Oscar Mayer package, or whatever. That's going to be available. That's an off-the-shelf application. Yes, we knew it was out there and scripted for it, and, yes, you can purchase and probably would want to purchase from Freedom Scientific the database so that those bar codes, when they are seen, will know -- the PAC Mate will know what they are.
But that's the beauty. There are so many things that are out there. There's a new device -- I shouldn't even call it new. I don't know how long it's been out. It's called IAPhone, and it allows you to use the PAC Mate to read the screen of your Nokia. Now, not every Nokia in the world works yet, so I can't go and say, "Hey, if you get a PAC Mate, your Nokia, no matter what you have, is going to be perfect." But if you go to iaphone.com and look at the phones that it supports and you have a PAC Mate, you will be able to read your cell phone on the PAC Mate screen. And, getting back to what we talked about earlier, all of this will be available or is available, depending on when you're listening to this, with a Braille display.
And let me just talk real quickly about the Braille display. The Braille display is a 20- or a 40-cell Braille display that works off of USB. It is a stand-alone device, and it's very exciting because it's also affiliated -- if that's the right word -- with a very breakthrough price. The Portable Braille Display 20, or the 20-cell unit, is going to be nineteen ninety-five, or $1,995. Now, that sounds like a lot of money for all of us, but, having said that, you can't find a Braille display right now for $2,000.
EH: Is that available now, or has that not been released?
SH: It is being released any day now.
EH: Okay.
SH: I will have my version by this time next week. So, again, the problem with doing these ahead of time is that, as you listen to this, hopefully, it's available and out there and ready to go. But it should be in full -- full availability by the end of August.
EH: So nineteen ninety-five for the 20-cell --
SH: For the 20-cell, and the 40-cell is going to be $3,995. Or, to try to get you to buy a PAC Mate -- I shouldn't say that's the only reason, but it's $3,695 if you purchase a PAC Mate. The PAC Mate, both the Braille version, or the BNS, and the TNS version has a case with a Velcro strip on the front of it, and the case that the Braille display comes in is going to have a strip on it. So those two strips will mesh together or attach, meaning that, in theory, as you carry the PAC Mate around with your Braille display, it will be one unit that almost looks like it has a hinge in the middle where the two Velcro pieces are touching each other.
But what's exciting about this Braille display is, if you'd rather just use it with your computer, that's fine. And the new JAWS 5.0, which is also being released by the end of August or the first week in September, is going to come with drivers for the new PAC Mate Portable Braille Display which runs off USB. So you just plug in the PAC Mate into your computer. If you're running JAWS 5.0, the PAC Mate Portable Braille Display will be recognized by the computer and you're ready to go. Not only that, but the PAC Mate Portable Braille Display is shipping with drivers. So if you don't have JAWS 5.0, you'll be able to use it with previous versions of JAWS.
Not only that, if you install JAWS 5.0 -- and we'll get to that in a minute, what JAWS 5.0 is -- it will back -- I don't know what the word is to use here, but it will go back to all your previous JAWS versions and install the drivers for the portable Braille display. So it's going to be very, very easy to use, and we think, with or without a PAC Mate, this portable Braille display is going to be really, really exciting, because it's light, it comes in a really nice carrying case, it has very few keys. It will still have the wonderful whiz wheels that we have had on our Braille Lites and on our Focus Braille Displays so you can switch between paragraph, line or display by just turning the wheel. And by "display," I mean as soon as you turn the wheel, it will move you ahead by 20 or 40 cells as if you're using one of the left or right scroll bars on the top of the Braille display.
That's pretty much the info on the PAC Mate Portable Braille Display, which, again, will work with a PAC Mate, and it will work either with a BNS PAC Mate or a TNS PAC Mate or with your computer, your laptop or desktop. It will have no ability to be plugged in. It's a total USB device, which is -- which is --
EH: Or no need to plug it in.
SH: Actually, you won't be able to. It will not have the ability --
EH: Oh, I see.
SH: -- to be plugged in, so you can't plug it in. So it's not going to be like some of our other Braille displays where, if you wanted to run off a serial port, you could plug it in. This will require that you have USB, but I think now most computers do have USB ports. I don't think that's going to be an issue.
Hopefully -- and I shouldn't say "hopefully" -- pretty much guaranteed by the end of this year, and I'll even back off and say by October of this year -- and, again, please don't quote me, because I'll just deny it.
(Laughter.)
EH: It's not like we're recording it or anything.
SH: No, and, of course, nothing that I'm saying is being recorded for future listening. We are going to have an all-in-one PAC Mate with a built-in Braille display. For those of you who are familiar with the notetakers, for example, our Braille Lite units, you know that they have a keyboard and a Braille display all on one unit. Well, that's going to be happening before the end of this year, and the advantage of that is that you have one complete unit that is going to have either a 20- or a 40-cell Braille display along with either a Braille keyboard or a QWERTY keyboard. So you're, in essence, going to have what I will call a laptop-like device or a PDA with Braille right there for you. You won't be able to take that Braille display and take it off and use it with your computer. Although, again, things are in planning stages. It's possible that you'd be able to use a PAC Mate -- a PAC Mate's Braille display for JAWS, but the portable Braille display will be the smallest, easiest way to do that if you want to use it with a regular computer.
(Musical break.)
EH: You're listening to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. My guest is Scott Hegle, Regional Manager -- is it the Midwest or --
SH: We call it North Central. I call it Midwest.
EH: Okay.
SH: You can't go very far north, but North Central is my --
EH: Okay, North Central Regional Manager for Freedom Scientific, and, my goodness, so there's a lot going on in the way of PAC Mate and JAWS for Windows. Anything else --
SH: I mentioned earlier about JAWS 5.0, and definitely as you are listening to this, JAWS 5.0 should be out or is out. It's an exciting step forward for us in -- in our screen reader, the world's most powerful and popular screen reader. I think one of the biggest differences that you're going to see in JAWS 5.0 is the ability or the authorization scheme. Those of you who have used JAWS know that when you load JAWS 4.5 and below you need to have a -- a -- a -- what do you call it, an A drive, a floppy --
EH: Floppy disk --
SH: -- disk. Thank you, an authorization disk in the A drive. Well, that's going to change. With JAWS 5.0 it's going to be very much in the same scheme that you have seen in the Microsoft products. You are going to, in essence, take JAWS 5.0, you'll receive it on CD or -- well, probably CD. In fact, that's the best way, or you can download it from the website freedomscientific.com. At that point there's going to be a 20-digit code. The 20-digit code is going to be available for everyone in the world, and I'm not kidding when I say that. Every person in the world will have access to a 30-day trial of JAWS 5.0, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing. Because when you get JAWS 5.0, it will automatically come up in a 40-minute demo mode. We will post, not "your" but "a" 20-digit code on the website that you will be able to put into JAWS 5.0, and from that day forward you'll have full access to JAWS 5.0 for 30 days.
Now, if you are authorized or if you've purchased JAWS 5.0 or if you have an SMA that allows you to upgrade from, let's say, 4.5 to 5.0, you will be able -- you will be actually sent, on CD and in print and in Braille, your 20-digit code. And those of you who are listening might say, "Well, why can't you just -- just put it out on the Web?" Well, the reason being, since there's no authorization disk anymore, anybody who has access to that code is going to be able to unlock JAWS. So we need to send it to you in the format either, like I said, in Braille, cassette -- I'm sorry, Braille, print and/or on CD. The CD will run automatically, meaning you don't have to even know what the 20-digit code is. You will have three places that you will be able to use your version of JAWS. If you lose your code or something happens to it, the bad news is, we cannot issue you that code again. The good news is, we can issue you another code, and that -- you would contact Freedom Scientific to take care of that. That's the main difference.
Features are galore on JAWS 5.0, and I think, instead of going through all of them, I recommend that you go to freedomscientific.com, and as I record this now, there's a huge list of all the new features that go on and on and on. I'll just cover a couple of them that I think are really exciting. The ability to support multiple speech synthesizers. If you, for example, are on a website and you suddenly go to -- let's say you're on an English or an American website, you go to a Spanish website, your eloquence, your synthesizer, will switch to Spanish automatically for you. Exciting. If you're on Google or on one of the Web pages that has an edit field, JAWS will automatically bring you to the edit field so you don't have to hit F for forms mode and find it. It will just be there and ready to go. If you want to fill out the form, you hit ENTER.
Wraparound on forms modes, paragraphs, headings, in other words, as you're going down the screen, you get to the bottom now with JAWS 4.5 it will tell you to -- or "No more forms available" or "No more headings found" is what it will say. Not anymore. It will wrap to the top. An exciting, exciting feature that I think people are going to go crazy over is the ability to make marks, or place marker marks. More and more companies are using HTML for what they're doing, and you will be able to set up an unlimited number of place markers on your Web page, which means that if you go to certain spots over and over and over again, you can name those Web -- those place markers. You use a hot key which lines those place markers up, and you type the first letter of that place marker that you want to go to. And that is permanent. Not only that, you can then take that file and send it to one of your friends or to another co-worker who is using JAWS and tell them to load this file, and next time they go to whatever Web page you want them to go to, tell them what place mark to go to, and they're ready to go.
I can go on and on. There are just some tremendous support, obviously, for the new Braille Display, for the Focus, and for the Portable Braille Display. You've got the ability now for four modes on the whiz wheels. I'm just barely touching the surface of JAWS 5.0. We're going to be releasing OpenBook 7 very, very shortly. OpenBook is an OCR program, or an optical character recognition program. It is -- it's especially -- it has been in the past used for scanning, so you can scan a document in, then you can manipulate that document. You can, for example, convert it to an MP3 file if you want to play it on an MP3 device. You can send it to a printer, like a Braille printer or maybe to a notetaker. It's got three OCR engines, which really allows you to -- to be able to -- to pick the best one so that you can scan just about anything that's out there that -- at least try to scan just about anything that's out there.
BuckScan, so you can find out what dollar bills you have in your wallet, that's part of it. OpenBook ships with a product called Connect Outloud, which is a scaled-down version of JAWS. I guess that's the best way to describe it. It allows someone maybe who's getting involved in the Internet and e-mail to at least jump on and start using Internet Explorer. It doesn't handle many of the Microsoft suite of products, but it really will get you started, and that comes with OpenBook. But OpenBook 7 is going to have a new speech engine along with the one that -- the ViaVoice that's already with it. So you can have two choices of speech on OpenBook. You'll be able to do a lot more in the faxing world, both sending and receiving faxes, and it's just going to be an exciting add-on to what we've had already with 6.01.
MAGic 8.02 is coming out, and I can tell you that MAGic 801 -- 8.01 is very exciting already, because it supports two languages. I mentioned earlier about JAWS 5.0 and the fact that as you're reading you can -- when you go to a Spanish, for example, website, your speech synthesizer will switch to that. Well, MAGic supports Spanish as well. Not only does it support Spanish, but if you hit a hot key, you will have your menus in MAGic in Spanish, and that's a very powerful feature. The scrolling on MAGic 8.01 and, of course, 8.02 is very, very smooth, smoother than it's ever been before. So I challenge anyone who wants to do this, if you want to download a copy of MAGic from our website, you have 120 hours to use it. Find yourself a nice video, run it through MAGic and watch how you can enlarge that video on your screen, and it will be as smooth as silk. So it's very exciting in that regard, and just the fact that MAGic and JAWS work so well together now. And they have, but even more so now.
There's a -- something called DCM. I believe it stands for data chain manager, and I'm not a technical person but, in essence, you don't have to worry about video drivers when you load programs in the wrong order. And as long as MAGic -- the newest MAGic and the newest JAWS and the newest other products out there are running DCM, you no longer have to worry about the way that you load those products, in what order. And, having said that, JAWS and MAGic work flawlessly together and are an incredible package for someone who maybe is starting to lose their vision, who's finding himself losing vision and not able to see as well but still wanting to look at the screen in an enlarged situation. Run JAWS at the same time, and you can gradually work your way into JAWS from MAGic, or it will just make MAGic talk even more than it does because you're running JAWS along with MAGic.
EH: There's actually some special pricing going on right now, isn't there?
SH: Yes, there is. Through October 31st MAGic is, in essence, about 50 percent off, and, generally, you're looking at, let's say, a full-blown version of MAGic 8.01 for XP, which I believe runs for about 550, is going to be about $300, and that includes speech. And it's a little less if you're going for, let's say, the XP Home or maybe Windows 98 or whatever. In essence, MAGic is discounted about 50 percent across the board, and we're very, very excited about what MAGic is doing right now.
Program end music and ID:
You've been listening to a broadcast of STAR Point, a production of the MN STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. If you would like to provide feedback, be a guest on our show, or if you'd like to find out more about the STAR Program, please visit our Web site at www.admin.state.mn.us/assistiveetechnology. My name is Earle Harrison. Thank you for listening.