Techy Findings

Nuance TALKS versus Apple iPhone 4s

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:14:16 +1200

This could be a messy ordeal - The fight of the decade; I am comparing the specialised software that has been promoted by organisations around the world as accessible for the blind and visually impaired with an “off the shelf” product from a mainstream vendor.

I have personally used a Nokia 6700 Slide Symbian powered mobile with the following specialised accessibility for over a year, and it with this experience I call on to make the comments in this post.

opponent in the Blue Corner of this battle, the reining champion, promoted by organisations around the world.

The Specialist Visually Impaired and Blind Software.

# Item Attribute

Hardware: Nokia 6700
OS: Symbian S60
Accessibility: Nuance TALKS
Nuance ZOOMS
KNFB Reader

Pro’s

The Nokia is a small device
It can be operated with a single hand.
Good control over speech rate

Con’s

Bluetooth stack unreliable
Phone unstable would guess memory leak or management issues needed resetting daily
The top row of numeric buttons are really hard to get to with large fingers
Limited range of applications with even fewer free apps
Memory issues with accessibility app loaded means not much room to add additional apps even if they were readily available.
No future for the OS so app development has stalled further
Not every Symbian S60 phone can support the accessibility
Mainstream popoularity plummeting
TTS (Text To Speak) is aimed at supporting particular applications as opposed to supporting all applications.

Capabilities I regularly use

Phone Calls
Receive Texts (dissuade others when possible)
Data Modem
Audio book Reader (MP3)

Comments.

It was really hard having had an iPhone for around 6 weeks to find pro’s for the Nokia that were not true of the iPhone. Although the Nokia had the additional ZOOMS software that provides screen magnification, I found as my vision

degraded and my confidence grew in using audio feedback that I did not look at the screen so I turned off ZOOMS.

The K N F B reader is software that can be added to Symbian phones to enable you to photograph a printed document and convert it into text. When combined with Talks it enables you to photograph printed documents and listen to them when you are out and about. You can save images and text so you can listen to the document later and the reading speed can be adjusted to suit you. The software analyses the camera image and provides audible feedback to help you line up the document and ensure your document is aligned correctly.

My experience is this OCR technology still has so far it needs to go for it to change from a demonstrative technology to an actual in the field technology that people draw on and use regularly. The times where I have really wanted to use it in restaurants for example work colleagues are discussing the latest work topics and in full flow, I would try not to disturb the conversation flow and instead try discreetly sort out what I wanted from the menu, I have yet to see this actually work, most menus are not in standard fonts.

Business Services

Making and receiving calls, using the phone to provide a data modem capability for my laptop where I could then do my work on the laptop was the main capability it offered. In basic terms it is a phone and that really seems to be it.

=================================================

And in the Red Corner,

The next contender in this bloody battle with no holding back the punches is the one and only iPhone 4s mobile from Apple.

# Item Attribute

Hardware: Apple iPhone 4s.
OS: Apple IOS 5.1
Accessibility: Built-in VoiceOver
Built-in Siri

Pro’s

Stable and rarely need resetting
Some apps have accessibility issues (see reviews of the failures on this blog)
A trurly mainstream device that stops disabled needs being expensive out on the fringe.
vast number of apps that can be used for almost anything with so many working really well with native accessibility
SMS dictation
web search using voice commands
wifi hot spot, turns your mobile into a mobile access point
Siri, its not just there for silly pranks its a serious tool too
vast number of free app, I have not yet purchased an app and have tried so many
VoiceOver (test to Speech) supported by almost everything, as in OS based not per application.

Con’s

It is certainly not a small compact device
It cannot be operated with a single hand.
Needs bluetooth headset with A2DP profile support to really use it with VoiceOver
lookaround applications currently do NOT support New Zealand
googlemaps support through Siri only supports US English
poor control over slider gadgets with VoiceOver enabled

Capabilities I regularly use

Receive and SendTexts
Data Modem
Wifi Access Point
Audio bookReader (MP3)
PDF reader
MS Office read and edit
Email send and receive
Calendar Appointment Reminder
Meeting Organiser
Adhoc Reminder (Siri)
Stop Watch (Siri)
Audio Conference Unit (adhoc handsfree)
Many Cloud and webdav service including Dropbox and Box.net
Web browsing
Podcasts listening
Banking
And its a phone!

Comments

I am sure that many will say that the Nokia running the Symbian OS can do much of what I list above, the difference is that I did not! It may simply have been the difficulty in finding apps that would function well on the phone and not destabilise it further, it may have been because the nokia oki suite is so awful (and I hate iTunes) that every minute I spent using it was a minute too long. Whatever the reasone it is so much simpler and ACCESSIBLE for me to use on the iPhone and I DO!

I am still in the honeymoon phase as such I have yet to find so many of the apps that I am sure I will use once I realise they are out there, I love trying different apps it makes me able to join in with conversations at work stood around the coffee machine, “Have you tried this app…”, a sense of belonging offered by mainstream and popular products is not to ignored.

The same VoiceOver screen reader made popular on the Mac is now a standard feature on iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS. It’s the world’s first gesture-based screen reader, enabling you to enjoy the fun and simplicity of iPhone even if you can’t see the screen.

With VoiceOver, you simply touch the screen to hear a description of the item under your finger, VoiceOver differs from traditional screen readers in that it provides location and connection information between elements that are read out, this additional context information helps in understanding the layout.

Siri, is not simply a toy, it is a very focused piece of software that takes another technolgy area that still has some way to go “voice recognition” and by cleverly narrowing the field of context enables the resulting outcome to have a much higher probability of success. Sending SMS messages by Siri, can many times work flawlessly, where as using the dictation capability processed on the phone is more likely to end in frustration. Setting reminders, timers, and contact phoning Sir excells at these regular tasks.

I have tried SayText which allows me to take a photo of a page of text and will use OCR technology to process and then speak the results, this is similar to KNFB Reader and has the same failing and successes, an alternative if you will. SayText is a free to download application from the Apple store.

Business Services

The iPhone can do all that I regularly used my Nokia phone for and so much more. I now regularly check and answer emails on my phone, respond to meeting invitations, use the reminder function of Siri for informal work related tasks. As I have another set of apps that I use for personal use that are not included in the list of business related apps this enables my confidence on using the device to grow it creeps into all aspects of my life and becomes really familiar.

Conclusion.

There was little doubt after the first initial few days of the steep learning curve ended that the end was sighted for my Nokia phone with its limited accessibility tools it now sits in my drawer and the battery is drained. The iPhone wins by a knockout!

As the market for “Eyes Free” software gathers momentum I have no qualms in predicting mainstream vendors will push the specialised software companies in the accessibility industry to either buck up or ship out.

Ciao

Paul

iPhone App Review - Box.net

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:58:25 +1200

Well it’s that time again; time to name and shame.

Box.net have great claims, indeed their online cloud service seems to be on par with others,unfortunately where others have iPhone applications that are suitable for the visually impaired and the blind, box.net do not.

The description provided below is off the Apple app store for version 2.7.2 of the box.net app.

Box provides simple, secure sharing from anywhere – letting you easily store files online, send big files fast, access content from your iPhone or iPad and collaborate with others. Box for iPhone and iPad lets you:

Unfortunately with voice-over enabled you cannot even login or selectr any buttons. Voice-over is a native application that ships nowadays with the iPhone it offers accessibility to the visually impaired and blind users.

This is by far the worst app in terms of accessibility so far to date.

Ciao

Paul

The Solar Power Eye Implant Which Restores Sight

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:47:27 +1200

The Solar Power Eye Implant Which Restores Sight:

druidofoak:

Electronic implants which restore sight to the blind aren’t anything new, but one of their major stumbling blocks has been the need for an external power source. Now, that’s about to change, because a team of researchers has built a digital implant out of infrared-slurping photovoltaic pixels—so it can power itself.

Win7 samba issue on ubuntu Precise 12.04

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:22:00 +1200

I like many others upgraded to the new LTS (Long Term Support) version of ubuntu that was released in April, commonly referred to as Precise or 12.04

Initially everything looked fine, then things seemed to become unstable. perhaps a better way of describing the issue is that windows 7 clients could browse although slowly sometimes and download small files but would falter and fail if large files were downloaded.

It is hard to say the exact sequence of events, suffice to say after two weeks and a couple of reboots of the ubuntu server I have managed to find at least one workaround. looking back it would seem two things were evident:

slow downs occerred and a reboot of the server on at least one occasion returned download speeds back to satisfactory levels
windows 7 was affected, whereas Linux, Android and the Windows XP SMB clients were not.

It would not surprise me if one or more new memory leaks have krept into the mix with the upgrade to 12.04 and this would account for item 1 above, only time and the ability to narrow down the issue will assist.

However, for the second item a workaround is possible that allows speeds simialar to the 11.10 samba package.

Add the following line to the global setting of /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

max protocol = NT1

I kept all other configuration lines as I had them from 11.10 version of my smb.conf file.

Afterwards reboot your windows 7 clients and try to transfer files you should see a vast improvement.

The workaround was found like so many other things by searching long and hard with google, thanks to Ryan Davies who actually found the solution in amongst the google hits.

ciao

Paul

Where's the Zombie?

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:28:48 +1200

locating zombie processes can be troublesome, below is the command I use on ubuntu to find the process ID of each zombie.

ps aux | awk ‘{ print $8 ” ” $2 }’ | grep -w Z

ciao

Paul

Apple iPhone accessibility woes for 5.1.1 upgrade

Sat, 12 May 2012 12:15:14 +1200

Here I was starting to think that Apple’s tyrannicalapproach did have one advantage over the more open and free spirited android OS (at least on the surface), the consistent look and feel that came about I presumed by developers knowing they would be subjected to a vetting program, a “is your app worthy” process to be available through the official Apple channel.

Well the latest iPhone IOS 5.1.1 update changed that view really quickly.

An official piece of code from Apple themselves, sure they will have tested its suitability with the phones own native support for accessibility such as voice-over? With such a dismal failure for voice-over to announce the terms and conditions page or any of the buttons on it I would guest not.

So if you or you have a friend that are totally blind or close enough it makes no difference you may want to advise them that having a sighted person around during the update is probably a good idea.

Apple it would seem has adopted the “Do as I say, not as I do” line.

Apple, sort out out your checks on your own software and NOT just focus on policing others.

ciao

Paul

Blind people are using iPhones and hundreds of visual-recognition apps to radically improve their lives

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:09:51 +1200

Blind people are using iPhones and hundreds of visual-recognition apps to radically improve their lives:

seldo:

Recognizing the denomination of paper money, reading out text messages, telling you what colour a piece of clothing is — there are lots of things a small portable computer with a camera and GPS can do to help a blind person. Plus, there are accessible versions of things like navigation software that needs to work very differently for a user who cannot see a map.

My first week with the iPhone

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:05:17 +1200

My first week with the iPhone:

unqb:

From blind user Austin Seraphin’s personal account of his first experience with Apple’s iPhone in June 2010:

Last Wednesday, my life changed forever. I got an iPhone. I consider it the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever. It offers unparalleled access to properly made applications, and changed my life in twenty-four hours. The iPhone only has one thing holding it back: iTunes. Nevertheless, I have fallen in love.

It might seem hyperbolic for me to say that the iPhone with its accessibility features is the best thing that happened for the blind since Braille, but when the blind are saying it, it rings more of truth than exaggeration.

Netcomm - A Homeplug vendor with delusions of grandeur

Sun, 06 May 2012 11:46:45 +1200

Some NetComm NP285 homeplug devices were being redistributed today and a discussion emerged on the wiring configuration of the house and to keep the data’s traffic as short as possible on the electrical mains would be the best practise.

Well as I have no clue to the electrical wiring of this house, I figured I would use the signal and speed indications provided by the utility application that comes with the homeplug devices to indicate the optimum setup (minimal data path degradation).

So I grab the utility for install on my windows 7 x64 machine and proceed, almost immeadiatly I get the fdolling dialog that made me chuckle, what was the developer of the installation package thinking? We may never know but I found it amusing.

Awesome.

Ciao

Paul

DRP progress with a slash aimed at Orca!

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:30:12 +1200

I previously posted on my Desktop Replacement Project or DRP for short (Techy’s love acronyms), I have successfully setup an environemnt where I was using three desktops.

HAL-DT
HAL-PROG
HAL-Arrow

Each of these environments were setup to use Windows 7, in actually fact the HAL-DT was actually termed HAL-HOST until recently when I virtualised the windows 7 Host environment so that I could try once again to make my move to Linux and the distro of the moment ios ubuntu 12.04 of course as its leading edge and LTS (win-win).

One of the many issues stopping me using linux as the host OS of choice was I am dependant on screen magnification and I am not ready to switch off my monitor and just use audio response to interface with my computer, there will be plenty of time to do that when the choice is taken out of my hands. The problem is that Orca the main accessibility and adaptive application on Linux is awesome in many respects but screen magnification is not one of them, to be frank in this department it sucks big time!

Well I am pleased to say with ubuntu 12.04 and following the setup in the presentation that can be found here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1663660/Zoom%20Tutorial.pptx) You can have amazing screen magnification on ALL applications as it is performed by compiz. The amazing research, testing, hard work AND the instructions were all put together by a good friend Ryan Davies. Thank You Ryan.

I still have some way to go to making Linux my main host system of choice but every step brings me that little closer towards my goal.

Ciao

Paul

BNZ a bank that cares?

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:27:00 +1200

Followers and regular readers of my blog will have noticed I wrote a review at the weekend on the Bank of New Zealand Mobile iPhone application which is available from the Apple store. As I found what I believe to be an issue with the application and its accessibility that was unacceptable after posting my review, I thought it only right to wander across to Twitter and let BNZ bank know that my review existed and was not too flattering.

I am really pleased to say that I received immediate response from the BNZ staff manning the banks twitter presence and on Monday as promissed I had a call from Matthew the BNZ mobile app developer.

Mathew was surprised at my finding and assures me that he will have additional testing done to check out my claims. He also advised that many blind and visually impaired people opt out of the use of the net-guard and he referred to this as getting a net-guard exemption. I certainly would not like to advise any readers that opting out of security checks is the recommended thing to do but for many like myself the desire to have a workable service is the primary objective, other kiwis that are visually impaired or blind should contact the help desk and discuss the option of becoming net-guard exempt..

I have now had a tour of the mobile application beyond the net-guard screen and can happily report back that the application is fully accessible and works really well, and will be staying on my iPhone. I will juct need to make sure I have a headset one before I login and perhaps we will see a new update in the furure, you never know.

I would also like to commend BNZ and their staff members for a truely refreshing approach to customer service, Well Done Guys!

Ciao

Paul

As I have yet to try translating this, I figured I would reblog...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:44:31 +1200

As I have yet to try translating this, I figured I would reblog so I can find it easily at a later date.

iPhone App Review - BNZ Mobile

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:18:42 +1200

Firstly, I apologise that this review is really only relevant to folks in New Zealand.

My experience with the BNZ Mobile app for iPhone v2.0 is limited by the usability of the application.

The application is like many that are popping up all over the place. they take the place of the web site and offer the most popular buttons and information from a big brother web site variant.

The application was found to be INSECURE, unusable and confusing.

For a banking application insecure was an unwelcome surprise the other two well that seems to fit well with banking.

For anyone that is reading this post that is not used to the Apple IOS built in voice-over application then I will point out some behaviours.

A visually impaired or blind user will glide their finger over the screen and as their finger covers an element, that element is spoken. For security reasons it is normally that secure fields do not have there contents spoken and may instead have the number of characters announced as this can help users to see if they made a mistake.

The probability that voice-over users may make a mistake on secure fields is increased as the character entered is not “confirmed” by a repeat announcment (often at a higher pitch) of the character entered.

Onto my review of the BNZ Mobile v2.0 iPhone application

INSECURE

This was an unexpected find especially for a Banking application. The access number field that is not secure doe NOT confirm the entered character, where as the password and the net-guard fields that are declared as secure DO! Thus anyone nearby is provided with your confirmed password.

Sounds like a developer misunderstood the flag meaning and then to cap it off no one bother to test the application using accessibility. Good going BNZ!

USEABILITY

Well as I have never managed to log-in successfully I cannot comment on the meat of the application. I guess that the net-guard entry screen is trying to get three characters off me, I say guess as the text is so small and bunched up my thick fingers struggle to work out what is going on using voice-over. yet the bulk of the page is empty, this damned screen real estate is so expensive developers would rather leave it empty.

CONFUSION

The settings has the version number (2.0) and a toggle option for Mobile Net-guard, I could not notice any difference on the net-guard screen whichever way I set this option. So not really sure what this does. I am open to suggestions, answers on a postcard, wait I think the Internet killed off the postcard industry.

Ciao

Paul

Accessibility & iPhone My Top 10 Annoyances

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:12:00 +1200

Well I may have found the orchid and eaten now at the Apple tree, it doesn’t mean that I have not observed issues, bugs and sometimes possible just annoyances with the iPhone 4S.

In this post I jot down the items that I currently find most annoying, they may be because I need to change something in my configuration, or they could be alternative views that says the way a feature works is the way to go so I just need to get used to it.

so at the top of the list:

Imagine this scenario you have voice-over enabled and you receive an incoming call. You answer by clicking the button on your Bluetooth headset. The call connects and the conversation begins; wait, what was that? Is that voice-over girl talking over the top of my caller? yes and she is telling me the phone number of the person that called, not once, twice, thrice but four times!! By this point I have to explain to the caller as there money is flushed down the pan that I cannot talk to them as I am having difficulty hearing them. I can see that voice-over needs to be able to tell you something during a call such as DTMF digits for entry, muting a call, switching to and fro between alternative callers. But to have her tell you the number that dialled you multiple times after you have accepted the call this is damned annoying.
I find that I prefer to use Siri to dial for me whenever I can, however there are some real annoyances with her. The ambient noise of the environment has to be so low that I find many normal environments cannot be used, and no I am not talking about being out at a rave, or in the pub. This is in my home with children around, or at the office with general chit chat levels in the common rest areas. So Siri you need to learn to deal with background noise better.
Two handed operation. This is such a PAIN! and seems to be something that gets worse in accessibility mode but still present even for people that have no accessibility mode enabled. Apple and other smart phone OS vendors should add single handed operation of basic tasks such as unlocking/locking the screen, answering and making a call, receiving and sending text messages should be able to be performed one handed, with the sanity test is can the task be performed with the phone in your jacket pocket.
Usability of some of the gestures when voice-over is on, I seem to have immense difficulty with sliders, interestingly a good example is the volume control. deleting running apps is equally a task I have yet to master.
Lack of a way to remote onto the iPhone using the adaptive tools of your computer to enlarge the display which is particularly great for visually impaired trying to become familiar with the screen layout. Apparently the only way to do this is to jailbreak your iPhone. Apple this is stupid and not looking after your customers needs, get with it, and do not give me that old cock and bull story of security, Bull. I am in charge of my security policies not Apple.
Siri, sorry but reading out the telephone number of the contact I have asked you to call makes you useless in an environment where someone else can overhear.
Passwords, the entering data into password fields is different than other fields for fairly obvious reasons, normally the entered character is repeated at a higher pitch to inform the user that the character was entered. this last higher pitch confirmation is missed off for password fields. This makes no sense when the phone knows that I am on a bluetooth headset listening to the output, I suppose the issue is that the headset could be one of those in car loudspeaker devices, so give me the option with the device is the audio public or private? default to public for backward compatibility by all means.
Getting a notification while in zoom mode (example low battery) meant that zoom switched off with the only way to get it back on was to power off and back on. Bye Bye Zoom!
RSI, I have noticed that I can get a pretty sore hand after using my iPhone for a short period of time for tasks such as entering settings or other fiddly text input. I think this may have to do with the voice-over gestures and the small size of the virtual keyboard, this seems to lead to really small movements on the virtual keyboard with sudden quick dashes to the area of the next key. perhaps iPhone Strain Injury is the new Tennis Elbow?
I really like my iPhone and I find that extremely annoying. How come Apple make crap computers but seem to be really great at music players and phones. Go figure!

Ciao

Paul

iPhone App Review - SIPFone

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 16:59:00 +1200

I notice that political correctness seems to have crept into the cynicism that once was reviewing. I have spent some hours recently listening to iPhone application podcast reviews. The reviews are aimed at the blind and partial sighted after the fifth one I noticed a pattern, the applications were always presented in a positive light, even when they were useless.

The level of political correctness has got to such a height that developers are goinmg to think that rubbish they knocked out in an a few hours actually passes the grade. It is the reviewers job to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Reviewers that ONLy provide positive reviews are of no use to me nor I suggest the developers looking for feedback.

Anyway, I will get off my soap box and on to my first application review and this will be short and not so sweat; it will take as long for me to write as it did to realise how useless the software fitted ny partial sighted requirements and remove it from my iPhone.

App Name: SipFone

Version: 1.0.4

Description:

SipFone is a softphone developed by Sysun Technologies. It allows any user to register with a VoIP system. Just enter their account and register on the server for their calls worldwide. The setup is done from the iPhone settings. With SipFone, you can call via WiFi and 3G, from anywhere in the world. Handy for any company with a telephony server.

Review:

I found it reasonable easy to configure and quickly had it set up to connect to my asterisk server. I only made two test calls and then delete it from my iPhone and went off to search for an alternative softphone.

So what brought about this quick removal from my iPhone? I use voiceover so that as my finger goes across each element I am informed what is unfder my finger at that time. with this application the developer had not bothered to set the hints so every button simply said “Button” when I shoul have been hearing “One”, “Two”,
“Three” etc.. This is simply to fix but a real deal breaker for the blind and for most visually impaired users.

Update:

I just found about the ability to label unnamed buttons in voiceover, of curse a certain degree of sight is required for this task but it is certainlt handy to know about. see video turial here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az-jVWDS6gs).

With this new found information leterally at my fingertips I reinstalled SIPFone, added all the labels to the buttons and continued to test. The labelling is only good for screens and element that you can get to, you cannot really ;label the buttone that display once a call is in progress, so sorry the issue above remains and is firmly in the jands of the developer to fix.

I did however go a little further with my testing and realised that although the softphone could make calls and used the contacts address book, not having its own separate address book, is really great to see. It also supported G.722 which is a high quality codec supported by ITU so more likely to be taken seriously

It could not however recieve a call unless the iPhone has the softphone app at the foreground and the screen is not locked, this really meansd that you must be prepared to receive the call beforehand. This makes the app of little value for me.

Until Next Time

Paul

Audio shenanigans from the Smart Phone A-List.

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:25:00 +1200

Although this blog is focussed on my recent experience with the Apple iPhone, I noticed similar issues with Android when I looked at it. I never did get to the bottom of the headset issue while evaluating Android, this post I feel has a lot to offer Android users in the same boat.

This post is from a visually impaired person that has specific requirements from his audio interaction with his phone.

Audio support

General View

mono headset support is preferred as this allows the user to stay connected and aware of their surroundings, unfortunately many applications do not provide their audio output to a Bluetooth headset instead the output is directed to the loudspeaker or earpiece.

Headset

Note: this section was completed using the Jabra EasyGo Headset that supports Bluetooth® profiles:

· Hands-Free Profile (HFP)

· Headset Profile (HSP)

When a headset is pared and available the experience below is observed, it may be possible to change this experience for each individual application.

Application Sound Output

Siri Headset

voiceover Loudspeaker

calls Headset (optional Internal / Loudspeaker)

ringtone Headset (and Loudspeaker if not in silent mode)

MP3s (Music) Loudspeaker

Audiobook Loudspeaker

Voice Memo Loudspeaker

Stereo Headphones

Headphones used was model BSH10 which are branded by many. The profile supported are

Audio / Video Distribution Transport Protocol (AVDTP)

Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP)

Audio / Video Control Transport Protocol (AVCTP)

Application Sound Output

Siri Headphone

voiceover Headphone

calls Headphone (optional Internal / Loudspeaker)

ringtone Headphone (and Loudspeaker if not in silent mode)

MP3s (Music) Headphone

Audiobook Headphone

Voice Memo Loudspeaker

VoiceMemo is the odd one out for the user experience and really needs Apple to pull out its thumb and get with the program.

Summary

Desired experience only available on stereo headset (not desired) or with mono headsets that support the needed A2DP profile. If picking any headset you should look for one that supports A2DP profile, unfortunately most suppliers in New Zealand do not sell these models yet they are plentiful in existence from the vendors. The price point does not seem to be heavily affected by the addition of this profile.

On No... I have joined the Apple Gang.

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:16:00 +1200

I have for a while been looking at Android as an off the shelf replacement for my nice and expensive Talks & Zooms software which runs on my symbian s60 phone (a Nokia 6700 Slide). It just so happens I have obtained an Apple iPhone 4s to evaluate. I must admit to being a staunch loather of all things Apple citing them as worse than Microsoft, evil and dominating. So it is a big step I take when I actually take possession of an Apple product and begin to have a wee play with it.

I should note that my look over the Christmas break at Android 2.3 did not see me buying an Android phone instead I reluctantly went back to my Symbian based Nokia.

I did briefly look at Windows Mobile laughed and carried on my way.

Being partially sighted I have some assistance from sighted friends, family and colleagues to begin with but they will quickly tire of assisting me, so it is important that I get to grips with sufficient understanding quickly so I can become self sufficient.

Over the next few days or possibly weeks I will blog on what I find.

Ciao

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - FreeSwitch Install from source

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:50:00 +1300

Ok here is what I did to install FreeSwitch on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Lets get into super-user mode, this can be done by issuing the command

sudo su

After you have entered the password then do the obligatory:

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

apt-get dist-upgrade

packages install YMMV

apt-get install php5 php5-xcache php5-xmlrpc php5-mysql php5-gd php5-cli build-essential git-core autoconf libgdbm-dev libdb-dev subversion php5-curl automake libtool libncurses5 libncurses5-dev php-db mysql-server-5.1 mysql-client-5.1 libtiff4-dev

Next let’s download the latest daily FreeSwitch and compile it.

cd /usr/src/

git clone git://git.freeswitch.org/freeswitch.git

cd freeswitch

./bootstrap.sh

./configure

make

make install

Assuming all the above went well the last stage of the FreeSwitch installation is the sounds:

make sounds-install moh-install

That’s Free Switch installion complete!

You can if you feel so inclined, install the High definition sounds with:

make uhd-sounds-install uhd-moh-install hd-sounds-install hd-moh-install

start the Service using

/usr/local/freeswitch/bin/freeswitch -nc

You should be able to point a SIP device at your ubuntu box IP address, using extension 1000 and a secret/password of 1234 try calling 5000 to test.

An excellent walkthrough was found here after writing this post:

http://wiki.2600hz.org/display/bluebox/Install+blue.box+on+Ubuntu

Virtual ubuntu Reminder

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:30:00 +1300

As an aide de memoire, on the initial install screen press F4 and select Minimal Install.

After booting in and performing the normal apt-get update.

install the package that adds in the missing utilities such as nano.

apt-get install -y ubuntu-standard

add sudo as a prefix if you are not the root user.

Desktop Replacement Project

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:32:00 +1300

Due to an untimely wipe of my partition table information from my 1TB hard drive on my desktop. I find myself once again questioning the OS I use on my desktop, my archiving capabilities, and the portability of my setup.

With all this in mind I have set down some concepts below; It will certainly be interesting to see if I keep to them, which fall by the wayside, when and why?

I am looking to run my desktop PC which is powerful; AMD 6 core CPU and 16GB of RAM as multiple machines.

This is not something new exactly, as I have been running multiple virtual machines on my desktop for years (that is why I have 16 Gig of RAM) the subtle difference is my desktop will comprise of multiple machines.

Goal is to remove and thin down the Host as much as possible.

Portable Apps should be used where possible and synced to network drive and be available for all windows desktops for use.

An attempt will be made to keep the disk drive image size down to below 64GB (e.g 63GB) , as these size flash drives are becoming cost effective it would be useful to be able to take any desktop environment with me.

I will be making an effort to try and use ubuntu when both OS provide the same application. I will see how this goes with MS Office as I cannot have files corrupted for work.

A word about the Host PC and the Guests:

I will have a slimmed down Host running win7 X64. it should take care of the following.

Adaptive tools which are graphic or hardware restrictive such as Zoom Text and Outbook (to cope with my visual impairment).
Graphic intensive applications (do I use any?)
VMWare workstation
Drivers for the hardware
Obscure applications that will not function in a VM Guest, these should be listed so a check can be made to see if ways around the issue is available later.

The DRP VM Guests initially identified:

ubuntu x64 Desktop
Win 7 x64 Desktop (Browsing, Work etc)
Win 7 x64 Desktop Programming
BMT (portable “Blind Man Tools” guest synced to flash drive)
Other Specialist desktops as required

The first question that hits me is “Should each machine have its own network identity?” or “Should i use a VMWare bridge network adaptor or NAT?”.

I think the initial answer is I can see more issues with using a single identity, so they will all have separate ones; leading on from that decision it would make sense that a virtual machine can be seen at the network level as a separate entitiy so they will all have bridged interfaces. Ok,

I think its time to start…. I will let you know how it goes!