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Tuesday was the first day of the 3 day Sight Village Exhibition. All the usual suspects from the assistive technology industry were out in force. And it was tremendous to catch up with some old friends as well as make some new ones.

Including yours truly Dolphin had a good sized team on the ground, all describing and demonstrating our range of access and alt format products to enthusiastic audiences.

Sight Village is a valuable opportunity for the industry to benefit from a diverse range of user perspectives, and it is also a chance for the people who support the industry to come and meet the companies who make it all happen. I am intrigued by the range of people who make it to Sight Village: parents, children, teachers, students, IT professionals, assistive technology advisers, home users, elderly people, and many more. As someone who enjoys meeting people, I find it fascinating to learn about the different contexts in which people are using assistive technology products and services.

Visitors to the Dolphin stand were able to take a glimpse into the future of Pocket Hal, including support for the ETI Eloquence speech synthesiser, plus an early alpha version of Pocket Hal running on a Windows SmartPhone! I believe Dolphin have been the first company to publicly demonstrate Eloquence working with a genuine pocket screen reader in the Windows Mobile environment, and the first to demonstrate a functional screen reader on a Windows Smartphone. If you know different then I would love to hear from you.

If you did not go to Sight Village on Tuesday, hopefully we will see you there on Wednesday or Thursday.

It has been a long but rewarding first day, and it is time for me to see about getting some food and sleep.

Pippity pop.

Twas the night before Sight Village, when all through the house
Not a screen reader was stirring, not a vertual mouse;

The iPods were connected to the PC with care,
In hopes that many podcasts soon would be there;

The blindies were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of USB thumbs danced in their heads;

And the people of C Sun and Closing the Gap
Not hearing of Sight Village didn’t give a crap.

When out on the blogs there arose such a clatter,
When the Assistive Tech companies started to natter.

Away to MS windows I flew like a flash,
Tore open the browser and typed something ending slash.

The Daisy and the braille and the large print you know
All alt format conversions all ready to go.

When, what to my wondering ears should appear,
But a miniature PDA all mainstream not dear.

With a choice of IO drivers, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment, this content would stick.

More portable than desktops, Mobile apps they came
And they Podcast and Shoutcast and called them by name;

“Now, Real Streaming! now, MSN Messenger! now, web browsing, and Skype!
On, Word, on Excel, On and on excuse the hype!

Through the Ethernet port! through the Windows firewall!
Now blog away! blog away! blog away all!”

Following the close of exhibits on Thursday, I had time to catch up with colleagues and friends, plus observe some of the ACB convention proceedings.

Thursday evening included an interesting meal with some colleagues from the US. It was pleasant to be out of the hotel for a while, and the riverside walk west from the hotel was extremely relaxing.

Friday I spent some time observing some of the ACB business general sessions. While contracted to the council I intentionally let my membership laps for personal reasons, although I intend resuming this soon. Heh if they keep having protracted debates about the use of “chair” verses “chair person” I may choose not to rejoin. Surely there are more pressing issues to be considered?

I bid Gareth from Dolphin USA a farewell around lunch time on Friday. He has a tremendous intolerance of pretension, and as well as sharing my fondness for incongruity, he seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of British TV from the last 30 years.

On Friday evening I had the privilege of being invited to sit at the head table during the ACB banquet. This is an invitation I have declined in previous years, but curiosity got the better of me. It turned out there was an ulterior motive behind my invitation and I was asked to introduce some of the banquet entertainment which I was glad to do.

The banquet was followed by several drinks with several groups of friends and the partying went on until dawn.

Saturday morning consisted of a hearty breakfast, packing, a dip in the rooftop pool followed by lunch with Marlaina and Gary from Seattle who I know from my ACB Radio days.

The journey back to Worcester has not been without it’s issues. Some of the assistance has been truly abysmal. Who trained ground staff that the way to treat a blind person is to grab the upper arm with both hands in a vice-like grip and drag in completely the opposite direction to the one in which the blind person needs to go? Usually I am pretty tolerant of this kind of treatment, as the only way to change this is through education rather than condemnation. Although after a 12 hour overnight journey which included minimal sleep and US Air seemingly loosing my suitcase, it’s tough to remain relaxed.

I am now on the train from London to Worcester, without suitcase, US Air are getting back to me, hope to be home and veging out with a book or some TV in about 90 mins. Tomorrow back to the office, and Tuesday it is off to the Sight Village exhibition in Birmingham.

It would appear that T and T Consultancy have a Sight Village Blog for those people interested in such things.

Finally, sincere thanks to all my friends in the US who made me feel most welcome. I will be back very soon, although I may need to buy a knew suitcase first!

Click to download a brief audio update from Jacksonville including some reflections on my journey out here, as well as a brief interview with a musician.

Checked into the Hyatt Regency last night around 8PM local time. Met the manager of Dolphin US who treated me to dinner. It turns out Gareth Collins and I have a lot in common and the evening was both productive and fun, as was today at the Dolphin booth 72 in the exhibit hall.

I also managed to catch up with the ACB Radio croud for a drink, and they talked me into going on air this afternoon. Hoping to be able to link to audio archives soon.

Pocket Hal works extremely well with the Braille Connect 12 a tiny 12 cell Bluetooth Braille display from Baum, sold in the US as the Conny.

Dolphin presented to Blind Information Technology Specialists BITS this afternoon. Although we were a bit rushed as the proceeding presentation over-ran. Not to worry, I think they knew we were there, and everyone had lots of fun exploring a range of main stream PDA technology.

This evening I checked out the ACB Opening General Session which included a very moving presentation from a blind guy who escaped from the WTC on 9 11.

It has been a busy couple of days, and it is about to get much busier. I will post when I get chance.

Pip pip.

After making final preparations on Friday, there was not a great deal of time remaining for sleep before I boarded the 6:06AM train from Worcester to London. It was a fresh and bright morning in the west midlands, a pleasant change from the recent humidity and thunder storms. The train was pretty quiet at that time on a Saturday morning, and I made it into London on time.

Even with everything running like clockwork, it was going to be pretty tight to get from Paddington to Gatwick and check in before departure. I had some great assistance on this leg of the journey and hats off to London Underground staff who yet again proved their weight in gold. Same cannot be said for ground staff at Gatwick, it seems they were having a bad hair day. And we wasted 20 minutes hanging around at the wrong gate in spite of my protestations that we should double check the gate number. It had been changed. Nevertheless I boarded on time and we were in the air by quarter to eleven.

The flight from London to Charlotte was pretty uneventful apart from a child who appeared to have some kind of behavioural challenges and insisted on screaming at the top of his lungs every few minutes for most for the flight. So I slept in brief snatches.

Since leaving the UK, During the flight I made first use of Pocket Hal to start my travel expenses spreadsheet using Excel Mobile. More about Pocket Hal as the week goes on. While this is a pretty simple spreadsheet the the only calculations being currency conversions and totting up each day’s expenses etc, this clearly demonstrates a practical and professional application of the product. I did not have to drag out the laptop and wait for it to boot. And using my HTC Universal, a device the size of a calculator, I was able to efficiently and accurately record expense information in a form which will be straight forward for our accounts department to process.

I am now on the ground in Charlotte waiting for my connecting flight to Jacksonville. Look forward to connecting with people from Dolphin US, and catching up with some old ACB friends.

For an international airport Charlotte seems pretty limited, no where to exchange currency, and no WiFi that I have been able to detect. So I have fallen back on GPRS. Buts it is all worth it as the girl who assisted me with the baggage reclaim was lovely!

More later.

Pip pip.

I had a quiet Worcester weekend planned. Just as well Dolphin had other ideas!!!

If you want a free limited edition squishy stress busting Dolphin, and a look at the soon to be released Pocket Hal version 7, then come and find me in the exhibit hall at the 45th convention of the American Councel of the Blind starting this weekend at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville-Riverfront hotel in Florida!

See www.dolphinusa.com for more information about Pocket Hal and Dolphin products. And visit www.acb.org for more info about the ACB convention.

Political apathy and worries about the nation’s public and moral health at home, and increasing anti-American feeling abroad, are among many challenges which the US may want to face sooner rather than later.

It is not fashionable to be heard saying it in many parts, but for what it is worth, I like America and most of the Americans I have met. It is obviously the foreign policy of the Bush administration to which many foreigners and a growing number of frustrated Americans are opposed.

I have been welcome in the US on several occasions, and have made many good friends from the US. However true it may be, it is becoming a cliché to say.

“many of my friends are Americans”.

Seriously though, it is a challenge to think of a country who has in the past 50 years contributed more to the world in the way of international aid, medicine, technology and entertainment. But many seem to be asking does all this come at a price? And is this apparent generosity not without self-interest?

Who was it said, there is no such thing as altruism? Me probably after a few pints!

And many of those lambasting the US are probably happy to unwittingly buy and use a vast range of American designed products and services.

The cultural and knowledge empire of the United States extends far beyond her geographic borders. But like empires of old the end will come some day. Are we starting to see a gradual fall from grace for what was in the minds of many the most influential nation of the past century?

While millions of Americans are celebrating 230 years of independence today,. I cannot help wonder What will America be like on July 4 in the year 2236?

Happy Independence Day!

I have fond memories of visiting Goonhilly for the 1999 solar eclipse. If you are someone who is fascinated by international telecommunications, then this is a must day out. Oh and having a solar eclipse thrown into the mix made it something of a no brainer. I have some text and audio which I recorded at the time and when I have a spare month to sort out all the unpacked boxes from my move, I will post it here.

Re 100Megabyt broadband, well your connection is only as fast as the slowest link between your computer and the remote system. Although my recent upgrade by PlusNet to 5megabits is going down well. Credit where credit is due. 🙂