Since the introduction of wireless support for the 2nd generation Victor Stream from HumanWare, many additional features have been added to take advantage of this capability including Internet radio support, Bookshare downloads, and support for online reference sources. We welcome back Matthew Janusauskas, Product Manager for Digital Talking Book Products for HumanWare, who discusses the latest updates for the stream and what might be on the horizon in this podcast. Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2014 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.
Transcript
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Hide transcriptDirect from San Diego, it’s BlindBargains.com coverage of CSUN 2014. The biggest names, provocative interviews, and wall-to-wall exhibit hall coverage, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J.: We’re here at CSUN 2014 with Matthew Janusauskas, who is the Project Manager for digital talking book products for HumanWare, and here to talk about the latest with the Victor Stream. Matthew, welcome back to Blind Bargains.
MJ: Thanks, J.J.
J.J.: Of course, probably the biggest recent development that we’ve heard about is the expansion of all the wireless capabilities in the latest Stream, so why don’t you bring people up to speed with what’s been happening since we last talked?
MJ: Absolutely. Since the last time we saw each other – we’ve done a software update back in early February I guess it was, so that’s Stream 4.3. And as you just mentioned, it’s really focused on adding wireless features to the product. Internet radio is probably by far the one people have been the most excited about. We’ve done a couple of things with internet radio. The first is we’ve partnered with ooTunes, that I’m sure lots of your listeners are familiar with from the iOS client and so on.
So we have access to their catalogue, and it’s really nice because it’s dynamic. They’re constantly adding. They’re really happy to add things if you let them know with the correct links. I think they’re the best partner we could’ve found. And then for them, its ability is similar to the iOS app, so you can search if you know what you want, and then you also have some browsing capabilities by genre, some of their criteria.
J.J.: How do you do searching with the numeric keypad?
MJ: We’ve had searching on the Stream for quite awhile, for like text files and things. Not a lot of people use the feature. What we did this time, since this is the first time that we expect a lot more people to be exposed to it, we added a second mode, so you have a choice now. You have the classic behavior, so I can just – if I already know that letters A, B, and C are on the number 2, I know the right number of times to press it, I can do that and go pretty quickly. For people that are probably trying to learn now, we’ve always had a key describer in that mode. If you press the sleep key, it’ll echo the characters to help you find them. That’s particularly helpful for symbols and punctuation that are on either 0 or 1, to help you know where those are.
But then what we did with 4.3 also is we added a second mode, so now what happens is each time you press the number 2, it would say “A.” Press B and then press C, and then as soon as you stop and pause, it’ll enter the character. So you can’t go as fast that way, but it can really be helpful as you’re learning to do it, and then you could switch to the other mode later.
J.J.: Is it possible to do something like T9, or is that a licensed technology?
MJ: It is a licensed technology.
J.J.: That’s what I thought.
MJ: The classic mode is as close to that as possible, though. The way you’re writing is the same; it’s just not doing the word prediction, basically.
J.J.: Right. If you have “C,” you’ve got to press it three times, for instance. If you have two of the same letter, you kind of just have to pause for a second?
MJ: Yes. If they’re on the same key, you would. If the next letter is on a different key, you don’t even have to wait for the pause. You can just go ahead.
J.J.: Sure. Which internet radio formats does it support?
MJ: It supports MP3, AAC+. I believe we still have Ogg Vorbis. Basically, it’s easier to say what we don’t support right now with those media streams, basically.
J.J.: There are some radio stations, yeah, especially the commercial ones, that use Windows Media. But most do have an MP3.
MJ: The vast majority, yes.
J.J.: Or AAC+ at this point.
MJ: What we did is besides the ooTunes, some other things we did is we thought it was important for, since we knew there’d be a lot of excitement about the feature – folks had been waiting since we added wireless to the Stream for these types of things. So we wanted to provide a way for people, like we’ve just been talking about – maybe they’ve never entered text on a numeric keypad or something. While they’re learning, they’re going to want to just be able to find something as they’re listening and enjoying it right away.
So what we did is we came up with the concept of the HumanWare Playlist, we call it. Based on the package that you have installed, your language and your region of Stream software, there’s a tailored playlist. So for here, we would hit English, North America, for example. What we do is we try to play some things that interest them in playlist. It depends on the country and language, but there’s between 5 and I think we have 14 or 15 on the English, North America.
J.J.: So pretty much a starter list of stations.
MJ: A starter list, and the criteria is just for them basically to be noncommercial stations, either something of blindness and low vision interest, radio reading services, or in other countries, it would be like the government or the national radio, like CBC in Canada. Those types of things we’ll put there, and then anything else we would expect them to use ooTunes to find.
J.J.: Can you add new stations to the playlist if you like?
MJ: Yeah, that actually lives on our server, so we wanted a way to – just like ooTunes, these things, as we know, they can change frequently. We didn’t want to be in the position of people having all these broken stations that we put on their Stream. So we can update that in real time, and any time that you – if you have the default settings, whenever you connect to Wi-Fi, your Stream’s already checking for a firmware update; at the same time, in the background, it’s checking for updates on its playlist.
J.J.: So it can update the playlist, and then if I wanted to bookmark my own stations, is there a way to do that?
MJ: Yes.
J.J.: Okay.
MJ: It’s very complicated how you do that. You’re searching, you’re browsing stations, and you want to bookmark it, so you press the bookmark key, basically.
J.J.: Wow, okay. Of course, that’s very simple. ooTunes does also a podcast directory in the middle of their internet radio directory. Are you supporting that at this point?
MJ: No, not on this release. Podcast, it’s gone exactly the way I thought. As I said a moment ago, there’s been a lot of enthusiasm about internet radio, and my assumption was correct; as soon as we added that, the next thing people would say is “Oh yeah, okay, great. How about podcasts?”
J.J.: Yeah. I think part of that, too, is that I believe they’re in the same directory. I think you sometimes would have podcast results that would pop up on the Stream.
MJ: Yeah, we’re not presenting those. If you do a search on the Stream itself, we’re only going to show you radio stations, because we can tell the difference in those results. And the same thing I guess, like I mentioned here, since you mentioned the Windows Media, that small number of stations that are there that we don’t support, that’s something that could maybe confuse someone that uses the iOS app, because you’d search and find the station on iOS because it works there; you won’t even see that in your search results in the Stream.
J.J.: So you’re only showing the stations that the Stream –
MJ: We’re only going to show you something that you’re going to actually be able to listen to.
J.J.: Do you account for larger network stations where they have say like five different feeds for the same station?
MJ: Yes. We would still show you any of those duplicates, as long as they’re in a supported format. Just because there’s a use case for some things, lower bit rate, and you’ve got a not so great connection or whatever. So we do show you those.
J.J.: So this is using the Wi-Fi connection, and of course, you’re doing other things with the Wi-Fi connection; more support for book services, Bookshare, etc.
MJ: Yep. Bookshare, there were still some things we wanted to do the last update and we ran out of time; the dynamic lists that Bookshare offers, the most recently added books to their collection, the most popular. And then I wasn’t so familiar with it, but they do a pretty good job of categorizing their books, too. They have less than 30 some categories, so you can also browse that way. If you don’t know exactly what title or author you’re looking for, that’s a great way to find something based on the genre, if I’m looking for something with sports or whatever, a hobby.
J.J.: Also NFB Newsline support?
MJ: NFB Newsline was from the previous updates. There’s nothing new there. It’s working really well.
J.J.: Okay. And then of course, the magic question: have you looked at, or what’s the deal with NLS?
MJ: NLS. As a manufacturer, we’re waiting along with all of the end users. NLS, as most people know, they realized the iOS app last – was it late last year, or early fall?
J.J.: September, yep.
MJ: They have an API in place to access their content, obviously; that’s what makes their own app work. But they have yet to make that available to any third party manufacturer, so we’re still waiting.
J.J.: Have they indicated that they’re going to?
MJ: They have indicated that they are going to, but they have not indicated any timeframes or anything beyond that. I think the best thing that we’ve been saying to clients is we’re just as interested as you are, but it’s really within NLS.
J.J.: Is this going to be a big race from all the book player manufacturers as soon as that API comes out?
MJ: We’re hopeful that – we can make some assumptions based on how the iOS app works, and I think the consensus is it works really well, and the functionality that it offers isn’t overly complex as far as having access to your wish list. Judging by that, we don’t expect it to be a huge technical challenge. It’s basically us just waiting for their API documentation. Once we have that, we’re hopeful that we can provide something pretty quickly.
J.J.: I found it interesting that you went a little bit outside of the mold of reading books and sharing content. You’re doing Wikipedia and some other reference sources now.
MJ: Yeah, there’s a lot of Streams being used in the educational setting, for example, and that’s a pretty common expectation on a mainstream book reading device, if you have a tablet or something. On my iPad, I can go and hold my finger on a word, and I get a choice to define it or look on Wikipedia. So we thought why not, since we have access to the internet, why not offer a similar function on the Stream?
We mentioned earlier that we’ve had the ability to enter text and to do searching on the Stream for some time, although it wasn’t used by a lot of people, so what we did is we’ve expanded that, so when I’m in any text-based content, if it’s today’s newspaper from Newsline or Bookshare book, just on the go to key, where there was always the “go to the heading” or the shortcuts, I can press and there was “search”, and now if I press again, there’s “search on Wikipedia,” once more, “search on Wiktionary.” If people aren’t familiar, that’s the dictionary service by the Wikipedia Foundation. We chose that one because, interestingly enough, I was really pleasantly surprised to find they offer some content – the amount varies – but they do offer some content in all of the languages that we localize Stream in, so it’s of interest globally.
J.J.: Would you add other dictionary sources? Or I think that’s easily adaptable in the future.
MJ: Absolutely, it’s very flexible the way it’s been built. Wikipedia, the way that we chose to do that, because of the amount of information, it could certainly be maybe a bit of information overload since it’s an audio only device. What we did is, just like the previous search function, if you’re navigating a word at a time, and I press until I get “search Wikipedia,” by default, your search query is the current word. It’s already filled in for you, and then you can certainly change that if you want, and then you press the confirm key.
J.J.: Because many of your Wikipedia titles are more than one word.
MJ: That’s exactly right, but it would at least get you started and minimize your typing on the keypad. Then the other use case, I’ll talk about in a minute, is if perhaps it didn’t give you exactly what you wanted, and it’s a term that wasn’t very clear, it could mean a couple of things, because of the way that it works, the Stream doesn’t have a browser, we had to make some intelligent guessing.
So basically, if you type the search query into the website, the first result that would come up, that’s the one that we choose, just because we don’t have a way to do anything else. What it does on a PC is it gives you what it would call a disambiguation page, where you can choose the right one. Without a browser, we can’t do that, so the solution is if you do get the result that you weren’t looking for, just simply refine your search, make it more specific, and that’ll solve the problem.
J.J.: Right, you’re just displaying the Wikipedia result. You’re not able to let people click on links.
MJ: That’s right, since there’s not a browser.
J.J.: Which is probably a good thing, because there are many nights where I’ve stayed up with Wikipedia, just browsing for hours.
MJ: Oh, I’m not the only one. That’s good. The other thing we do, J.J., is when you do the search, the first thing is, you know how, for people that are familiar, at the top of the Wikipedia page, they have the nice little concise synopsis for most things?
J.J.: Right.
MJ: That’s usually what you wanted to know anyway, right?
J.J.: Yes.
MJ: And then if not, you can certainly dive in down below. So that’s what we show you first, is that synopsis, and then we say you can either press the play key to return to your book exactly where you started the search from, where you left off, or you can press the confirm key, and what we do is we go and we retrieve the entire Wikipedia article.
J.J.: Do you use the headings and things like that?
MJ: I was just going to say, we add it to a new bookshelf called “references” on the online system, and then you can copy that to your SD card, and wherever you’re reading it from, yes, you can use the same DAISY navigation and leverage those headings and move around really fast. It’s a nice experience.
J.J.: What about some of the more complex Wikipedia pages that have tables and other things like that?
MJ: That’s going to be a challenge, again, without a browser and lots of control. We render the text, and it’s down in a way that –
J.J.: Sure. The idea is a simple interface, though, and at least it provides a degree of reference material.
MJ: Yeah, and again, there’s two things. Most of the time, you’re going to just want the synopsis, and if you want the full amount, one of the reasons we let you save it out to your SD card is to either share that article with somebody – maybe you’re collaborating on a research project with someone – or you could also, at that point, you could just take your SD card and put it in your PC and read the articles that way. You needed access to them offline.
J.J.: Sure. Obviously you’re working on more features for the near future. Anything you can…
MJ: Always. There’s always things coming. There’s still plenty to do on the wireless, for sure, so I think people can expect to see more things there in the future.
J.J.: Okay. Have you noticed different reception for the products since the NLS app came out?
MJ: I haven’t noticed a different reception to the product. I’ve certainly noticed a lot of people coming to us and asking “When can we download it?” It’s increased the pressure on us, and it’s a bit challenging since, as we mentioned, there’s not a lot we can do about it.
J.J.: It’s out of your control at this point.
MJ: Yeah, yeah.
J.J.: Sure, absolutely.
MJ: But no, I don’t think a lot’s changed. There’s still people, and I think myself and you were examples of that. We use tablets and smart phones and so on for the right tasks, but there’s still a place for these types of players for a lot of people. There’s battery life considerations, there’s user interface consistency, there’s people that aren’t willing or able to accept the monthly iPhone bill every month or whatever. There’s still plenty of applications, and people love their Streams.
J.J.: Sure. Okay, if people want to get more information, how can they do that, and what’s the price of the Stream, for those who might not be familiar?
MJ: The price, I can give U.S. pricing here. It’s $369. And then the best way to contact us is probably the website. That’s humanware.com, or you can certainly phone us toll-free at (800) 722-3393.
J.J.: Thanks as always, Matt.
MJ: It’s a pleasure.
Blind Bargains is your home for the latest assistive technology news and reviews. Visit us at BlindBargains.com, or follow Blind Bargains on Twitter for the inside scoop.
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J.J. Meddaugh is an experienced technology writer and computer enthusiast. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University with a major in telecommunications management and a minor in business. When not writing for Blind Bargains, he enjoys travel, playing the keyboard, and meeting new people.
