Dolphin continues to update its screen reading and magnification solutions and was demonstrating some new touch-screen magnification capabilities in its booth. Jeff Bazer, U.S. Sales Manager for Dolphin, joins us to talk about the latest with SuperNova and Guide in this podcast and tells us how to win a Dell touch-screen tablet. 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 wall coverage, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
JJ: We’re here at CSUN 2014 with Jeff Baser who is the US sales manager for Dolphin and here to talk about the latest from Dolphin. Jeff, welcome back to Blind Bargains.
Jeff: Thanks, Jay Jay. Thanks for coming by. Always good to see you.
JJ: Absolutely. Thank you so much. We have a lot to talk about including some new versions of course of your popular products and Supernova and Guide. Why don’t you start out by actually talking about guide and you have some touchscreen magnification?
Jeff: We do. You're standing right in front of the Dolphin booth right now and what we've got on our back wall are three large 27 inch touchscreen monitors and we have a video playing in the middle and then on the left and right are Supernova and Guide respectively. You can go up to these things and touch the screen. For the first time, we have touchscreen magnification in both of those products.
That is Guide Nine. You can take one finger basically and move down the menu. If you know the background of Guide, it’s all menu driven, it’s a very simplified computer experience. It’s for folks who a screen reader, a screen magnifier might be a little too much, the conventional Windows with all the keystrokes and moving around might be a little too much. Veterans love it and seniors of course love it, but anybody who gets a little intimidated by a mainstream Windows PC, Guide is for them. What we did for low vision users, we think they're going to love this because they’ll be able to basically take one or two fingers, move around the screen, open programs, increase the size of the magnification or decrease just by taking two fingers and stretching them out for larger and pinching them together for smaller magnification and things like that.
It’s really some very cool stuff to look at. We’re also showing this on tablets as well. You’ve got an 8-inch, an 11-inch, portable Dell Windows tablet. You can try this in multiple environments with either on a tablet or a larger monitor. We’re doing the same thing with Supernova as well. We’re got those running on Windows tablets and then we have the larger 27-inch screen for that as well. What we’ve done for the first time is given you full access to the magnifier from the touchscreen, so you can change your colors or change the size of the magnification. Everything on a fully functioning magnifier you can do with touch.
JJ: Windows 8 made all those possible with all their touchscreen support.
Jeff: Yes, and this is Windows 8.1 that we’re running these all on. A couple of things, for anybody coming by wanting to try this, we’re giving away a Dell tablet. All you have to do is access the link on our website to download the public beta, and when you do that of either Guide Nine or Supernova 14, we’re putting you in the drawing to win a Dell tablet with Dolphin software on it.
JJ: When are you going to draw for that?
Jeff: Sometime after the show. We’re going to keep it open after the show for a little while so of course everybody can get home and-
JJ: If you're hearing it quick enough, you probably can still get in.
Jeff: Absolutely. We’ll keep it open for a while and then we’ll find a winner. The reason we’re doing that is we want as many folks as possible to try this because it’s new for us, it’s exciting for us and we want everybody to be able to take a look.
JJ: Speaking of Supernova 14, which you're showing here as well, have you done a lot with the touchscreen support? That’s been one of the big challenges for screen readers lately with Windows 8.1 and trying to modernize and take advantage of all that. What are some of the new features in version 14?
Jeff: Another new thing that we’re rolling out across our line of products is our Dolphin bookshelf. This is the first time that you’ve been able to read best selling books, periodicals like newspapers and magazines; you can do all of that. We’re working with folks like Book Share and other major libraries to do that. The beautiful thing about doing this with Supernova and Guide is you can skip the website. You open the program, you sign into Book Share or the other library that you're a member of with your username and password, then you can search the catalog from our program, find the book that you want to download, hit the download button and it all happens behind the scenes. No more unzipping of the file, having to worry about putting it in the right folder; it’s all done for you. When it’s ready, you just hit the read button and you're off and running. You can adjust your screen magnification of course either in Guide or Supernova however you need; the colors, the size, all of the functionality or speech as well.
JJ: Do you have typical ncavigation command as far as moving around the books while you're listening to it with speech or?
Jeff: You can use your arrow keys or you can skip by, by headingif it’s set up that way depending on the content. We have those navigation features built in there as well.
JJ: Is the bookshelf feature available inside the products exclusively or can you purchase the bookshelf separately?
Jeff: Right now, it’s available on our SaySoproduct as well as in Supernova 14 and Guide Nine. That’s where it will be available. What you can do is if you don’t want to read your book there, you can transfer to any one of several mobile devices. If you want to transfer it off onto your book sensor stream or whatever we have, one-step basically to do that. As far as separately for the bookshelf, I don’t think at this time. That might be coming in the future.
JJ: Other features in Supernova 14, everything’s always new versions of all the web browsers and Word and everything else, how are you supporting all that?
Jeff: Quite well. The biggest thing we were pushing was the functionality on Windows 8 and 8.1. We were the first actually to magnify in Windows 8 and we have that working on 8.1 now as well. The biggest thing in 14 that'll be new of course will be the touchscreen magnification. And then in Guide, Guide Eight came out at the beginning of the year in January and our web browser has been completely redesigned from the ground up. The web works beautifully in Guide now, everything from YouTube and other flash content to online banking, new, TV websites. Basically you're going to get the same experience in the Guide browsers you'll get with a screen reader.
JJ: It’s my understanding that version eight is a free update as well for Guide?
Jeff: When you bought seven, it was. We’re just very happy with how the web browsers turned out so we encourage everybody who hasn’t had a chance to try that to definitely give that a test run for sure.
JJ: Now you're up to the public beta for nine. You're moving awfully quickly here. When is version nine going to come out and how's the pricing and upgrading going to look for that?
Jeff: We’re hoping within about the next month, maybe a little more. We should be releasing both Supernova 14 and Guide Nine. Of course you never know; we still got to put the finishing touches on. We’re taking feedback from everybody here as well. We really want it to be right before it comes out. Standard upgrade price on Guide will be $159; of course if you have your maintenance agreement, your SMA, you'll be entitled to Nine. And the same thing with Supernova as well; same price.
JJ: People wanting to get more information about Dolphin, what's the best way to do that?
Jeff: We have a specific CSUN page and that is yourdolphin.com/csun. That’s where you can get the public betas and register to win the Dell tablet. When you do that, you can get a 30-day trial of all of our programs as well. They're fully functional programs, we don’t have to reboot the computer or you're not missing out on any features, just like you had the program. At the end of the 30 days, you just need a code to unlock it and you're good to go. Our conventional website after our CSUN page is done is just www.yourdolphin.com.
JJ: Thank you so much Jeff.
Jeff: Thanks Jay Jay as always. Good to see you.
For more exclusive CSUN coverage, visit www.blindbargains.com, or download the Blind Bargains app for your iOS or Android device. Blind Bargains CSUN coverage is presented by the A T Guys, www.atguys.com. This has been another Blind Bargains audio podcast. Visit BlindBargains.com for the latest deals, news, and exclusive content. This podcast may not be retransmitted, sold, or reproduced without the express written permission of A T Guys. © 2014.
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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.
