FYI Sugar Sugar Says: People are like stained glass windows: They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, But when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light shining from within.
----- Original Message ----- At last - The talking iPod has arrived Stephen N Plumbton Apple has released the new iPod Nano in a variety of colours and in 8 Gigabyte or 16 Gigabyte guises. The menu structure on the iPod can now be spoken using a synthetic voice, so now if you can't see the iPod screen, you will not be left wondering what tracks you have downloaded or have selected to play. The model evaluated is the Nano Red, which means that Apple donates some of the purchase cost towards fighting Aids in Africa. The great news is that this is an iPod that anyone can buy and use, not a specialist product or needing an add-on for blind or partially sighted people to use. This is the first talking iPod to come to the market. You can expect other MP3 players to follow suit as Apple is the market leader in this segment. The spoken menu feature is expected to be well received amongst fully sighted people also because the iPod is an audio device and people will find the spoken menu coming through their earbuds. The spoken interface can be used on a Macintosh or Windows PC but you must use iTunes version 8. When the iPod is plugged in the first time, it will begin to charge up the battery. Eventually a start up screen appears which allows you to choose how you want to set up the iPod. One of the tick box options is "spoken menus". Tick this box if you want iPod menus to be spoken. The voice used is a synthetic voice (i.e. computer generated voice) so might not be totally clear or understandable. The voice used is the one chosen in Speech in System preferences folder on a Mac and the speech folder in the Control Panel on a Windows PC. These are text to speech voices that are installed on your computers hard drive. The more synthesizers you have installed then the greater the number of voices you have to choose from. The PC used to trial the iPod Nano had Microsoft Sam installed which was very basic but quite clear and also Voiceware Kate which is a very human sounding voice. Using the iPod The iPod has an LCD screen, which is approximately half of the height of the device. The screen can be used to watch movies, or photo albums or even TV shows that are now available to download from iTunes. The screen also shows albums and songs installed on the iPod. Below the screen is a touch wheel. This touch wheel is made up of four buttons that can be pressed - so left side of the wheel is rewind or backwards but also can be volume down, the right side of the wheel when pressed is fast forward or volume up. The top of the wheel is Menu and the bottom of the wheel when pressed toggles between play and pause. The touch wheel can also be used as a touch sensitive scroll wheel. Sliding your finger around the wheel will move backwards or forward through the menus. Finally the inside of the wheel acts as an on and off button. To listen to tracks simply move through your menu list of tracks and press play on the one you want to hear. If you want to browse for another track whilst listening to a song, the iPod fades the music playing into the background while speaking the menu contents. Once you finish navigating in the menus the song returns to the set volume. Shuffle the Shuffle The iPod has an accelerometer built in so it can detect which way it is being held up. This is mainly as a feature for sighted users viewing photos, movies or downloads. However the accelerometer allows the iPod to detect when it is shaken. This shaking is used as the shuffle feature and a track is played randomly from the playlist. Disable touch wheel mode When the iPod is in your pocket, bag or even on your arm you can set it to play then disable to touch wheel functions so that it does not change songs or stop playing by accident. Its similar to keypad lock on a mobile phone. On the top left of the iPod is a tiny round slide switch. Sliding it to the right puts the iPod into keypad locked. To the left, unlock touch pad. Display and font sizes The display is small - after all, the device is called a Nano! However there is some accessibility built in. In the General folder the backlight, brightness, font size can be adjusted. The font adjustment has two settings standard and large. Large is approximately 14 point print size. The colour scheme appears to be set as black text on a white background. There is a lot of adjustment in the Brightness setting if people find the bright white background causes glare however contrast does deteriorate if the brightness is turned down low. A useful feature is the "clicker", which registers movement on the touch wheel by clicking through menu items. In conclusion A desirable, great little device that just got even better. Why not give one a try and join the iPod generation! "CCB" google group --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Access the Recipes And More list archives at: http://www.mail-archive.com/recipesandmore%40googlegroups.com/ Visit the group home page at: http://groups.google.com/group/RecipesAndMore -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
