Winter Edition 2004 , Summer Edition 2004 , February Edition 2004 ,
Download a Journal , Summer Edition 2006 , Spring Edition 2007
The Foresight Journal Editor, gives you computer news and some useful tips about using your computer.
If you want to know how to better use the Foresight website please read the Help with this Website section. You can also change the look of the site with the Style Switcher.
Adobe have just issued their Acrobat Reader™ 6.0 software. The biggest difference is that there is now a screen reader built in to read Adobe PDF™ documents back to you. Something that it was not possible to do previously. The second bit of good news is that this upgrade is free. It is around 6 Mb in size so may be slow to download if you have a dial-up modem.
I know its been said many times before but copy all your important data (letters, articles and so on) to another drive or to a CD on a regular basis. We know it is a pain but when you do lose something important and have to type it all out again you will remember. It appears that this is not a question of if it ever happens but when it will happen to you. It is better to back your data up now and avoid all the grief and hassle it causes.
Brent Council have a website that lets you download a text to speech program for free and then use it to convert their website into speech for people who are visually impaired.
There is more information about the Browse-aloud speech software on the Brent Council's website.
You can subscribe to this regular bulletin delivered via e-mail, it is FREE. It contains lots of information about all aspects of computing, the Internet and access technology for the visually impaired. It is easy to subscribe just send an e-mail to "eab-subs@headstar.com" and put the words "subscribe eab" in the subject field... it's as easy as that!
A company called Rhetorical have developed a advanced text to speech program that generates very high quality speech. They and other companies are all working towards programs that can produce speech so good that they really could be mistaken for human speech. Now it is not a surprise that all this money is not being spent to just help the visually impaired, but to power programs such as totally computer generated audio newspapers on CD and so on.
Rhetorical say other uses will include producing artificial TV presenters and so on. Even films may appear to be 100% real using real actors but will only exist inside a computer memory. The reason of course is money. Once you can generate say a facsimile news reader you never need to employ a real one again. Whilst you may not fancy the idea of having artificial news readers, movie stars and so on all this technological innovation will improve the text to speech programs that will be available, and maybe even reduce the prices... Maybe.!
One company is working on a variation of text to speech, this is text to song would you believe. I am not certain why you would want text to be sung back to you, but maybe they are also interested in replacing opera singers and maybe even pop singers. Well judging by some of the modern pop songs I hear these days that really could be an improvement, all we need now is a computer program to write the songs and the music, that will avoid paying anybody at all.
This idea can be taken much further. As speech to text programs such as Dragon Dictate and IBM's ViaVoice improve then you can replace telephone operators and call centre operators with computers. You will then have a computer that understands human speech and can speak to you with what sounds like a human voice. When this happens of course all these people in call centres here or in India will be redundant, but I bet you wont get your call answered any quicker.
If you use the Internet but cannot see the graphics very well, or not at all, you can speed up the pages loading by not loading or showing the graphics. In Internet Explorer select "Tools" then "Internet Options" then "Advanced" tab then "Multimedia" and uncheck the "Show Pictures" box.
Another way, particularly if you use a screen reader you can download a program called "WebbIE" free from www.screenreader.co.uk . This program automatically strips out all graphics leaving just the text which can be read by a screenreader program such as "Lookout" or "Jaws" etc. WebbIE has the added advantage of allowing you to configure the screen colours, font size and so on although it is possible to do this with most browsers if you know how.
Still on the subject of browsers why not give Opera 7 a try. It has advantages for the older slower computers and connections. It can control pop up windows, toggle displays, allow selection of alternate stylesheets ( to do this in Internet Explorer requires Javascript and cookies to be enabled), embedded audio and so on. In a recent test Opera 7 came out as the best all round browser. The only downside is that the free version has banner advertising but the shareware version is advert free.
Recently I have had a number of people ask me about Firewalls, as they all have said that since putting a Firewall onto their computers they have nothing but problems. I too have had serious problems since I put a Firewall onto my own computer, which I only did after seeking advice from several experts' sources in the I.T. world. Advice received was conflicting, (nothing new there when dealing with experts in any particular field), but the strong consensus of opinion was that with a Firewall installed, it actually "Attracts" hacker and virus activity. But the choice is yours, "You pays your money and make your choice"
If you have had any similar experiences with Firewalls, good or bad, I would value your comments.
Any computer tips or news, please Email: