Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from November 28th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Listening may be through Vision Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or maybe the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast to catch that. What you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and down can Canal come usually on a Tuesday afternoon
just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia Radio talking tech podcast Vision Australia Radio talking Tech podcast with me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well written. Australia's national advisor on access Technology, David Woodbridge. David, let's talk today about some of the apps that have come to your attention and some of them to mine throughout the year.
Yeah, because looking back in the year, I've suddenly realised that I've gone far beyond in some ways, just using sort of apps on my iPhone or even my Android phone to, to be exact. And I've gone into more getting more information around what's happening with our planet for general news, technology and everything else.
So talking of getting information, let's talk about information around you. The Environment Obstacle Detector came to your attention recently.
It did. And this uses your camera on your iPhone because that's what I tested it on. I'm not sure if there's an Android version and what it does. It vibrates, speaks, and makes sounds when you get close to an object. So it's very similar to sort of other handheld devices. Now I've tried it out with a chest harness. I think I might have said it a few weeks ago and it worked beautifully. Well, oddly, it doesn't work with overhanging trees, so tree branches or leaves and so on.
And I think that's because it's not quite solid enough for the signal to bounce back. So I've currently ordered a head mount for my iPhone and I'm going to see if that makes any difference.
So how is it giving you the information. What are you actually hearing?
I can hear speech. So it's going to say like 1.5 1.5m away or 0.5m away, which drives me crazy. The vibration actually gets a lot more solid if you like, but the one that I use is the beeping sound. So when you're two meters away, it's like a click. When it's 1.5m away, it's like a beep. And then when it's one meter away. So almost within arm's distance away, it's a very fast, rapid, solid beep.
Very interesting. Now of course, our smart device is a source of great news content. And you use an RSS reader. You better tell us about what an RSS reader is and then the particular app that you use.
RSS readers are basically a hyperlink or a feed link that goes to different websites. So when they update information on the website, it goes to that feed. So it's very much like you subscribing to a podcast feed, except this time you're actually subscribing to Attacks Feed if you like,
where news stories pump. So things like in Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age or those sort of major ones, and the RSS reader that I use, which I've searched for all different types of RSS feeds around the world, is leary l I r e RSS reader. And what I do every morning when I'm having my cup of
coffee or cup of tea, I started up. It. Does a screen refresh or application refresh of all the RSS feeds that are following, which is, like I said, about 40, and then I simply read the ones that I want. I then asterisk the ones that I then want to post out to social media. And that's literally what I do for every single day, including getting stuff for talking tech.
What's your way of getting access to X? What used to be Twitter.
Oddly, I use an app called spring, which supposedly is not supposed to work anymore due to the lovely person at x slash Twitter. But it still does work and it's very accessible. So that's the one that I still use. So rather than using the quote X app, I use this spring app because it's just a lot more accessible than what Twitter app or accepts ever been.
There's been a competitor to X over the last year or so. Mastodon. How do you access that?
Yep. So Mastodon it does have its own app, but I use another app from the same developer that does spring. It's called Mona. Mona. And again, the developers spent a lot of time doing accessibility. Now the reasons why I in particular don't use any other clients or spend time really on Mona or the spring app is mainly because like every social media, everybody sort of sometimes. Post stuff that are not really relevant to what I'm looking at, so I tend to read and then share my information
out to Mona and Spring. So i.e. Mastodon and Twitter, rather than reading those particular social websites.
One of the video assistance apps that people use is Be My Eyes. It's been around for quite a few years. A major development with my eyes this year wasn't there?
Oh, this was a huge explosion when they developed the virtual AI assistant to help you identify what was around you, and they were even mentioned at the open AI conference as being an absolute great example of how artificial intelligence can help people that are particularly blind or low vision. So I never used to use bias before, because I
had no need to quote ring people for assistance. But since I'm very interested in finding what's around me when I'm out and about myself independently, I'm always using the virtual assistant in my eyes.
So be my eye. How do you use it?
Simply going to be my eyes. You choose the AI assistance tab and then you effectively take a picture, and then it comes back and tells you what's in that photo. And then you can interrogate that photo more if you wish to do so. So it's actually very well done. And of course, if it doesn't get right the first time, you can always ask it again and again and again just to double check your information. That's what I do
with all AI systems. I always double check. I don't take the first thing that comes out with as the the whole and solely truth.
And you don't have to take the photo from within the app. You can actually have photos already on your device and share those to be my AI, and it'll describe them, which is terrific.
That's also true. So if you've taken photos from like from the camera app, for example, then you can do exactly the same thing. Yeah.
Well, photos that somebody else has sent you all sorts of. Absolutely.
Which is really great perplexity.
That's another AI app that people use.
Now you've spent more time with this one than I have. I must admit, I haven't spent that much time, and I find it a little bit messy to get information out of it, because it feels like I've got a sort of like go all over the screen to find the information. I'm assuming you've got the next using that app now?
Yes, I use it quite regularly a couple of times. I've used it this year that immediately jump out. We were upgrading our NBN and I was wanting to find out about fibre to the home and what it was going to mean. I just asked perplexity about it and it explained it to me. Explained the modems that were available. ET cetera. The different kinds of cable that you can use then to carry the signal around, around your home. So I became an expert on what the difference was
between cat five, cat six, cat seven. ET cetera. Something completely different is when listening to cricket on the radio. Sometimes I might wonder about a particular batsman and I can just ask perplexity, which hand is Hayley Matthews bat? And it'll come back and tell me about Haley Matthews. A lot more about her if I want it. Terrific. All sorts of stuff.
That's really cool.
So that's perplexity. Another one that people use, the Microsoft one. Bing.
I like being in a few ways. One of the main reasons is because it's if you're quite live on the web, so it's not just coming off a large language model that hasn't been updated for a while, like it's voice feedback. The only thing I don't like and I know I can wear headphones is the the stop speaking button. If voiceover reads it out to me, then Bing thinks it's myself or whatever else talking to it,
so it stops talking. So that's really irritating. And the other thing about being I find sometimes is if I'm not using the speech output bit, it has information on the screen, but I find it's not very friendly to try and find it quickly. And that's what I like about some of the newer systems, that it's very quick to find the information on the screen or have it spoken out to you, which Bing does do, but sometimes it just feels a bit too fiddly.
Tell me about Call Any.
Call any is an application for both iOS and the Mac, and I use core any on the Mac, and this is purely and you can use the keyboard, but this is purely voice input and voice output. So I can just simply sit here. I can run the call any application press on the button that says call any. And she knows my name now. So she says, Hi David, what can I do for today? I ask her questions, so she speaks back to me and we have a
conversation now that is really, really amazing. So I find when I want to get straight information or query information I always tend to use Call Annie on my Mac.
ChatGPT has been around a while now.
It has been, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with ChatGPT. In fact, this weekend I had a whole conversation with the AI. Out. I and I literally spoke between 35 to 45 minutes asking it all about computer vision, computer enhancement, AI, VR, R, blah, blah, blah. And it was just absolutely incredible because you're speaking to it and it's speaking back to you. It really feels
like you're using a human being. And I wasn't using headphones, but the stop speaking button is called Speak now, which means that it doesn't activate anything because it's just the Speak Now button. So I'm thinking I might even just apply for the full version of ChatGPT. So I get the latest database and internet access, then just using the free version now.
So let's just explain this one to people that the app is called ChatGPT. It uses GPT 3.5 for the free version. The paid one is GPT four, but this feature, the speech feature in it that's just come out in the last few days, hasn't it?
It has. And because you don't have to try and find information on the screen and it's all done by your voice and then the voice feedback, I think it's just updated my access to the app and the AI system for OpenAI and chat, GPT itself, the application is just 100% improvement.
There's a lot more we could talk about with apps during the year. We'll get some more opportunity to do that in future weeks. The vision store taking Christmas orders now and in the final days, the vision store of Vision Australia.
Indeed. So if you're listening to this program this week, then as of December 1st, that's the last date you can get your orders in before Christmas for Western Australia. And then Friday week, which should be December 8th for the rest of Australia, is the time to get your orders in. So it's guaranteed before the Christmas shutdown period for business rate, which we have every year and just has a bit of a sort of a bonus thing.
What I did last week is I went out and about, so I went onto a main road, I went into a park, I went into a quite shady street. I did some stuff in my backyard and also one finishing off, one inside, and I just called it the sounds of Summer vision Store ideas, just that you can see that this stuff really does work, and you can really have lots of fun when you use this stuff out and about, particularly in summer.
So for people, particularly in Australia and in New Zealand, who can access the Vision Australia Vision store, they haven't been there before. What are the sorts of things that they can get from there that will make a difference and would be good for Christmas presents?
We do have a lot of gift ideas under $100. Quite a few things between 100 to say 5 or $600. And then then of course, you've got the big ticket items like video, desktop magnifiers and braille displays and that sort of stuff, but particularly things for the kitchen, such as cooking, preparation, checking how hot your meat is inside, whether it's cooked properly, checking what jars are actually in
the pantry, and all that sort of cool stuff. Vision Australia has all the stuff to be fully independent, not only in the kitchen, but you think of different rooms in your house such as your bathroom, lounge room, bedroom and so on. Then we have stuff for practically every single room in your house. And like I just said in the podcast, when you're out and about as well, not just inside your own home.
So for people struggling with their vision, it's a good way to open the door to all those possibilities with devices and things, isn't it?
Indeed.
Shop Dot Vision australia.org shop dot Vision australia.org. Before we go, a reminder of whether a details of what you've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.
Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog site which is David would be Dot pod bad Pencom.
David would be dot podbean pod a n and to write to the program.
You can write to me at Business Real where I work, which is David Dot Woodbridge. It sounds at Vision Australia.
Org David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Org this has been talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge I'm Stephen Jolley take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.