Jared's Rambling Thoughts

Deaf411 - Which cities are deaf-friendly?
Jared Evans David Rosenbaum and Andrew Veith have developed and launched an interesting website called DEAF411. Deaf411 will be taking on the challenge of identifying how cities are considered deaf-friendly. Deaf411 will be researching and collecting information on which cities are deaf-friendly...
Mon, Apr 28 2008

Deaf woman auditions on French version of American Idol
Jared Evans Nouvelle Star is the French version of "American Idol." This link will take you to a video clip where Magali, a Deaf woman, who was fortunate enough to get an audition on the show and performed a song in LSF...
Mon, Mar 24 2008

Hulu.com's TV shows: subtitled or not?
Jared Evans I have been waiting with great anticipation for the day when hulu.com would open their doors to the hordes who wanted to watch TV shows on the web. Their grand opening was today! So far, I'm pretty impressed with the...
Wed, Mar 12 2008

Ironman Trailer #2 (subtitled)
Jared Evans This movie is a must-see this summer! Thanks Bill Creswell for the subtitles for this movie trailer released today!
Fri, Feb 29 2008

My DeafRead 2008 Conference Presentation: SEO for your blog
Jared Evans At the DeafRead 2008 conference, I gave a presentation titled: "Leveraging your v/blog: "Build your online reputation and become a search engine darling!" I covered the basics of why it's important to take into consideration how well your blog plays...
Thu, Feb 14 2008

AGBell getting scared of the American Sign Language vloggers
Jared Evans I was heartened see how the recent Pepsi Superbowl Ad "Bob's house", showcased American Sign Language by adapting a joke from Deaf culture to fit the Super Bowl theme. Often, when Hollywood tries to take on Deaf culture, something is...
Mon, Feb 04 2008

Time Warner customers: Prepare to pay more for your VRS...
Jared Evans Lately, I've been keeping an eye on the telecommunications industry, especially when it'll impact the Internet usage at home for Deaf people, like myself. Time Warner is starting a test trial in Beaumont, Texas where they will be putting a...
Fri, Jan 18 2008

DeafRomance: our first resident spammer?
Jared Evans DeafRead is practically a self-run system (with some help to nudge it forward) composed of a collective of Deaf v/bloggers from across the entire spectrum of Deafhood. This nascent system has started to crystallize and take on specific characteristics that...
Thu, Jan 17 2008

Wireless VideoPhones are the future of Deaf communications
Jared Evans My take on the Viable VPAD Also, Jed Barish of DeafNation TV went to CES 2008 and has the best in-depth video coverage on Viable VPAD: DeafNation TV at CES: Viable VPAD If you are interested in getting more information...
Tue, Jan 08 2008

High quality video with clear subtitles: JW Mediaplayer
Jared Evans With a new year upon us, I want to share a new technological improvement that may benefit some vloggers in 2008. I found a better way to display high quality video with clear subtitles that are easily readable. Caution: this...
Wed, Jan 02 2008

The big problem the Deaf have with hearing society at large
Jared Evans Sarah-Kate Templeton, the reporter behind the TimesOnline article "Deaf demand right to designer deaf children" woefully falls short of explaining why the Deaf have a big problem with the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill (AKA Eugenics Bill). There is an...
Sun, Dec 23 2007

My workshop at DeafRead 2008 Conference
Jared Evans A few mintues ago, I settled the final details of my trip reservations for the DeafRead 2008 Conference. Something in my gut tells me that this conference will be one for the ages. I'm very much looking forward to having...
Wed, Dec 19 2007

EyeJot - Great video tool for bloggers and vloggers
Jared Evans Over the weekend, I was introduced to EyeJot which offers several cool video features that I think many Deaf bloggers and vloggers would greatly appreciate. What struck me the most was that EyeJot was the easiest way to set up...
Sun, Dec 16 2007

Captioned movie trailer: "I Am Legend"
Jared Evans Thanks Bill Creswell for creating the captions for the trailer of "I am Legend." This should have been Warner Bros' social responsibility to make sure their trailers are captioned rather than depending on the goodwill of others to do the...
Sat, Dec 15 2007

At long last! CNET has captioned video clips!
Jared Evans In the very first vlog that I created (July 2006), I was lamenting about the lack of captioned video clips at many prominent media websites. Among the companies I named in the vlog was CNET. CNET is one of the...
Sat, Dec 15 2007

Just think it and have a voice speak it out
Jared Evans This is almost like having a built-in one-way interpreter! I was unaware there was research on this different approach until I saw this article which raised my eyebrows an inch or two. A "locked-in" man speaks. This is an interesting...
Fri, Dec 14 2007

Paddy Ladd email: UK bill to outlaw embryos with the Deaf...
Jared Evans Paddy Ladd granted me his permission to reprint his email for a call to arms to fight a bill currently going through the rounds in the UK. Grumpy Old Deafies first broke the news about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology...
Sun, Nov 25 2007

YouTube improves its video service
Jared Evans This is good news for Deaf vloggers who use YouTube: YouTube has announced several improvements. With this new video uploader for Windows, you will be able to upload several video clips at the same time, rather than being forced to...
Fri, Nov 09 2007

Comcast shaping Internet traffic: Will the Deaf start to...
Jared Evans It's been proved by now (after an initial denial by the cable company) that Comcast engages in the practice of shaping Internet traffic. In San Diego, I was blessed to have outstanding cable Internet service with Time Warner. It was...
Thu, Nov 08 2007

Extreme funny Deaf Lawyer video clip
Jared Evans There's another well done and very funny vlog by Tom Neville. In this one, he's a Deaf lawyer in one of those TV lawyer info-commercials. Asking if you need to sue based on, what else, injuries caused by mobile pagers!...
Thu, Nov 08 2007

Facebook: The next mass convergence of Deaf People?
Jared Evans In the last few months, there has been a massive resurgence of Deaf people over at Facebook, a website dedicated to social networking. There have been other social networking websites in the past where many Deaf people registered and set...
Wed, Nov 07 2007

My kingdom for a TTY!
Jared Evans While catching up on news about the firestorms threatening my former hometown of San Diego, I found this link for Reverse 911 Emergency Notification System. This is one way that Deaf people can be automatically alerted to emergencies, but only...
Wed, Oct 24 2007

DeafRead: One year later
Jared Evans It was a year ago when Tayler and I released DeafRead into the wild. I still vividly remember the seven days prior to the launch when we stayed up late into the night while banging away on keyboard. We kept bouncing many ideas off each other and materializing it all into programming code as fast as we could. The first iteration of the DeafRead site was a [...]
Fri, Jul 13 2007

Snapshot from the past: Vint Cerf and I
Jared Evans I found this old picture from 1996 that I wanted to share on my blog Vint Cerf who is widely known as the Father of Internet. He was part of the original team that developed ARPANET, the first packet switching network which later evolved into the Internet as we know it now. He currently works at Google and is on the board of Gallaudet University. [...]
Mon, Jun 18 2007

If a media reporter asked you, how would you answer?
Jared Evans Update about cochlearimplant.net I was graciously given access to a private e-group of parents who are heavily involved with CI and AVT. The forum shall go nameless here out of respect for them. In one of my earlier posts, "CI/AVT vlogs/blogs are a reality now", I wrote that I was highly suspicious of the website cochlearimplant.net which seemed [...]
Thu, Jun 14 2007

ASL vloggers and DeafRead in Wall Street Journal
Jared Evans I have been waiting for the Wall Street Journal article about ASL vlogs. It finally came out today!I particularly enjoyed this article because few ASL vloggers were mentioned. There is also a short subtitled video clip where the reporter interviews Austin Andrews of the Deaf Ninja fame. It shows that ASL can be mastered by both the Deaf and [...]
Fri, Jun 08 2007

Deaf Ninja strikes again!
Jared Evans Andrew Austins has released Deaf Ninja II! Watch it in all its ASL cinematic glory!If you missed part I, it's a must watch....
Thu, Jun 07 2007

CI/AVT vlogs/blogs are a reality now
Jared Evans AVT/CI is starting their v/blog propaganda attack via cochlearimplant.net. If you look at the same domain in the Wayback Machine, you'll see that it used to be a plain vanilla website. It has not changed much over the years which leads me to believe that this is a thinly-veiled PR ploy by CI corporations. The website claims to be maintained by a [...]
Sat, Jun 02 2007

Response to comments on "selecting ASL vlogs to watch"
Jared Evans This is my 8 minutes vlog response to everyone who commented about my previous blog post: "How do you decide which vlogs to watch?" I try to put my tips/suggestions in the light of the dynamics of behavior patterns of ASL vloggers and the audience who make up the majority of people who view the vlogs. I also explain why we should be thinking about [...]
Sat, May 12 2007

How do you decide which vlogs to watch?
Jared Evans In my previous blog, One of the comments detailed how vlogs were chosen to be watched. The comment gave me the idea for this post.I think it would be very useful for the Deaf vloggers to understand how the DeafReadership choose which vlogs to watch. In the early days of DeafRead, I would click on every vlog that I could get my hands on. With the [...]
Wed, May 09 2007

Participation inequality in the blogosphere
Jared Evans I ran across an interesting page that talks about the participation inequality on the Internet. This page talks about the percentage of users who produce content on the Internet compared to the numbers of those who comment or simply lurk in the background and not participate in any way.For blogs, the rule of thumb to follow is 95-5-.1. This means that 95% are lurkers, [...]
Tue, May 08 2007

DeafVideo.TV: The next centralized location for sign...
Jared Evans A few days ago, Tayler shared with me another exciting project that he had in mind: A place where one would see an unfiltered list of many video clips that showed the use of sign language by the Deaf. His idea was brilliant because we have noticed at DeafRead, video clips with sign language are very popular within the Deaf community and are already accounting for the [...]
Mon, May 07 2007

Echoing Noesis: Important RSS video to watch
Jared Evans Last week, there was a lot of raves in the blogosphere about a video that explained what RSS was all about. I wanted to share with the readers of DeafRead but the catch was that it wasn't subtitled. I left a comment asking for subtitles and forgot all about it. It appears that someone went ahead and did the subtitling work! But I didn't have a [...]
Tue, May 01 2007

Sign Language before Spoken words?
Jared Evans While one can only guess at what happened during the early days of man/womankind- this news article may shed some light.If signs indeed preexisted spoken words, it would appear that it's likely that were were all (deaf and hearing both) masters at sign language before we developed a spoken language. I find this new scenario intriguing... I've long subscribed to [...]
Tue, May 01 2007

Laser Eye Surgery for a Deaf person: Yes or No?
Jared Evans There are risks, real or imagined, associated with laser eye surgery. It's even more magnified for Deaf people since eyes play a huge role in our lives. Is it reasonable for a Deaf person to seriously consider getting laser eye surgery these days? I am interested in hearing from any of you (Deaf) who may have gotten laser eye surgery in the [...]
Sun, Apr 29 2007

CCExtractor - another way to extract closed captioning from...
Jared Evans I got a comment on my blog from the author of a free, GPL licensed closed caption tool called CC Extractor.This software looks promising, even if I haven't had a chance to test this yet! If you are able to directly record TV shows on your computer as MPEG2 files, the files may also store the closed captioning data. You could use this open source program to extract the [...]
Sun, Apr 29 2007

Finally here? Automatic voice-to-text
Jared Evans "Full text off of voice."This could have dramatic repercussions for all deaf people, if the same technology was adapted to our needs. Possible application: a device that we could carry around with us that would be able to accurately translate any voice into text. Has this significant technological barrier been, at long last, lifted? Scant information here [...]
Fri, Apr 27 2007

Chase Bank's discriminatory practices challenged by NAD
Jared Evans I've been frustrated several times by Chase Bank's refusal to accept my relay calls, even after giving them proof of who I was over the phone and discussing this unfair policy with the head customer service manager. NAD, along with DOJ, has took further action to challenge their policy which is not acceptable by their deaf customers. Hopefully, with this [...]
Sun, Apr 22 2007

Google Maps: make your own!
Jared Evans Google Maps now offers you an easy way to make your own maps! You can set placemarks with additional information that will show when an user clicks on it.While testing out this new feature, I've created a map that shows several places in San Diego that would be of interest to Deaf people if they come to visit this corner of the country. This map is probably far [...]
Thu, Apr 05 2007

Cyberbullies have hit the hearing bloggers too.
Jared Evans Online cyberbullies don't exist solely in the domain of Deaf blogs/vlogs. This serious issue has come to a head among several prominent hearing bloggers as well.See how they are dealing with it at this link which provides some interesting tips on what to do about this.We have showed our unique take on this particular problem and have already talked about this [...]
Wed, Mar 28 2007

Deaf Blogs in the NADmag
Jared Evans For the current issue of NADmag, I wrote an article titled "Now & Beyond: blogging" which covers the new world of Deaf blogs/vlogs. This time, I used a flatbed scanner (instead of digital camera) for better quality images to put up on the web!NADmag is included for free when you become a NAD member! There are other interesting articles to read in the [...]
Mon, Mar 26 2007

Subtle symbols used in the Baton Passing scene
Jared Evans Before releasing my last vlog into the wild, I asked a few friends to pre-screen the video clip. I was interested in seeing if they caught the sublime messages behind the baton-passing scene. They understood why it was there but...
Fri, Mar 02 2007

Deaf Blogs and Vlogs: The Next Cultural Shift
Jared Evans In this 12:24 vlog, I talk about the upcoming cultural shift started by v/blogs and how it applies to the Deaf. At 6:55, I have a special treat for you all to watch! In my next blog post, I'll talk...
Thu, Mar 01 2007

Netflix Watch Now- watch streaming movies online! subtitled?
Jared Evans Netflix offers a feature that is not promoted yet but can be enabled if you know where to go. Netflix Watch Now is a service where you can start watching streaming movies on your computer.I certainly hope that they will...
Thu, Mar 01 2007

Reactions to Ella Lentz's Deafhood workshop
Jared Evans Yesterday in San Diego at DCS, 70 Deaf people showed up for Ella Lentz's Deafhood workshop.Here are some of their reactions after the workshop. This video was done with my digital camera, so the image quality is not crystal clear.In...
Sun, Feb 25 2007

Pix of Ella Lentz workshop in San Diego
Jared Evans Happening right now this morning at DCS!...
Sat, Feb 24 2007

The DeafBlogLand: How did it come to be?
Jared Evans After reading JJ's excellent post about how Deaf bloggers/vloggers are currently in uncharted territorty and running across ckblythe's post about the "Media Determinism of DeafRead". These are some of the examples of the high level of discourse that Deaf people...
Tue, Feb 20 2007

A milestone: 100,000 page views reached!
Jared Evans Sometime this morning, my blog served its 100,000th page view! I started this Typepad blog on 11/13/05 after moving over from a Livejournal blog that I had for a year.This milestone made me curious about what kind of impact DeafRead...
Mon, Feb 19 2007

Preserving ASL vlogs for the future generations
Jared Evans Transcript:Hi, I want to share my concerns about preserving ASL vlogs for future generations. I am seeing more asl vlogs. Now there are recommendations by some who are suggesting different video sites such as Blip.tv, VideoEgg, or personal ISP server....
Mon, Feb 19 2007

Splashcast: showing video clips on a blog
Jared Evans While catching up on blogs, I came across Splashcast. The idea behind Splashcast is intriguing. They offer you a special video player that you can paste on your blog or website. This was toot'ed as something that many Deaf bloggers/vloggers...
Sun, Feb 18 2007