Proud Geek

iSuccumbed
Proud Geek Yes, I succumbed. Or more accurately, iSuccumbed. I've been a loyal Palm fanboy for more than a decade. I've had a series of Palm devices, including the Palm VII, several Treos, and finally the Palm Pre. I've touted Palm for years and even converted numerous (but not countless, I admit) folks to the Palm mentality. [...]
Thu, Aug 12 2010

Greater Access to San Francisco: Tweeting Complaints
Proud Geek San Francisco continues to keep up its uber-geek credo: it will now accept complaints from people via Twitter.   Just follow @SF311. Can even post photos via TwitPic. Damn.  This is terrific for deaf folks living in or visiting San Francisco.  Hope Frederick, Maryland will do the same soon.  I do know that several city and [...]
Tue, Jun 02 2009

VPAD+ Accessories
Proud Geek Now you've got your uber-cool VPAD+ from Viable.  Now you've got to put it someplace! Clear View Innovations — otherwise known as CVI Gear — has three mounts and stands for the VPAD+ which may help you decide.  All three are useful for freeing up space on your desk or counter, and for raising the VPAD+ [...]
Mon, Feb 23 2009

Don’t Forget To Register Your VRS Numbers with DoNotCall.gov
Proud Geek Now that FCC is mandating 10-digit numbers for our videophones, the major video relay / videophone companies have been busy assigning new phone numbers to our videophones.  For some of these numbers, hearing people can also call and be connected directly to you via video relay (or instant messaging or email).  In addition, we may [...]
Thu, Nov 13 2008

GMail adds Video Chat!
Proud Geek In an attempt to further cement my enduring love for Gmail (Google Mail), video chat has been added! As a deaf person and a Google lover, this is the perfect confluence of all things Google-goodness.  I can't emphasize how thrilled I am with this new development. (No, that's not me in the picture above.  That's a Google [...]
Wed, Nov 12 2008

VPAD+ Coming Out Soon
Proud Geek Viable will soon be releasing the next generation of the VPAD videophone! It'll have the following enhancements: Bluetooth technology (good for a headphone for voice carryover) Built-in WiFi capability (so that means you don't need a WiFi “stick”) Dual USB ports (good for adding keyboard, mouse, headphone, etc) Improved touchscreen function ...
Fri, Sep 19 2008

YouTube Finally Adds Closed Captions
Proud Geek Long-time readers of my blog may remember that I had a series of posts explaining how to caption your videos and recommending that they be posted onto Google Video — at that time the only “major” video host that supported .srt files (where closed captions are stored). YouTube, ironically also owned by Google, finally added the [...]
Thu, Aug 28 2008

VPAD and Some Ceiling Fans Do NOT Mix
Proud Geek I have a Viable VPAD with a wifi “stick” and a battery pack.  It's very nice being able to chat with friends from anywhere in my house without worrying about an Ethernet cable or having to plug it in! A friend of mine in California has a similar set-up.  But the first time she used her [...]
Fri, Aug 08 2008

Alarm System Interrupting DSL Internet Service, and a Fix
Proud Geek When I moved into our new house earlier this year, we immediately ordered high-speed DSL Internet service from Verizon. In addition, we installed a security system via a Monitronics contractor. While Scott, the Monitronics contractor, was installing the alarm box and hooking it up to a phone line, I asked him if there [...]
Wed, Aug 06 2008

A Jewish Perspective on Justice
Proud Geek Seven years ago, I gave this speech at the 2001 Jewish Deaf Conference.  In preparation, I did some of research into the Jewish perspective on “justice,” and I wanted to share this result with you all.  Happy reading! (People who are using RSS readers may need to click over to my blog to view this speech) When [...]
Mon, Aug 04 2008

TAP Accessible Plan is $10 MORE per month for New iPhones
Proud Geek Just got this comment from Lenny – “FYI... The TAP for the 3G is 50.00 a month... The 2G is 40.00 a month... I thought I would make that clear before folks end up surprised at the extra $10 a month for the 3G model...” Thanks, Lenny, for passing on this (bad) news. And remember, don't [...]
Fri, Jul 11 2008

Breaking: AT&T WILL Provide TAP Discount for New iPhones!
Proud Geek More info, from my friend: “I just got an email from nccd att announcing that they now do support new iphones. Off I go to Apple Store!” Go forth and buy the new iPhone and let us know what you think! I'm so tempted to buy one, but I'm not too sure about not being able [...]
Fri, Jul 11 2008

SnapVRS / Ojo Also Offers 9-1-1 Calling
Proud Geek Since May 19, SnapVRS has been making it possible for callers to be connected to 9-1-1 just by dialing “911″ on their Ojo videophones.  Sorenson began doing that last year, and Viable just yesterday.  Good move, SnapVRS, even if it's being mandated by FCC! Callers would have to provide the address where emergency services are needed.  [...]
Tue, Jun 03 2008

Viable Will Soon Connect You To 9-1-1 Emergency Services
Proud Geek Most deaf folks I know haven't used a TTY in years — rather, they just use videophones as well as text-based relay services through the Internet or via their pagers. But they still kept a “landline” phone line with a TTY next to it. For for? Ah, for emergencies! They needed [...]
Mon, Jun 02 2008

AT&T Announces Accessible Monthly Rates for the iPhone
Proud Geek AT&T has announced that it will provide a discounted rate of $40 per month for deaf users of the iPhone. This discount also includes unlimited text messages, unlimited data usage, “Visual Voicemail,” and a rather steep $.40 per minute pay-per-use voice plan. If you wanna get this discount, you'll have to apply by [...]
Wed, Apr 30 2008

VPAD Accessories, and the MVP
Proud Geek I asked Viable customer service for more info on VPAD accessories.   Viable has a vendor, Clear View, selling “CVI Gear for the VPAD” which includes the VPAD-compatible WiFi USB adapter (Wireless G, 54Mbps data transfer) for $29.99, a small rechargeable two (2) hour battery for $89.99 that can be attached to the VPAD, and a [...]
Sat, Apr 12 2008

VPAD Update: It’s $99 This Saturday ONLY, and …
Proud Geek A follow-up to my post earlier this morning about the VPADs going on sale for $99 this Saturday.  Viable says this $99 discount (down from $699) is ONLY available for the Pomona, CA DeafNation Expo at this time.  Pricing is subject to change for future Expos.  And remember, this discount is limited to one per [...]
Thu, Apr 10 2008

VPADs for $99! VPADs for $99!
Proud Geek Better sign up now for a DeafNation Expo near you!  Viable VPADs will be sold at the next several DeafNation Expos for just $99, down from the full price of $699. And Viable has confirmed that these aren't pre-orders.  People will be actually walking out with honest-to-gosh VPADs! Viable also confirmed that this special offer is limited [...]
Thu, Apr 10 2008

A Moving Experiment
Proud Geek We've been conducting a lengthy, 8-month-long experiment: we tried to sell our house and then move by just using the web and via email.  We're trying to do this without any phone calls at all.  Here's the result of our experiment: * Find a realtor via the web and who's willing to do everything thru email:  [...]
Wed, Mar 05 2008

Comment from Viable manager on the VPAD
Proud Geek Brendan Steuben Steuble, the manager of the VPAD project at Viable, left the following comment with more info on the VPAD on both Amy Cohen Efron and my blog posts announcing the VPAD. Thanks, Brendan, and we look forward to getting even more information on this from you. This new videophone is certainly [...]
Sun, Jan 06 2008

Viable VPAD Unveiled - And It’s A Beaut
Proud Geek Viable certainly didn't disappoint us. It unveiled the newest videophone, the VPAD — and it looks like it's going to be a winner. Some features that I think we'll all like: WiFi connectivity - that means we can take the VPAD to our local Starbucks, or on out-of-town trips to hotel rooms, or even to many [...]
Sat, Jan 05 2008

Viable To Unveil New Videophone This Saturday
Proud Geek Viable will be unveiling a totally new type of videophone on Saturday, January 5th (TOMORROW!) at the 2008 International CES conference. Judging from the shape under the fabric (see picture), it looks like some kind of upright tablet / monitor. Looks like it's much wider than the Ojo. Hmmm. (Speaking of which, [...]
Fri, Jan 04 2008

Video email and video wall posts via Facebook
Proud Geek A little-heralded feature of Facebook is the ability to send / receive video emails and wall posts. Very, very easy to create a video email inside Facebook and send it to your friends (or enemies), and watch their video responses as well. And these video emails show up as a thread in each email exchange — making it easy to scroll down a series of video emails or...
Tue, Oct 02 2007

Easiest way to subtitle and show your videos: Overstream +...
Proud Geek Heads up: a new subtitled bonus video at the end of this blog post — this time, of my younger daughter walking for the first time! Four months ago, I told you about Overstream, a website where you can easily add subtitles / captions to your videos. Several of you (including myself) mentioned that while this website was wonderful, there wasn't a way to [...]
Mon, Sep 17 2007

i711 Merges With HOVRS
Proud Geek It was only recently that GoAmerica, i711's parent company, merged with Verizon. And today it was announced that GoAmerica will be acquiring, uh, merging with Hands On VRS as well. i711 seems well on its way to becoming a veriable juggernaunt — will we end up with just several VRS providers soon? True, there are still quite a few VRS providers (13 at my [...]
Wed, Sep 12 2007

Bendable Batteries Coming Soon?
Proud Geek First it was razor-thin bendable televisions. And now we may soon get bendable batteries! Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a battery that looks like paper, and "can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed."  The technicalities of this breakthrough is beyond my comprehension, but according [...]
Tue, Aug 14 2007

Sorenson Adds Call-Waiting
Proud Geek You're having fun vp'ing (videophone-ing) with your best buddy who lives across the country, and you talk for hours and hours. Then you hang up and find out that other friends (or, heaven forbid, your mother!) had been trying to vp you with important news. Hearing folks has had it easy for many years; with call-waiting, they can hear a beep on their [...]
Fri, Aug 10 2007

GoAmerica Acquires Verizon's Video / TTY Relay Services
Proud Geek IP-Relay will soon have a new owner. GoAmerica recently announced that it will be acquiring Verizon's Telecommunication Relay Services (TRS) division. This division includes Verizon's TTY relay services, IP-based (via the Internet) relay services, and video relay services. At $50 million cash and up to an additional $8 million in contingent cash [...]
Thu, Aug 02 2007

Viewing Captioned Videos on Google Video
Proud Geek Google Video — a close cousin of the more well-known YouTube service — has a feature where it can display closed captions. And you can turn the captions on or off just by pressing the "CC" button. Niiiice. Here's a list of selected videos with captions. Clicking on any of the videos on this list displays the video on a separate page (with [...]
Tue, Jul 03 2007

Captioning your videos #7: OpenCaptions.com
Proud Geek Came across yet another Internet website that helps you caption your videos: OpenCaptions. Some quick thoughts below, along with yet another a 25-second captioned "bonus" video of my two daughters. OpenCaptions is somewhere between alpha and beta — meaning that it's still under considerable development and is probably slow and buggy, and the [...]
Mon, Jul 02 2007

Captioning your videos #6: dotSUB.com
Proud Geek When I first heard of dotSUB.com, a web service dedicated solely to subtitling videos, I was prepared to be skeptical. But to my surprise, I found it easy to use — and I had captioned a 29-second video (of my two daughters, of course!) in record time. Definitely two thumbs up for its speed and ease of use. While dotSUB.com's main function is to subtitle [...]
Tue, Jun 19 2007

Captioning your videos #5: YouTube (but not quite yet)
Proud Geek The popular video hosting site, YouTube just came out with a new video editing feature called Remixer. It also includes a captioning feature — and knowing just how popular YouTube is, I thought I'd give it a try. Remixer is still in beta. After trying its captioning feature out, I can firmly say that this definitely has quite a ways to go. I give it [...]
Mon, Jun 18 2007

Skipping Phone Trees
Proud Geek We all hate phone trees. And as a deaf person, I hate them even more. They were impossible to navigate using TTY relay services, and now with video relay services they're "merely" as annoying to us as they are to hearing folks. And now there's a way to get around phone trees: Bringo's No Phone Trees service. Bringo will help you skip the [...]
Thu, Jun 07 2007

New IP-Relay Feature
Proud Geek Just got an email from IP-Relay touting a new feature on its My IP-Relay service: personalized greetings. First, some background if you don't know what the My IP-Relay Number service is. You can sign up and get your own free phone number with the same area code as the state you want it to be located in. You'd have to link it (again via IP-Relay's [...]
Fri, Jun 01 2007

Ordering at a restaurant using your table's Surface
Proud Geek Imagine ordering food at a restaurant, or drinks at a bar, by putting your hands on the table and making your selections. No more asking the waiter for a paper and pen, or pointing at menu items and then negating the "onion" listing, or speaking your choices and hoping the waiter understood enough to bring back the right dishes. Microsoft has announced [...]
Fri, Jun 01 2007

Blackberry 8300 Curve - the next big pager?
Proud Geek Blackberry's about to come out with the first model that's targeted toward personal users rather than business users — the Blackberry 8300 Curve. Like previous high-end Blackberry models, it has the usual list of features: Email and text messaging Advanced phone features Organizer Browser Expandable memory slot (using SD cards) But it also has a [...]
Wed, May 30 2007

Push Email On Palm Treo Via Chatter and Fastmail.fm
Proud Geek CAUTION: TOTAL GEEK-TALK / INFO OVERLOAD here! Don't tell me I didn't warn you. Want push email on your Treo 650 / 680 / 700p / 755p? Don't have Microsoft Enterprise server installed at home? Your workplace doesn't have an IT department?  Don't want to give up your main email address? No problem. Well, sorta. "Push" email [...]
Sun, May 27 2007

Making TTY / Relay calls from your pager
Proud Geek I've heard several people ask how they can use their smartphone / pager to have a conversation with a TTY user. Thanks to a tip from commenter Jon, I came across iptty.com, a website that's customized especially for the Palm Treo's Blazer (web browser) application. Commenter Jon said that iptty.com also works with Windows Mobile smartphones' [...]
Thu, May 24 2007

Captioning your videos #4: Overstream
Proud Geek On a tip from, again, commenter drmzz, I checked out Overstream. And yes, I captioned a third "bonus" video, this time of my younger daughter — see the end of this post. Overstream is a web service dedicated solely to adding subtitles to videos already stored on several other video hosting sites. As Overstream says: Have you ever wanted to [...]
Fri, May 18 2007

Captioning your videos #3: Subtitle Workshop
Proud Geek This is the third (well, duh, it's obvious because there's a "#3″ in the title!) in a series of reviews of free software or websites which you could use to add captions or subtitles to your videos. I've previously reviewed Windows Movie Maker and Jumpcut. Acting on a tip from commenter drmzz, I tried out Subtitle Workshop by URUSoft. In [...]
Thu, May 17 2007

Captioning comment from Harkle
Proud Geek Got this helpful comment about captioning from James, who's part of Harkle. Harkle is a cool website that links to / collects captioned media and videos from all over the web. These videos could be news-related from CNN, or personal videos on YouTube — and while many videos are open-captioned, some have closed captions that can be viewed via Windows [...]
Wed, May 16 2007

Captioning your videos #2: Jumpcut
Proud Geek Yesterday, I wrote about captioning videos on a PC computer using Windows Movie Maker. I've gotten a number of very helpful comments — thanks, all! Today, I'd like to share some thoughts on Jumpcut, an on-line video hosting / editing service that also has a very useful captioning / subtitles function. And yes, there's yet another bonus video [...]
Tue, May 15 2007

Captioning your videos #1: Windows Movie Maker
Proud Geek Lots and lots of videos on the web out there, and a TINY fraction of them are captioned. All those news clips on CNN and other media websites, many amateur and professional videos on YouTube and Google Video, many many vlogs (whether hearing or deaf), lots of movies available for instant watching via Netflix and its ilk, etc. Just about all of them aren't [...]
Mon, May 14 2007

The inside scoop on Eyejot
Proud Geek Got this informative (and nice!) comment from the CTO and co-founder of Eyejot, in response to my recent blog post and some of the comments about the video email service.  Now I'm even more excited about this service and what it may do for deaf-to-deaf communications.  (And thanks, Daryn, for mentioning this blog and related comments on your own blog!) Hi "Proud [...]
Wed, Apr 25 2007

Sprint IP Wireless on any Treo - NOT
Proud Geek The latest issue of the NADmag published by the National Association of the Deaf has a full-page glossy color advertisement from Sprint Relay. Near the bottom of the page, it says, "Sprint IP Wireless for any Treo: free download at www.sprintrelay.com/download/wm/treo". That would be true, only if your Palm device was a Palm Treo running on Windows Mobile [...]
Tue, Apr 24 2007

Video emails via Eyejot
Proud Geek I needed to send an email to my partner, asking about tomorrow's plans for our two daughters. So, I quickly signed a few sentences about taking the girls to the park tomorrow, added my partner's email address, and clicked "Send." My partner watched my message, and replied by signing that he agreed with my plans altho with a suggested change [...]
Mon, Apr 23 2007

Adding CADVRS
Proud Geek I just added CADVRS to my page listing Video Relay Service providers.  CADVRS is being provided through the California Association of the Deaf under contract with CSDVRS.  (Geesh, how will we be able to tell the difference between CACVRS, CADVRS, and CSDVRS?)  Even though this service is being provided by the California Association of the Deaf, nothing on the CADVRS [...]
Thu, Apr 12 2007

Goodies from D-Link
Proud Geek Many of us deafies know D-Link as the company that makes the D-Link DVC-1000 videophone, competing directly (or complementing?) the DVC 1000 videophone. What many people don't know is that D-Link carries a lot of different neat networking products, some which sends shivers of delight up and down my back.Here's some: DVC-1100: similar to the DVC-1000 [...]
Wed, Apr 04 2007

Speak / sign in a bubble to website visitors
Proud Geek Imagine being able to quickly and easily make videos and then putting them into a "bubble" on your website — and this bubble would follow as visitors scroll down the page or jump from page to page. Bubble Guru has made this possible. Via the Bubble Guru website, you can record (or upload) videos — i.e., narratives, stories, or even just a [...]
Mon, Apr 02 2007

Group video-conferencing for deaf or hearing folks
Proud Geek Our Sorenson and D-link VPs (videophones) are wonderful, but how can we talk with several different callers at the same time? And for free? Use Wengo Meeting. Using Wengo Meeting, up to five people can video-conference at the same time. Yes, FIVE. Through almost any Internet browser like Internet Explorer or Netscape or Firefox, as long as they have the latest Adobe [...]
Mon, Mar 26 2007