Speaker 2 00:00:58 And good evening. Thank you for joining Disability and Progress, where we bring you insights into ideas about, and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam, I'm the host of the show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Charlene Dolls, my research woman. Hello Charlene.
Speaker 3 00:01:13 Good evening everybody. And it is pledge time. And
Speaker 2 00:01:17 Don't show us shy, show us some love, show
Speaker 3 00:01:19 Us some love. Don't be shy.
Speaker 2 00:01:20 Also, thanks to Erin who's our podcaster. Um, if you want to go to kfa i.org g, you may give whatever you can afford. A little means a lot. Where was that before there there was a commercial that was like that, right? Anyway, that's what I'm saying now. So this evening we are lucky. We are speaking with Dominic Labbe. Um, Dominic is, I believe a software technical leader from Humanware. Hello Dominic.
Speaker 4 00:01:55 Hey, good evening. Thanks for the invitation. Thank
Speaker 2 00:01:58 You so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Um, my apologies for any, uh, ridiculous pronunciation I may be doing with your last name.
Speaker 4 00:02:07 <laugh>. It was perfect.
Speaker 2 00:02:09 So why don't we start out a little bit by having you tell us, because this is, uh, I'm sure you've done a lot of shows for the blind community and whatnot, but this, this is a show on community radio that gets podcasted and we are national as well, but it's for everyone. So can you start out by telling us who is humanware?
Speaker 4 00:02:30 Correct. So Humanware is one of the largest company doing assistive technology, uh, for blind and visually impaired people. That's stocking book reader, that's magnifier, that's brail devices and many more, uh, products that we are putting out for the market in us. But, uh, say almost everywhere on the planet as we have a lot of international distributors. We're based in Canada, but we do have people working in us, UK, and Australia.
Speaker 2 00:02:58 Excellent. Um, and I don't know if you know this, but I used to work at Humanware. I, um, was a tech support person for a handful of years,
Speaker 4 00:03:08 So great.
Speaker 2 00:03:09 <laugh> <laugh>. Um, anyway, uh, we're talking tonight about the newly released, uh, Victor Reader Stream's third edition software. Um, plus maybe I'll sneak a couple more things in, but how, uh, before we get into that, I wanna talk too about how you got involved with Humanware and what exactly is your role?
Speaker 4 00:03:35 Great. Well, it's been a long time being, uh, Humanware is Vire back then for 25 years. So it's a quarter of a century. Uh, was just a very junior software engineer just looking for a job and I came across an opportunity at Vire. They were looking for young engineers to start up a new line of products. So it was in 1997 and basically I started as a software engineer and grew up in, I was handling more of the management of the development of all the different Victor. So I was there for the original Victor Reader Pro that we launched in 1999, up to the latest one that we just released in the US uh, couple of months ago.
Speaker 2 00:04:18 Excellent. Alright, so, um, let's also then continue with, tell us and describe for people since this is Radio <laugh>, what does the Victor Reader look like?
Speaker 4 00:04:32 Right, so the Victor Reader Stream is, if I talk about logically and then I'll talk about physically. So logically, this is a talking book player. It basically serve as a way for blind visual impair people, but sometime people with learning disabilities, uh, to be able to read books, books that are produced by the National Library Service, the Bard Service, Bookshare to, uh, to services that are well known in the us And over times we've been adding a lot of other functionality. Some people might be listening to that program tonight on internet radio streaming. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, the podcast that will resolve from that episode will be available on the stream. Uh, we do have Wikipedia, we do have access basically to music a lot of context, uh, content. Um, so that's how it actually is the functionality, physically speaking, it's a NL device. It's about the size of a sm a small cell phone.
Speaker 4 00:05:28 Uh, it gets physical buttons, which helps with people that have a little bit more challenge with touchscreen. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, it comes with a speaker, headphones, Bluetooth, and basically people put that in their purse, in their pocket and usually carry it. The device, I can remind all over the place, even though I'm not visually impair, I know a lot of blind people will carry a stream, uh, wherever they go. So if you have a few minutes to, uh, to wait before getting on a bus or to a few minutes before a meeting, well, you can listen to a little bit of the book or a little bit of music or whatever you, uh, feel appropriate. So it's, it's a day-to-day device and it covers from the most technical people to people that are more technically challenged. So it's really, we're trying to cover anybody that gets some visual or I would say print disabled. I could be learning disability dyslexia, for example.
Speaker 2 00:06:20 You know, I, I I use one of these and I love mine, absolutely love mine. And it is true if I'm waiting for some kind of mass transit or if I'm on the mass transit even I will sit and listen to podcasts or my book or, you know, just any number of things. Or you can have a little music folder. So I can attest to how valuable it is to have something like that. But I wonder, you know, these services are often, um, you know, still available with your iPhone, you know, they made the iPhone. So it kind of does a little bit of everything. Sometimes I think it's a little bit too much. But I'm wondering what you hear, like still this is an extremely popular book reader. Um, so I'm wondering what do people tell you why they tend to go towards their victory reader streams as opposed to their iPhone for books and podcasts? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4 00:07:19 <affirmative>, we hear a few different reasons. One of them is the ease of accessibility with buttons. So reading is an enjoyable experience. It's if it's not, if it's not in a professional context, you wanna relax, you want to have fun, it's much easier to press on the physical button than playing with the touchscreen. So we are that all the time. The capacity of the battery, uh, we get 14, 15, 16 hours. So the tele the phone, I mean, at some point doesn't last that long. And people want to keep their phone as a safety. They need to call a Uber, or they need to call a friend, or they need to do something. That's a, that's another reason I think, I think we just make it simple. Basically, we make it simple. We integrate a lot of services with a common interface instead of adding 4, 5, 6, 7 different apps depending what you want to do on the cell phone. So those are, those are the main, uh, the main reason. And you're right, it's still very popular, even though the cell phone could be an alternate way of listening to books.
Speaker 2 00:08:16 And I have told, I will tell you, I've converted my share of people when they said, oh, I just used my phone. And I'll say, well, let's have a race. I'll look for my book and you look for yours with your phone, and we'll see how quickly, and oftentimes the Victor Reader stream, even though it's not like a superpower machine, it beats them. Um, I just find it so easy to be able to do the putting in the name of the book. You don't have to, you know, scroll to the letters, fa you can do it really quickly if you want. I just, I really, really am, um, happy that I use one. But I do wanna talk, you know, your books, the book types that you use, um, you can use Bard and Bookshare as you talk about. There's also been kind of a hit and miss with, with Audible. Um, and I wonder if there's anything that is going to make Audible work any easier on some of these book readers, cuz it seems like it's been difficult and maybe you can kind of shed some light on why it's been hard.
Speaker 4 00:09:25 Well, um, there's been some discussion. Audible is a large company. I mean, they're part of Amazon. Sometimes they might, they might not understand all the challenges for visually impaired people. So we're trying to, to help them. Uh, the new stream that will launch, uh, we're now working with Audible. There was some, some discussion, some users actually, uh, petition Audible to actually be supported on the stream too. So now we're getting a great support from Audible. My engineering team is working on making that implementation. And that's the idea to be able to bring Audible available on the stream tree. I won't give a schedule because we never know how things could happen, but it's, this is true. We're, we're, we're talking about short future. So basically we're working on that. But there's a few development, but then testing certification with Audible. Um, but I think, I think they understood the importance of their service for the community of visually impaired people. Um, the, the, yeah, they, they really, they're really aping us now. And that's, that's great. That's a, that's a very significant service. A lot of people like Sa, audible and ob obviously we, our job is to make more, the more context, the more content available, uh, on the Stream Tree and Ali Audible being one prime example in US, but also in some other countries, Germany, France, Canada, uh, Ali Audible has, uh, books in multiple languages.
Speaker 2 00:10:47 Sure. Um, I wanted to talk about, uh, the, the notes because one of the things that I really value is that the Victor Reader Stream can record notes on it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, and I do that a lot because it's just, like you said, it's just so easy to pull out and do that and it gets many hours of battery life. Is there any thi thought of coming up in the future of being able to, um, name the note?
Speaker 4 00:11:19 So we're looking at, we're looking at a few different things, again, without any precise schedule, but mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, having the ability to name notes and having the ability to make categories. So for example, a student could have a chemistry or a physics or my history or an English language. I mean, a professional might have a categories for meeting a category for lectures. Uh, so those are the things that we are right now considering and hopefully improve over the stream. Two, by giving a little bit more functionality and I would say flexibility, uh, to users, especially with the large SD card that we have right now. People can put more and more notes. So the ability to sort them to create categories will definitely help, uh, making, finding those notes a little bit easier in the future.
Speaker 2 00:12:06 And this is K ffi I 90.3 fm, Minneapolis, and K ffi i.org G. This is Disability and Progress. My name is Sam and I have with me Dominic Labbe. Dominic is with Humanware. And we're talking about the newly released, um, information, uh, for the newly released third generation Victor Stream. And also we are in the midst of our fundraising. So if you should choose to feel the love, you may go to kfi org g and um, donate what you can afford. Um, Dominic, I, I think that it was interesting, we were talking about notes and one of the things I noticed was, you know, like anything, when you're, when you're in this and recording your notes get numbered, um, but when you delete them, the, you don't, you know, like the notes you have stay in the same number, they don't fall back. Like let's say you had 10 notes and you deleted three of them, you still may have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10. Um, how does that work, that that does that?
Speaker 4 00:13:18 Well, basically right now what we do is that the file gets the new, the next available number available when you record an all it's the file name. So basically it remains with the same file name until, until you delete the file. There's a function though, it was there on the street too. It's there on the string tree to consolidate the notes. So basically they will remove all the gaps between numbers. Let's say you get 1, 3, 4 and you consolidate, you end up with 1, 2, 3. So it's a way for people that prefer to have their number, uh, all in sequence. They could do that once in a while. So depends, I mean some people like that, they will actually keep the number As is. Other people will say, oh, let me resynchronize my note. Reconsolidate is the best word that we use. So it'll basically just replace and remain every name. Sorry, the note. So the, there are basically 1, 2, 3, 4, up to the, um, last note that you have.
Speaker 2 00:14:13 So I wanna talk about, this is just the third release of, let's see, how long has the Victor Readers Stream been out Now? It's been out for,
Speaker 4 00:14:22 Oh hey, I'm not very good with data, I should learn that. But the Stream two, which is the previous one was about to be, and it's probably, it was somewhere in March, I don't remember. It was about to be 10 years old. Yeah. And the first stream was a few years before. So the stream has been for a long time. My daughter is 18 and we were working on that while she was a baby. So we we're probably <laugh> we're probably close to 17 or 16 a year for the
Speaker 2 00:14:45 Stream. And so that's, I think that's kind of amazing that like this is the third generation that's rolled out and sometimes I think that speaks to how well done it was that it's just been a while since you've, you know, needed to add anything. So tell me what the differences will be between the Victor reader Stream two and three.
Speaker 4 00:15:06 Correct. So the idea was a, well I would say an evolution, not a revolution. So we wanna bring the user up to the new version without being completely lost. So imagine a house while we're changing, we're keeping the good things about it and we're improving. The other thing, Bluetooth is an addition. So now we have Bluetooth for people that do have Bluetooth speaker earring aids or any other kind of Bluetooth, uh, device, I forget to say more power, more memory, the ability to do a, a little bit more thing. Uh, the ability to support the bigger SD card, uh, directly, uh, the ability to use headset, not just headphones. So you can use the microphone from a headset to uh, to record and hopefully because we now have more memory and more performance, we can do a little bit more functionality. And I almost forget PDF now people can read pdf, which is something that was, yes, I would say on the top five when we ask people what you like in the stream, it comes in many surveys as yes, one of the most important feature. Uh, and there's a lot of other small thing, but it's really, like I said, people will feel at home it, the buttons are the same position. Uh, the functionality remained relatively similar, but we are, like I said, able to add more feature in the future. But also, uh, a few, um, a few improvements here and then categories for the node, that's the kind of small addition we're able to make as we now have a little bit more, our playground is bigger, so we can put a little bit more stuff in the software itself.
Speaker 2 00:16:36 And you'll be keeping the um, headphone jack,
Speaker 4 00:16:41 Right? We do, yeah. Correct. So it's now it's headphone and headset. So if you have an headset you can actually record notes using your headset. Oh, I see. And we still, and we still have an external microphone for people that prefer to connect a standalone stereo microphone. So Bluetooth wired and the speaker, that's very important. The speaker was improved. We had comments on the stream too that it was not loud enough, especially for people that might be a little bit harder. Earing. I am a little bit RVing and the stream tree is definitely good enough for me as I can hear it properly. So a lot of improvement over there as
Speaker 2 00:17:15 Well. Well I have to admit to you, I've cheated for quite a while. I have the Victor Reader track <laugh> <laugh>, which I really love <laugh> and can't see myself giving up. Um, can you explain the differences between the Victor Reader Stream three and the Victor Reader track?
Speaker 4 00:17:34 Correct. So on the track, obviously there's everything about orientation. Basically the gps, the ability to locate yourself. Uh, this is a function that's not on the stream tree. The track is a little bit more expensive than the street tree. So if you're looking for gps, we do have the Trek, but we also have the Stellar Trek, which is our new product, which is an interesting one. So that's the major, that's the major difference. And obviously from now on, I could expect because there's more power in the stream tree than there is in the track. So we could imagine that new function will get added to the, uh, to the stream tree. That might not be possible in the track or in the Stream two. But the GPS is the big, the big difference people looking for orientation, uh, should look for the track and the stellar track. And if you're looking for both reading, then the stream tree is definitely your, um, your device to go with.
Speaker 2 00:18:25 So with the Stream three, how often will updates come out?
Speaker 4 00:18:30 It's a good question. We're trying to have a few updates a year, uh, making sure that we bring functionality. Uh, some functionalities are new features, other will be improvement on existing features. So yeah, three, four updates a year. That's what we're trying to do. Uh, but it always depend on the opportunities, uh, we have with different libraries or different program. And again, it's an international product, so sometime there's feature that matters for part of the world, less for Bookshare is popular in us, much less in some European country and vice versa. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully we can get three to four updates a year of improvements. One of them is coming up in the very near future.
Speaker 2 00:19:10 Are there any, um, book services that were added to the, um, to the third generation that maybe isn't as popular in the US
Speaker 4 00:19:23 At the moment? No, at the moment in US it's really Bookshare and Bar. We're looking at certain European countries, uh, that have services that didn't exist on the Stream two. But in us, I mean, audible being the next one, obviously I'm, I'm assuming we're gonna be completing Audible by the moment. Bookshare Bar and Audible are the three major service, but we should not forget NF V News line as well for people that are in newspaper or magazines. This is also a, it was on the stream two, it's also available on the screen tree. Nothing better than waking up in the morning opening your stream and having your newspaper ready for listening while you're having a coffee or yes, doing your morning stuff.
Speaker 2 00:20:01 I do wanna touch on a slightly difficult topic, which is the battery. Um mm-hmm <affirmative>. I know that generally the Victor readers and and VR trucks have had a user replaceable battery or one that you can replace or have clue of. If, let's say you are such a diehard user that you run your battery down and you don't always have time to charge it and you can just grab another one off and, and put slap it in. But that's gone away in this new third generation. Why?
Speaker 4 00:20:36 For the same reason I think that cell phone went the same direction. So it's a bit more challenging in term of procurement to get those removable battery. The plastic is more complex, so we end up with custom batteries also help to keep the device a little bit thinner by removing certain layer of plastic. When there's a removable battery, you need to have a little bit more thickness, et cetera. So I do understand some user would prefer to have a removable battery, but unfortunately as the trend we see now, tablets and cell phone used to have removable battery. They don't, there's a lot of reason. But procurement and the ability to find, uh, batteries, it's much easier with internal batteries. So unfortunately for the user, we had to, to go in that direction. The good thing is that we were able to, uh, we were able to make the product as small as possible, yet keeping a very long autonomy on the battery. So yeah, it is quite, I do understand the feeling of some users. I've read some emails
Speaker 2 00:21:34 <laugh>, oh, I bet you have
Speaker 4 00:21:36 <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:21:37 I I wanna ask about also the, so when you come out, well the third generation is out now. Yes,
Speaker 4 00:21:44 Correct. Yes. So it's been shipping since February in
Speaker 2 00:21:47 Us. When you start updating the third generation, will you keep updating the second or, or will the same update work on the second or no,
Speaker 4 00:22:00 In general, I would say that the stream true is probably reaching is end of life. Of course, if they are bugs with major services, we would address dues issue, but feature improvement at some point. I got a three years old cell phone and Google is not updating it anymore. I mean that's, that's the reality. So yeah, I think people should understand that mainly our effort will be on the Stream three and since it's a fairly different technology, those updates would not be compatible with the Stream two. So I think we'll reach a point where the stream two is a major product and unless there's a significant buy with Bookshare part or something that prevents user from using the device, it's slightly, slightly to remain, uh, how it is right now.
Speaker 2 00:22:44 And then, so what of the VR track though, you know, it has that whole um, GPS on it. Yes. Will you do any up more updates for it or will you just concentrate on the third generation?
Speaker 4 00:23:00 That's a good question. The track, the orientation portion is dealt with by another team, which I'm, listen, I mean we're, we have a large development team, so I'm not, not fully aware of all the, of all the detail, but it's quite possible that there's still some development that will happen on the map side. For example, having maps of date would be a good, uh, a good example. So I think, I think there's still some life in the Trek, um, for
Speaker 2 00:23:26 Ah, excellent. Well, having owned one myself, I will, I'm very glad to hear that. <laugh>. Um, what do you guys use for, like, one of the things that, I know that there was many comments, both good and bad on the internet radio portion of the, um, stream. And has that changed in the third uh, edition?
Speaker 4 00:23:52 That's a very good question. So, uh, we're doing three different things on the stream two to listen to internet radio. You can basically find the links yourself, import it, you can use the human word playlist, which is a, a list that we manage with the major NPR radio, for example, in US and BBC in uk. And we also have a search engine called os, uh, which is a good service, but it's a user driven service. So sometime the database is not as up to date as it should be. Uh, I cannot comment more, but we're looking for something very exciting in the future on the stream tree that would add another way, uh, to access radio station. I cannot say more, but there's definitely something that would give, uh, something more in term of, yeah, another way that's, that's about what I can say without telling the reality. Uh, but yeah, people will be excited. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:24:44 Tuned <laugh>. That's right. Um, and what kinds of, I mean, I, I believe the PDFs can be read on the, um, d VR track, right?
Speaker 4 00:24:57 Correct. So PDF was not available on stream two for some performance issue. It is available on the track and it's been had on the stream three. And we all understand that PDF are more and more present in our life. Government documents? Yes. University paper user manual of some, uh, microwave of whatever products you're using. And basically there's, there's a lot of stuff in pdf. So yeah, this is now on the stream. I think it's one of the interesting edition. As, as I said, it's everywhere.
Speaker 2 00:25:28 Yes. What do you use for, well, do you know what, what they use for the GPS on the VR track?
Speaker 4 00:25:39 Uh, good question. Uh, I'm not very familiar with the, are you talking about the auto maps or you map maps and stuff? Oh, the maps. Um, yeah, sadly I don't remember the company changed name a few times that we're working with, but it's a major map company, uh, that we are using. But unfortunately I don't remember the name. Uh, gotcha. Top of my heart.
Speaker 2 00:25:59 How does the price change of the third generation then? Um, since it's coming out?
Speaker 4 00:26:08 Yeah, there's a little, uh, it's a little price Ike, uh, on the stream. So it's a little bit more expensive. I mean, the price of electronic went up, uh, over the last couple of years mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, we were lucky on the stream too. We had negotiated certain amount of parts, but unfortunately that grocery and like many other things, uh, we had to adjust the price to, to live with the, uh, the cost of the component. So yeah, there's a little bit of price increase.
Speaker 2 00:26:35 I'm curious about the folder structure, cuz the folder structure is kind of rigid. Um mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I know you, you can't, when you put in a card, there's x amount of folders in that, on that card and you can't just make a folder on it, is my understand right?
Speaker 4 00:26:53 Well, the main structure, the base structure, it, it, it, it's there to allow people to tell us what they want to do with that file. Is it part of their music folder? Is it part of the book? We don't want it in the music underneath those VR dtb, VR text, VR audio, and there's a lot of others, uh, VR music I should say. Uh, then you can create folder for example, in music, I will have the first level, my general jazz word, music heavy metal, and then underneath the artist and underneath the, um, the house bomb. Same thing in talking books I speak both French and English. I will have my first level as French or English, and underneath I might have mysteries, history, biography. Ah, gotcha. So using a pc, you can be, that's for advanced users. Some people might not, it's not all the users that do that, but you can, especially now with large card that can actually hold a lot of books.
Speaker 4 00:27:44 People can create some kind of structure and within that structure they can navigate. Good example would be kids at school, well they would put their chemistry book in one folder. They would put their history books in another folder. So when, whenever they got to school they can find something quickly depending on the topic, uh, that they have a course, uh, this morning or tomorrow or whatever. So you can do that. But the reason why we have the main structure is really to make sure that audio files from one format doesn't pollute your music. Talking book is made of ology. Your file would feel strange if it's in the middle of music and might be in the wrong order because the file have some random name. So that's the idea. We do understand that people might find that at the beginning, especially a little bit more challenging, but it's really the idea like, oh, that's how we tell the device where they want to appear in term of bookshelf and making sure they don't appear in place. That would not make sense. Part of books would not make sense if they're not played in order. That will just be some random piece of text, for example.
Speaker 2 00:28:45 And how many levels deep can you go with the folders?
Speaker 4 00:28:49 Well, that's a good question. Um, what we offer for navigation is six, six levels. Uh, if people put more, they all gonna be like, collapse into the six level. But I think six level, I mean from a personal experience as a user, I think six levels cover, you know? Yes. For example, in music, the genre and then the artist, and then the album, uh, it's three folder and that's already covering a lot. Uh, so we felt that six and six came just for the record, for html, HTMLs six level, when you create an HTML page, we say, well, if it's fine to create a page should be fine to sort material as well.
Speaker 2 00:29:26 What is the speech synthesizer that you're using? Speech is so common now you can hear it on just everything. So what are you using on the, on the Victor reader?
Speaker 4 00:29:36 Correct. So our longtime partner, the one we introduced with the string, who is a company called Acapella, uh, they are um, European company, but they're doing multiple language, including English and but also Spanish for people that, uh, that speak Spanish. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And that's a nice thing that we're introducing with String Tree. In the past, with string two you had two voices and those voices were hard coded in the device. You know, you cannot, well with the new string, people will be able to select from the device a different voice. Let's say as a student, um, taking French course. So I'm taking German course for the next semester. Well, you can go into device and select Julia, which is a German TTS as your second voice. So we're giving that flexibility for user to change without having to do with the website and finding a package.
Speaker 4 00:30:24 So it's one thing we're gonna introduce with the first update of the stream, the ability for user to either change their second TTS to about any language that we support. But even the first tts, if people don't like Sharona, which is our main tts, well they could go with Lilly or Will or Ryan or even with the British voice if you prefer to have, uh, something different, you see what the idea is to give that flexibility. But in the device of people that might not have a PC or feel comfortable with a pc, we'll be able to basically have a different tts, uh, in their device.
Speaker 2 00:30:55 And how many languages do you support?
Speaker 4 00:30:58 Well, that's a good question. I should have checked, but <laugh>, um, more than 12, if I remember right. I mean it's all the major Western European language of German, Italian, Spanish, French, all the Scandinavian language. Finnish, uh, we do have checks, so it covers a certain number of language Arabic, uh, as well. So, uh, people will have a good choice depending on either their national or their, uh, their background, but also sometime things that they are going to be studying so they can use the TTS to match with the material they need to read.
Speaker 2 00:31:30 And, um, are you thinking that, well, I, I guess that makes sense and then you'll have more availability to really sit in, in more countries, because I don't know how many countries you have this released in now, but um, seems to me that the whole language thing is a big part of that.
Speaker 4 00:31:51 Definitely. And my first language is French and I grew up when I was a kid with product that were not that well done in French, you know? Mm-hmm. It's been important for me to, I want people of all the languages to support when they receive the device that they felt that we make it good, uh, for their language. And the market is significant in Europe, it is in us, but we do have significant sale in Europe. So we're happy to have, like I said, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian German, many other, uh, mother, many other languages. And it's, it's a pride, at least for me, to make sure that people feel that the device was done with as good as we can in their language. And sometime it's challenging, some European language are a bit more challenging in English. So it's been a good engineering challenging, but very satisfying to succeed in fulfilling, uh, this requirement.
Speaker 2 00:32:38 One of the things that you can do that I've always liked is not only are you, can you record your notes, but you can actually make, um, internet radio recordings. So if you're sitting there listening to some music and you really like the music, you can just hit your, your record button and it records off what you're listening to. Um, what are those formats that it supports as far as the recording formats?
Speaker 4 00:33:04 Great. So in the stream tree, uh, in the stream tree, we do have four recording, not playback. We can play a lot of formats, but for recording mp3 being the most obvious wave file for people that prefer to have their file, it'll be big files, but uncompress and non-change by any en cooling. But we also have fla, F L A C, uh, which is uh, which is a lossy, a lossless, uh, format. Some people that are in no would buy, for example, I Quality music and fla. So those are the three format, both for the internet radio recording, but also for the live recording, the one with the microphone. So those three formats could be available. And in MP3 we have three quality, uh, so people can have, if I'm recording a shopping list, I'm probably gonna use a low quality because that doesn't matter. But if I'm recording a lecture or an important meeting, I might use a better quality as I might listen to that recording many times. So it gives the flexibility to user depending what they're reading. Or if I'm going to a, a kid's concert, I might use a great microphone and very high quality to uh, capture that, you know, rest all or whatever.
Speaker 2 00:34:09 And one of the things that I've enjoyed too is when you're listening to podcasts, let's say you get a really good one that you want to save or listen to, you can save that on your card so that it doesn't take up the room on your, um, VR stream. What, what's the capacity of card that this uses? The SD cards, that's not going to change, right?
Speaker 4 00:34:31 Correct. So we'll still, we're still with the SD card on the stream two, we were limited to the, uh, SD hc, the, uh, the one that goes up to 32 gigabytes. Some people were reformatting bigger card than it would work, but that was unsupported. Uh, now we support what we call as the exceed, that's the extended card. I have a colleague at the office who's got a one terabyte card, well, a one terabyte card is 1,024 gigabyte. Just to give you an idea, that's a lot of recording. So I think we'll reach a point where, yeah, people will keep everything. Yeah, right now you have to manage on the stream to and remove some stuff. I think we'll be doing a, a little bit more. And we also had some user accessible internal memory. So people will be using the pc, could put some music, a bible, uh, some specific professional book lawyer could have his law book, for example, inside the device. So if they forget the SD card, they still have access to a few, a few books. Uh, so that, I think that's an interesting feature we just added as well.
Speaker 2 00:35:32 Oh, that's kind of amazing. Um, well, is there, are you able to tell us any, any uh, possible future things that you're hoping that the third generation, um, Victor Reader Stream will do eventually?
Speaker 4 00:35:50 Well, I could go with one for sure because this one is done and will be in the next version. There's a lot of podcasts that comes with chapters. For example, it would mark different interviews, right, within a program. So this is something that will come in the next version. People will be, let's say there's five people being interviewed on the program and you don't like the third one, it'll be easily able to skip to the fourth interview. So this is one, just one example of things we can now do because we have a little bit more memory and definitely more, uh, more power. And yeah, there's a lot of other things that's a problem with my job. I can talk about the past, but in the future I need to be a little bit more quiet. Not to give everything, but yeah, there's a lot of interesting things that are coming up, <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:36:31 Well, thank you so much Dominic. I really appreciate the time. Is there anything else you'd like to leave with, with
Speaker 4 00:36:39 Always the same thing? I feel a lot of gratitude for our users. They've been following us for years. They like our product, they provide us with feedback. And as an engineer, that's very nice because we know that we're doing things that people like. I mean, sometime in life you do products and you don't know whether people appreciate them or not. We do have a lot of testimonies from people. They like the product, they're very happy. And I'm always thankful about this. And I always say to people, I remember a letter when I was in my first few years, there's a lady that wrote to me and say, oh, I didn't like the tape. And now with it was a CD machine back then say, oh, now I start to read again. And for me, that made my life that day. I will say, oh, I changed a little bit the life from somebody that person was able to read. Again, like the notion of reading again and being a big reader myself, that was the best comment I could get from a user that she got into reading again.
Speaker 2 00:37:32 Yes. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on.
Speaker 4 00:37:37 It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the invitation and for people that have a stream, I just added this, the podcast of this program on our list of humanware podcast, suggested podcasts. So you can find it very easily if you like to listen to the other
Speaker 2 00:37:50 Episode. Thank you so much. Have a good night.
Speaker 4 00:37:54 Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:37:56 This is Kavia 90.3 fm, Minneapolis and k v.org. My name is Sam, I'm the host of this show. This is Disability and Progress. We were speaking with Dominic Labbe, who is software technical leader from humanware and talking about the new release third generation Victor Reader Stream. Um, it is also support K F E I and your favorite show. And we hope we are your favorite show and that you will support us. And you can do that by going to k ffe.org g and giving what you can afford. That is what helps us stay alive. Fact, we hope you have enjoyed this week's interview and discussion on a human wear product that I know was probably for more than just people who are visually impaired and blind. And you know, if you have an elderly mother who maybe is getting slower and doesn't wanna deal with a phone and, and has trouble reading more now, um, this is a great product for them.
Speaker 2 00:39:05 I will, I will vouch for it cuz I use it. So, and it's very easy. You don't have to tap and, and well, you, you tap the numbers, but they're all feeling, you know, you can feel them all. You don't swipe, you don't, you know, the voice is good, it's fun. Um, and there's a lot you can do on it. So you can also go to our website and pledge to kfi i.org G and give what you can afford. We really value you guys in your listenership and want to hear from you. And if you want to be a part of our email list or be a part of our listener member club, which we did not announce anyone tonight, but hopefully we'll have somebody for next week. I think we do. I just forgot her. Uh, not, I didn't forget her. I just forgot to put her in Charlene's little hands.
Speaker 3 00:39:58 Yes, you, you know, you gotta give me the the job.
Speaker 2 00:40:01 Oh my
Speaker 3 00:40:02 Gosh, here we are. You know, the, the Victor's dream has some, uh, if you're a parent and you got a little kid and you need to go get 'em, go to sleep, you can put it in their bed. And well,
Speaker 2 00:40:14 That's true because then they're not me messing with the cell phone. They're just listening to that. That is true. And
Speaker 3 00:40:21 It, you could put it on a, a timer, right? You
Speaker 2 00:40:23 Can, yes, you can. It has a sleep timer. I didn't even mention that, but it does have a sleep timer. Um, so that you can like fif uh, 15, 30 minutes, 45. I think there's an hour one. And there's also, you can set your own. So, uh, I, yes, there's a ton of really good great use for it. So, um,
Speaker 3 00:40:45 It, it, we didn't talk much about it, but there are people who have reading challenges Yes. And the these products are absolutely a ch uh, life changer for people.
Speaker 2 00:40:57 Yes. We wanna thank you for listening tonight and also remind you that our pledge is, you know, you just to click away, you can go on your, your little hot little phone and, and if you have the app, you can pledge that way or you can go to where? Charlene?
Speaker 3 00:41:17 K f a i.org.
Speaker 2 00:41:18 Org g There you go. I thought I was gonna have to poke or something.
Speaker 3 00:41:22 And if you do that, you, you also have options to get a gift, so.
Speaker 2 00:41:27 Oh, that's true. You do
Speaker 3 00:41:29 Even I think for $40, or is it 20 or $40? You get, uh, a packet of seeds you could pick up and, uh, there's all kinds of
Speaker 2 00:41:39 Some Hey, I didn't know
Speaker 3 00:41:40 That. Yeah, go on the go on.
Speaker 2 00:41:41 I don't want extra.
Speaker 3 00:41:42 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:41:44 <laugh>. Um, do you wanna tell people who is coming up for our next week?
Speaker 3 00:41:50 I don't know. You
Speaker 2 00:41:51 Do two. Stop that. You planned it.
Speaker 3 00:41:54 Oh, oh, you mean the
Speaker 2 00:41:57 Guests?
Speaker 3 00:41:58 Oh, our guests, uh, next week we are going to have, uh, the spokesman from Helping Pause and
Speaker 2 00:42:08 Can do
Speaker 3 00:42:09 Can can do canine. We're gonna have 'em both in and we're gonna talk about working dogs and how the training of it and the different, and explain to people that trained dogs are not the same as your little emotional support dog that you like to carry around in your purse or whatever.
Speaker 2 00:42:26 This is true.
Speaker 3 00:42:27 We are gonna talk about, uh, they're gonna talk about their training and, uh, they've both these groups have been in, in, in business for
Speaker 2 00:42:36 Several years,
Speaker 3 00:42:37 Uh, yeah, over 30 years. So, uh, it, it'll be a good show. We're, we're looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 00:42:43 And if you want to be a part of the email list to find out what's coming up on these episodes, you can email
Speaker 3 00:42:50 At, uh, disability and
Speaker 2 00:42:55
[email protected].
Speaker 2 00:42:58 Very good. All right. Oh, I've gotta, I gotta keep her, keep her going cuz otherwise she's gonna fall asleep on me. Oh, <laugh>. All right. Well, thank you for joining us. We wanna thank all our listeners for listening tonight and encourage you to go to kfi.org g and donate what you can. That's K F E I O G. And please, um, earmark it for Disability and Progress. It really helps us. We don't get paid. We are strictly volunteers. Um, but it, it helps keep the show going and it tells us you're listening. So, um, hopefully you've enjoyed the stuff that we've brought you in the past year and we'll continue to hopefully bring you and that's, that's what we wanna do. That's our goal. Anything else, Charlene,
Speaker 3 00:43:54 Thanks for listening and keep following us and please pledge. We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 00:44:01 This is disability and Progress. The views expressed on the show are probably Kfa at its board of directors. My name is Sam, the host of the show, Charlene Dah is my research team. Erin Wes Endor is my podcaster. I am engineering my show. <laugh>. This is nice for me. I'm the producer. Um, thank you to all of you who have followed. And this is Cafe I 90.3 fm minneapolis cafe.org and pledge now.
Speaker 0 00:44:33 K.
