Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Iacast. All right, with me this week, we have Michael.

Hello.

We have Marty Hall. And back with us again, we have Debbie. We are really excited to be back to talk all things tech and to talk about the latest news and things like that in technology. I guess to really start us off, there's been some getting more developments in what's going on with AI. And Michael, before the show you were telling me about a neat new feature that's coming to Bing where you can talk to it and it will talk back to you. Do you want to kind of explain what you saw on that?

Yeah. And if anyone from Microsoft is listening, I did go to bing. Comnew and I did sign up for the waitlist and I did download the app, so you can send me that email anytime.

Same here.

Actually play with the real chat GPT. Just saying. I know people out there that got it and it's not fair. Anyways. Yes, I'm whining So I did hear yesterday on main menu live, Jeff Bishop and the Gasmens were on there and Jeff was demonstrating the fact that with the new being supported by Chat JPT, you can tap on the microphone button and know that what I say may change because it is in very early beta. But right now you tap on the microphone button, the best experience is to do a three finger double tap if you're a voiceover user. Otherwise voiceover will read what you're saying. So you want to do that and stop your speech and then say your question. For example, on the main menu episode, Jeff asked who is John and Larry Gasman? And when he stopped talking, it said who is John and Larry Gasman? And gave two different searches of what he thought or what being thought he had said. Jeff then responded to the Bing app and said that he actually wanted the Gasmens. It was a different pronunciation of the other individuals that he was being found. And then it started talking about things that John and Larry had done in their careers and talking about a radio station that they were on back in the early 2000. They may be different than other people because they have done a lot of stuff online, but the fact is Jeff was able to use his voice and interact with the being assistant, even though it's not called a Bing assistant. But is that what Microsoft is leaning towards? Makes me wonder. And it was an awesome experience, so you have to go listen to that. And he plays I don't know if he knew this, but he played some Bing ringtones. Apparently there were some ringtones from Bing and they were kind of cool to listen to as well.

So here's a question for you. I have read a few pretty scary articles about the Chat GPT, but I heard that it's bringing back some very weird information. Do any of you know this kind of weird information that's coming back? I don't know if they're trying to invoke it and do something to force it, give it bad or answers that are out of the ordinary or maybe kind of sliding the line a little bit.

It's like you're trying to say it's unhinged. Right?

Yeah, you could say that. Or making other people unhinged by saying things that maybe aren't true.

Yeah. And that's the thing that I think may be getting overlooked by people a lot, but it's not something that's hidden. I'm pretty sure Chat GPT says it at least, if not the first time you open it, at least maybe on every page, but it says incorrect information may be provided by this tool. And that's important. It's good for us to fact check, but yes, Marty, I've heard some of those stories and they're very interesting. And it's bugs. Again, this is in very early beta that need to be worked out. All software has bugs, Michael.

Well, yes, and I have very mixed and very passionate feelings about this. And all of this kind of comes back to a long time ago, the 2010 era, when Microsoft created a chat bot called Microsoft Tay. Does anybody remember that?

I remember Tay, but I don't remember what happened with Tay, if that makes sense.

So why don't you give us a primer?

Microsoft Tay was like an early attempt at a chat bot similar to Chat GPT. What ended up happening was that it was supposed to mimic a teenage girl that people could talk to and talk to it about different things and be able to teach it. Well, nothing can go bad with that, right?

No, not at all.

Well, it would learn and it would pair it things kind of like Chat GPT, but they put it on Twitter and its own website and a lot of very malicious actors got to it and started teaching it how to speak hate speech. And Microsoft had to pull the plug on it, on the project because of how much racist and other content it was spewing out. And I think with the being I don't want to say Chat GPT because Bing's implementation of Gpt-3 and eventually GPT Four are different from Chat GPT. So Bing's AI will do some of that and some people have actually gotten it to say that it loves them and all kinds of other things. And that's, in my opinion, to be expected with a large language model that has not been given specific parameters as open AI Chat GPT is given. And so I think one of the things that has to happen is we need to really understand our expectations of this thing, not anthropomorphize it as much as we do. Make it as human as we think it is, and say, this is a tool. Realize that, yes, it's going to say some bad things. And maybe there needs to be a mode where you can limit its ability to say unhinged things. Debbie, what are your thoughts on all of this?

My thoughts, you know what, I'm sitting here looking for the price on my pick that I'll mention later, but I think this AI stuff is moving so fast and I think we need to I think there are going to be a lot of questions. It's fascinating, but it's going so fast.

Go ahead, Michael.

I'll just throw this out there and let people ponder on why are these conversations just now coming up and people yeah, that's true, we're paying attention to technology. These conversations should have been in the Open long time ago.

Yeah, that does make sense.

And I'll throw one more thing. Go ahead, Debbie.

Sorry.

Well, I think there are a lot of ethical questions. I was listening to Mozen at Large and he did an interview with the Eleven Labs guy and, you know, it's it's all very exciting, but there are a lot of questions and I just hope it doesn't get out too far ahead of us.

They did put Chat GPT behind a paywall, or at least a part of it anyway. But the other thing is, they did leave a portion of it out there for free, for people to still use, which is still having a lot of functionality. I mean, the free version has what most people would need on a daytoday basis, but when they keep it free, it's a two sides to this coin. One side is the people are happy because they get a free tool that they can use and they can experience what Chat GPT is like and how to use it and all that good stuff. On the flip side of that, the developers are getting free learning because all of these people using Chat GPT for free are also teaching it by doing all of these inquiries every day, all the time, all day long.

Well, there's two aspects there and Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, but I actually do not think that you get anything special for being a paid member as far as its functionality. You get no downtime, you get faster results, but that's really all you get is that am I not wrong?

That is the primary reason why I have canceled my membership. I will not be renewing Chat GPT right now.

And OpenAI says this Chat GPT is a research model. That's all it is. It is for research. And that's the biggest thing with these things is this is such a first step. We're taking baby steps and I think we just don't know where this stuff is going to go in the future. We have Whisper AI, we've got Eleven Labs, we've got all these things and now the new being and Bard. And I think it's great that those problems projects are coming out, I do. But I think that there's two sides to this coin, and I want to make people aware of this, is the tech media is saying these things are not that good, but at the same time they're saying these things are here to stay. What I would like people to understand is these things really are that good. They're not as good as you may think they are, but they are a step beyond what we've had before. So use them and get the most out of them. One thing is, Marty, you mentioned teaching it. I don't believe that we're teaching Chat GPT yet. I don't think that anything that we're putting in there is really being factored into its data model. But I think that now what we type into Bing, oh yeah, that is definitely teaching it. So I think as a developer, all this stuff is great and I intend to take advantage of some of these APIs in the future. But it's just time will tell and we just have to really see where this technology is going. They're saying that this will probably replace VR and Web Three as far as the next big thing in tech. So I know sometimes we get fatigued on what is going on in the tech news, but I think this is going to be going for a very.

Long time right now, like Michael was saying, the Chat GPT has a paywall and you could pay whatever a month. But the experience isn't that much different, at least right now. So now Microsoft is coming out with their version through Bing and they're also incorporating it into Skype and also Edge, the web browser. So for now, I think that's going to get out there. People will be using it, it'll be great. But I would not be surprised now there's nothing out there. This is just a guess of mine. So this is just hearsay right now. But I would not be surprised if down the line six months, maybe a year, that they incorporate a whole more optimized, more in depth version that you can only get behind the 365 paywall. So if you're a Microsoft 365 Subscriber, you're going to get all these other features that will allow you to do all these other things. They'll still be a free version and you'll be able to do some stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised if they put it behind a 365 paywall and then give you all kinds of other things it's going to do. But that's what kind of I think may happen in the future.

A product that I really wish was accessible, I really wish Notion has what's called Notion AI, and it's using OpenAI's Chat GPT or the Gpt-3 framework to make Notion, which is a document editing and database solution. It adds AI to that. And what's interesting is, and I found out this morning, you can tell this AI to reformat your document. You could give it a Blob of text and say, make this look good.

I think that's where the Microsoft Compose tool that Microsoft mentioned a couple of weeks ago is going to be. And that has me excited because that's primarily what I'm using Chat GPT for, is to reformat my emails. And I will give it the ideas, but I want it to make it sound more professional or get this point across for me. Because often I lack in that field.

Well, and not just that, but adding headings or bullets or paragraph marks where they should be making those things look better, I think, is where this AI stuff could really be beneficial, especially for our audience. Because sometimes if you haven't received training or you're just not that good at formatting a document, these things can be helpful. Like if you say you're writing a resume, you know what you want to write, but you just don't know how to format to make it look good for a visual user. That is some power right there in my view. There is some other tech news I want to get to before our topic, and this one I haven't mentioned before for the show. Netflix is saying that they're imposing rules on certain countries where you have to register on Netflix your devices in a primary location every 31 days or that device would be locked out to prevent people from sharing passwords. And I know Canada is one of those countries. So what are your thoughts on this?

That's too much, big brother.

On one hand, you want your company to succeed. Up until recently, people have figured out how to share their passwords and four or five people are using one account. I don't know, it's kind of tough to keep raising their prices also. And so a lot of people can't afford the pricing. So you get a bunch of friends to chip in and everyone puts in a couple of bucks and you all kind of share. I don't know. It's too bad that they can't find a more constructive way for people who don't have the money but be able to be cost effective at the same time. Like for example, maybe you just have a phone app and you can only watch it on your phone and nowhere else, and that would be less cost or something like that. I don't know.

I like where Marty's going with that. Have some devices, maybe they can be enrolled into it or offer a family plan. Because if I'm a parent and well, I mean, if I'm a parent who had kids going to college, for example, I would personally have no problem with them using our Netflix because it's going back to algorithms. It's the Netflix that knows them because that's what they've used all their life. So why should they have to go restart? Unless is it about the money or is it about the data? Do they want to build brand new profiles on people who are younger anyways, not getting into conspiracy theories or what people could also do is and it's more techy, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people do this to keep sharing their passwords. Go look up how to create a VPN, and then connect all your devices to that VPN that you run. And then just sign in from that one location. And then all Netflix knows that you're signing in from the same place.

Well, one thing they did say, and this is kind of creative, your primary location that you set has to have a TV.

Really?

Yes.

That's interesting.

I don't like that you only have.

A tablet or a phone or something and you're kind of out of luck.

That's basically what they're saying, you're out of luck. And this comes from the company that they promote. Four screens, is what they say in the plan. And they promoted share your password, get your family on Netflix. Well, now, apparently, that's no longer what they want.

They probably didn't realize the numbers would be so skewed when they did that. But Spotify is basically all you can eat music. It costs 999 a month for a single user. But they also have a family plan, like Michael was saying. And the family plan is $15 a month, I believe. And you can have up to five people on your family plan. So to me, it's interesting because a single user is $10 a month, but a family plan for up to five people is only $15 a month. So you can even get together with some of your friends and be like, hey, let's get together, and we'll all throw in a couple of dollars. We'll go on a family plan, and all five of us can have Spotify for a couple of bucks.

Apple Music has that as well.

Correct. The only thing about Apple Music, though, that's a little bit of a bummer, is I believe you have to be in their ecosystem in order to be able to do a family plan. So you can't be on Android or something like that? As far as I know.

No, you can be on Android.

Okay.

They have an android app for Apple Music.

You can be on android. But the gotcha and what makes Spotify better is Apple is entwined into your life. You actually have to be in the family ecosystem for Apple. So everything is connected. And that can work. But it has more implications than just setting up a Spotify family.

It's true.

And on Spotify, you can literally go to their web page, login with your credentials, go to your plans, choose family plan, and then whoever you want, you put their email in there, and then that person gets an email and they set everything up on their own from there.

And I think YouTube premium even has a way you could do that as well. So there's a lot of different ways that companies are doing this. And I think that Netflix is going to especially if they move to the US with this. They say it's their trial countries that they're doing this. I really think that they're going to lose a lot of customers if they do this in the US. I may even cancel my Netflix account.

Why? I said it sounds like Big brothers. If you have to log in a new device every what did you say, 30 days or 30 days? That's like with Nls, if you don't use a certain device that you have on there, it gets logged out. I thought it was like six weeks or three months, but that's too much control.

Especially it says you also have to have a TV as well. It can't be a screen, like an iPad or an iPhone or something like that. That's ridiculous.

That's ridiculous.

It's like a TV or your primary WiFi network or something strange. I think you have to have certain devices where you call it your primary location. It's very strange how they're doing it.

Michael, can you clarify something really quickly?

Sure.

So in the beginning we were talking about where they're implementing this and there's other countries where they're implementing this, but are they doing this in the US. Or not?

Not as of yet. But they are calling it trial markets.

So it will get here eventually.

I'm sure it will, yes. And like I said, if that does happen, I will probably cancel my Netflix account. So if you guys, as our listeners are out there in one of those countries, we'd love to hear from you if you're experiencing this and is it a big deal for you and what you're going to do about it if this happens to you?

I want to say one more thing before we exit this topic. And the thing about having a TV being one of the primary things that you need to be logged into when you're within your 30 days of like calling from home, basically, or your primary residence, whatever their rules are is. I wonder if that's their way of making it so that people cannot use a VPN to get around that rule.

Probably. I mean, you could create your own VPN and see if that works with your home network, but that's very techy and not beginner level stuff.

True.

This has to do with mastodon. And as people probably know, I do manage two or three lost count mastodon instances. And one of our members, this shady guy here, Michael Babcock, was reported by another instance. And I don't know the exact it was a very strange sounding instance. It was not one that you normally hear from. And of course, those kind of things you always have to be on guard about because it could be a bot or it could be a hacking instance trying to really shut down somebody who is a legitimate user. And I think that's what happened here. But Michael's account was reported for they marked it as other content violations and marked several of his messages on Mastodon and me as a server admin, I could say, okay, how am I going to resolve this? Do I just resolve it? Limit Michael's activity, mark him as being spam, suspend him, or remove him from the server? And the thing to realize is that if you do not know your server admin, or you don't know the people that are running your server, just see a report and say, I don't want to see any reports. If I get reports, even if it's not legitimate reports, you're gone. That all can happen. So Michael, I'd be curious to know your thoughts on all this and everybody else as well.

So I am trying to use Mastodon more, mainly because I missed that camaraderie that you get from seeing regular people posting in a place like Twitter. And Mastodon to me is so much cleaner than what Twitter has become. The problem, though, that I have been aware of since I decided to make that leap over is instead of having one Elon Musk at the head of Twitter, there's the potential to have thousands of Elon Musks at the head of Mastodon servers that can control the flow of information that you both see and that other people see, that you share. And that's kind of concerning because with Twitter, twitter is at this time a publicly traded company, which means the decisions Twitter make are in the public. And that is not the case with Mastodon. And I think the other thing is, we can easily fall into a hole of, hey, I really like the posting of these people, and Stephen brings this up quite often on double tap. But you know, you get into a group of people that you really like everything they're saying that causes you to not have to actually argue your points or explore the fact that other people have different points than you. In Twitter, it was everything all in one. You get it all or you don't. And yes, you pick and choose who you follow. But this is kind of the case too. With Mastodon, you can't control who your followers boost or retweet, and so you may see some of that content. But I think Mastodon, there's a lot more segregation of people's information and content.

Now, one thing that's really interesting about Macedon, which probably a lot of people don't really realize or maybe don't really understand, so Michael D can probably shed some light on this. Macedon has multiple servers, right? You can join a server that's already been created if you're looking for a friend, or maybe there's a particular topic or a particular organization that might be on a particular server, or you can build your own if you want and have only your friends on there, whatever the case may be. So, Michael D, do you want to maybe kind of shed a little light on that for people who maybe don't quite understand what that means because all the other social media is out there, the big ones, facebook, Twitter, and the alike, they don't do that. When you go on there, you're just in the masses with everybody. So maybe you want to give a little primer on how that works.

So with mastodon, you pick a home. I like to say they're like islands. You pick where you want to be and that's who you're living with. And you could talk to other islands and other places, but you are where you live and you're associated by where you live. It's kind of like I'm Michael Doe and I live in Texas. Right. It would be like at and Michaeldoe's at Texas us. Or something like that. Does that make sense? So that is your server. That is your instance. So when you have your server, you agree to the rules of that server. You agree to the group behavior of that server. And different servers have different group behaviors, and servers can block other servers. If there's a big group on one of my servers, like accessibility, social, and they don't want to see promotions from brand companies or whatnot, they can block that server and just not have to see anything from there. But the people on that server would still see posts from themselves and from other servers that they haven't been blocked from. So it's like you have little islands of social media that are all connected through this big thing called the Fediverse.

Now this is where this gets interesting, that is different from all other big social media outlets. So let's just say for the sake of conversation, I decide I'm going to complain about Michael Babcock and say, oh, he posted something inappropriate, whatever, and I complain. Ultimately in this situation, instead of it just going to whoever in these large companies, it's ultimately going to come back to the person who is the owner of the server that Michael would be on. So let's say Michael Doyce owns the server that Michael Babcock was on that I complained about Michael Babcock. Ultimately, Michael Doyce now, since it's his server, decides on whether there should be anything taken up against Michael Babcock or not, which is kind of interesting because there is no other social media out there that would put that power into the users'hands. Really? So it's kind of interesting there. So Michael D, what do you think about that?

Well, again, you said put the power in the user's hands. It's not really in the user's hands. It's in the hands of the server administrator who is supposed to be moderating to make sure that the users are doing what they're supposed to do. And this is why for me, I have to have multiple mastodon apps on my phone because most of them do not give those server administrator notifications. But toot, the T-O-O-T exclamation mark app will give you those notifications and it said that so and so reported Michael Babcock. And I thought, this doesn't look like a legit report. Let me go view it. And I went on my computer and said, no, Michael is fine.

Well, the thing is, which is different from any other social media, is that, let's say I decide I want to have my own server, I build my own server, I invite my 20 closest friends and block the rest of the world. And you create your own social media environment without having to have all this other stuff.

I want to tell our listeners about our livestream and we'll put a link to that in our show notes. We have a fancy Live 365 radio station, so you can find it by downloading the Live 365 app and looking for iacast network. And you can find [email protected], and again, you'll find it in the show notes of this podcast. It'll also be in the nice new fancy, shiny I accessibility app that I'm going to finish one of these weeks. It's in beta now, but I just need to get the podcast player finished and it will be ready to go. So we have a daily schedule of podcasts that you can listen to all of our recent content. Really excited about that. And I do know people use it and that's really exciting, that is.

So I'm going to put you on the spot here, Michael, because we want to incentivize people to actually play with the app and well, maybe not the app. I don't know if Michael can make this happen. He doesn't know what I'm about to say. But we want people to listen to the live stream and check out some of the past content. That way you can hear it and just have it on the background. Michael, next March 9, do we want to live stream to Live 365? Because one of us can do that with audio hijack. And why not?

Yes.

Then people can come live.

Yes. In fact, I meant to try to do that this time, but it was kind of a me too. I could not get into my YouTube and so we didn't record this live. So my apologies, people. It was one of those things that I tried to be fancy and set up pass keys with Google and for whatever reason, that's not working. So I need to figure out what's going on there.

But yeah. So March 9 will be live and how can people listen to it? And we go live at 04:00 p.m. Central time.

Yes. So if you want to listen to it again, make sure that you have the Live 365 app. You can search for it there. And eventually, once this app is off the ground, the accessibility app, we'll be sending push notifications anytime we go live. So that'll be fancy, that's something to be on the lookout for and just go listen to our content. It's really cool. We. Have a lot of faces that are showing up doing our station IDs and things like that. So it's really neat. With all that being said, let's get onto our topic at hand for today. And that is one of the things that I like to do. And we'll transition from that to this is talk about one or all of. The content that Marty and Michael have been doing on unmute and a piece of content me and Marty did on unmute kind of transitions into this topic. So, Marty and Michael, do you guys want to talk about your latest content that you guys have done on Unmute.

As of the time of recording? Because I was editing last week. Well, last time's iacast, and we're talking about this week and last week, and I'm like, none of these dates match up. So as of the time of recording, the most recent content we've published is the Unmutecast comparing homepods that was with Marty and Michael. And they talk about the different home pods. Yes, two HomePod minis have ended up in my home, and I kind of like them. January 21, we published the replay of the call that we host every Tuesday Live and ACB community, and then Marty on Sunday taught us how to navigate voiceover with less fingers, and that's specifically on the Mac, so just to be aware for people. And then lastly, Michael and Marty talked about picking the right Mac on last.

Thursday, and that one's really exciting because we went through all the different Macs, and it kind of gave people a perspective on which machines they should pick. So I think that The State of the Mac episode really gave a lot of perspective on which Mac to get and how to really understand what these things do. What were your thoughts on that, Marty? Do you think that that was a very useful episode?

Yeah, definitely. One of the reasons why that episode sort of came to fruition was because I'm constantly getting people asking me, hey, I want to get into the Mac world, but what Mac should I get? What would be the best Mac for me? If I want to get a laptop, which one would be the best one? Or if I want to get a desktop, what would be the thing to get? So I thought, hey, let's do a State of the Mac and let's go through all the different Macs and what they would be good for. And so Michael and I did that, and I thought it came out pretty good.

Yeah, it did. And that kind of gave me the idea for today's. IACAs topic. And the reason for that is there's so many tech devices out there. And last time we talked about the differences between assistive technology and mainstream technology, and I felt it would be a very good idea for us to talk this time about what is a good way to research and really learn what you should buy. Because we're not all made of money, and I think we need to be able to make good purchasing decisions when we go out there and buy these products. So I felt like this would be a good topic to have today because Macintosh computers are expensive windows computers. A good Windows computer is not cheap either. A lot of people are like, oh, you could get a good Windows computer for hardly anything. That's really not true. If you're going to get especially for assistive technology, like if it's going to run Jaws or Fusion, especially Fusion. If it's going to run that kind of stuff, it needs to be able to have some beefy specs and you could get a cheaper computer with better specs. But is it going to last? I felt like this would be a good topic today.

So I think there's two things that people really need to understand. A what is your use case? What are you going to be doing with your system? What tasks are you going to be doing? That's something seriously to consider before even making a purchase or even looking at what you want to buy. Are you going to be typing emails? Are you going to be doing Word documents? Are you going to be doing Pro audio or video? I mean, there's stuff all over the place that you need to kind of hone in and figure out what it is that you're going to be doing. And then when you understand what you're going to be doing, then you can educate yourself on the kind of power that you'll need for the computer, depending on hard drive space and processor, Ram, all those good things. And then when you're spending your money, you're spending your money in the appropriate way. Now, the other thing to understand, especially in the Windows world, if that's the direction that you're going to go, is getting a computer, that the hardware inside is going to be up to par, to what it is that you're going to want to do, and we'd be able to complete the tasks that you're going to want to complete. So, for example, there's a lot of computers out there that, hey, you can get this back, and that spec and your computer is only going to be $300. But I guarantee you that computer isn't going to be running after six months or maybe a year at the most. So you really want to understand what it is that you're going to buy so that when you buy it, it will last you three, five years, right?

So one of the important things to think about too, is when you go and you get a computer when you go out to buy one. I don't know if you guys have seen these stores, but here in Texas there was a store called Fries Electronics.

Oh, yeah, we had those.

And those guys make their sales and they get commission and they're not in business anymore. But Best Buy does the same thing. You'll go to a Best Buy and you ask them, what do you recommend? And these guys will tell you not just they have their own opinions and they do not understand what somebody needs for assistive technology, right? Like I went with Taylor to look at getting her a computer with a number pad and this guy recommended her get the Samsung Galaxy Book. I think that's what it's called. And it's a great computer and it did work for some things, but it would not work the best for assistive technology. It had the best screen out there and it had the number pad that she was looking for. But again, it did not have, you know, on with Jaws or Nvda. It would run really slow even though it had 16 gigs of Ram, which was very strange. So a lot of these companies you go to fries back in the day, Best Buy Now and places like that are not going to know these things. And I think that like, we had our conversation on mute about the best or what Macs are good for what I think, Marty, we may need to do the same thing for Windows machines and talk about those things and really go through a lot of the different categories because it's hard to know. One of the biggest things that I always recommend people do is look at the big companies first. Like Microsoft with their Surface machines are always going to be good machines. Taylor is using a Surface Book four with eight gigs of Ram and that's doing the job for her, whereas some other eight gigs of Ram computers and Windows won't, right? And so I think it just depends, like, what are you trying to do with it. And she does some basic video editing and things like that on there, whereas you can edit with Reaper, whereas other machines with similar specs won't work for that.

Here's the thing that's a little bit more difficult when you're going to Windows route opposed to the Mac route. When you're getting a Mac, you really just need to figure out what it is that you're going to be doing and then you can choose the Mac that will be able to cover the tasks and the things that you want it to be able to do. Whether it's a laptop or a desktop. The hardware for the most part is going to be solid across the board. You don't really have to think about that too much because anything is going to be super powerful, probably overkill for the regular day to day user and beyond. But when you go to Windows, are you going to go intel? Are you going to go something else? How much ramp should you get? What kind of screen? I mean, you really have to kind of have an education on the hardware so that when you're purchasing a computer. You're not getting a computer that looks great because it's only $300 or $500 maybe, and it has all the numbers that you would think that you want, but then in reality, the components aren't very good and they end up breaking down after six to twelve months. Or maybe even though it says, hey, you have all these big, huge number on the processor, but what processor is it? Or maybe the Ram is slow or maybe it doesn't come with an SSD. There's all these things that I think that people need to understand so that when they do make their purchase, they're getting a purchase where they're getting solid hardware and at the same time being able to get something within the price range that's going to do what they needed to do.

So, Debbie, I'm curious what methodologies when you go to look for a new computer or even a new microphone or a new device, whether it be assistive technology or not, what are some techniques that you use to go out there and find out what will work best for you and how you make a decision before pulling the trigger on a purchase?

I've gotten a lot smarter over the years, but I was a slow learner on it because I would want everything. Or I'd go into a store and somebody would show me a really cool microphone and I'd say, oh, okay, I've got various things around, all kinds of mics, and some of them I'm thinking, well, maybe I didn't need to get those. But now I am doing a lot better with knowing what I want to use where. And one example of this does involve assistive technology. When I was thinking about another Braille display, I saw that there was the I think it was the brilliant that had a deal where if you bought a certain time, you could get the 40 sell and then you could get this 14 sell for free. And everybody was jumping on it, but a lot of people were complaining about that little 14 cell. And I kept thinking about, what do I really want it for? Well, I went with the Mantis because I wanted the cordy keyboard, not because I don't know, a Braille keyboard. I've used it forever. But I wanted to actually see what I'm writing. I wanted to read what I'm writing after I type it. And I did it partly to get better at UEB. So that's one reason that I wanted that. Now, recently I bought a real cheap computer from someone and I told him it was one he put together for me. I said, I really want it for word processing. I need to get some writing done. I need it to be portable. I don't want a real complicated machine. I don't need a lot of extras bells and whistles. So I'm getting better at saying and thinking through, what do I want it for? What do I want it to do for me. And so that's been really helpful. But a long time ago, I just wanted everything. I wanted all the toys.

So, Debbie, here's a question for you. Let's say, and maybe you can tell us your process on how you got to where you are now. But when you're purchasing a computer, a Windows machine, there's choosing, what processor do you want and what does that mean? Right? And then there's what hard drive do you want? A platter drive? SSD? How much Ram? So, for you and you choosing to purchase a computer these days after having knowledge. Now, how did you gain the knowledge and understand what it is that you were getting? So the hardware was up to par and not super cheap and was going to break after six to twelve months. What was your process like? How did you find out?

I'd call you guys now. I'd call my geeky friends and I get on things like what was Twitter? I learned to use my iPhone predominantly because of Twitter, and I would now get on mastodon, and I'd be calling my friends and my friends who are really good geeks, and I'd be saying, okay. And they'd give me recommendations. So I'd ask their thoughts on what I need to get, what are the specs that it must have and why do I want it, what is it I want to do, and then I'd go to the most relevant source to get it.

So, Debbie, would you say that now that you've been using technology for quite a while, that you kind of know what you like when you're buying a Windows computer? And I think that's kind of the biggest takeaway from this, is once you've been buying computers for a while, right, you kind of know what you like. You know, like when I buy Windows computers, I buy from two brands, really, and that's, you know, Microsoft or Asus, those are my two brands that I buy from. It all depends on the things that you prefer. And I think it's important to talk to your friends, talk to your network, talk to people that you're around to come up with their recommendations. And you get enough information from different people and you'll see patterns, right? I don't know how many people buy Acer. I've never cared for that brand personally, so I don't hear about people buying it much. It's usually Dell or HP or some of the others, which I don't recommend those either, personally. But people have their taste, they know what they like. Lenovo is a good brand. People love that. And you can't go wrong with Apple silicon Mac. Back when we had the Intel Macs, though, that was always a chore, which one to get right? Because you had the I three, I five, I seven computers. So now on the Apple side, it's not as much of a deal, a big deal as it used to be, but I think it's important to talk to your network, find out what they're using, what they recommend, and then use that on your decision. You could look at reviews online that helps as well sometimes, and just make an informed choice. And I think that's the key words there about anything. Make an informed choice on what is going to work best for you because you don't always know. And my final thought before I open it up for final comments is we're losing this capacity, this capability, but there is nothing better than actually going to a store and putting your hands on the hardware and seeing how it works.

If they have it, where you can get your hands on it.

That's why I'm saying that that capability is lessening completely. Like, Microsoft had the Microsoft Store and they were wonderful stores. I loved them because they had loads of computers that you could just go and play with, like the Apple Store, and they don't have that anymore. Best Buy does have a good selection, but it's still limited compared to bigger stores. So if you have that ability, go into a Best Buy, go to an Apple Store, look at this stuff. If it's assistive technology, look at demos, go to shows if you have the ability, but don't I would not recommend going out there and just saying, well, that sounds cool, I'm going to put down $2,000 on that and I don't know what it does. That's never a good idea. Right.

I'd be careful. I'm sorry.

No, you're fine.

Careful about reviews because reviews are not going to speak to accessibility unless you find certain places that are dealing with accessibility. Like right here.

All right, with all that being said, Debbie, what is your pick for this week or this time and where can people find you online?

So I did forget one thing before I get to the pick, if I may. There's an app that I heard about today called Oko. Have any of you heard of Oko?

No.

Okay. It is Oko in the App store. Oko. And then by Ice Ayes, and just a little bit about it says, and it's iPhone only reach your destination effortlessly. Oko is a smart camera app that helps you explore your surroundings with real time feedback. With it, you can know the state of the pedestrian traffic light at an intersection. The pedestrian traffic light function gives you the state of the pedestrian light by playing Haptics and audio feedback. Similar to a physical app system, oko is closely co developed with blind and visually impaired users. Oko. Rather I said Okio. Oko practices privacy by design. So anyway, they're using it a whole lot over in Europe and now they're all over the US. And I meant to mention this earlier when you asked me. Yeah. So pretty cool, pretty interesting to yeah, definitely find out.

People want to check it out and we'll have to see how well it works and stuff.

My pick is a neck pouch. And I use this. I've used this for years. And how I use this is that when I'm walking somewhere and I want my camera to show something, like with IRA, or I would use it with this Oko app, I would use this pouch. And I carry my Air pods and any other little things in it that I need. But it's a very simple small pouch. They actually have them in different sizes. But I found that I used to buy them at free markets. But Gadgets guidelines and Gadgets us carries them for $15.

Fantastic. That sounds cool.

Yeah. It goes around my neck most of the time when I'm wanting my camera to show. And I just put it in one pocket. I zip that pocket just slightly so that it's holding my phone and the camera is showing out and can go forward hands free. Very cool.

Sounds awesome. I'll have to check that out.

Yeah. I am at well, debbie Hazelton.com. My email is I [email protected] I am on Mastodon debbie Hazelton or at Debbiehazelton at Mastodon Social.

Excellent. You'll be getting a follow after the show. Marty. Marty, what about you? What's your pick and where can people find you online?

My pick is actually something I purchase every year. And it is a book called iOS Access for all. And the writer of the book is Shelley Brisbane. She's amazing in the journalistic world. She does podcasting and she writes books. Obviously, this book dives deep into all the accessibility features on iOS. So that would be your iPhone or iPad and beyond. It just came out, this new iOS 16 just, I think, in this past week. So it's a great book. It's super awesome, filled with tons of knowledge. So I would definitely say iOS access for all. So go check that out. And you could find me at feedback at unmute show. You can send me a message there, questions, comments, whatever.

And we've had Shelley on the show before, and I think we should get her back on to talk about her new book.

I think that would be definitely that'd be an awesome episode.

Yeah. So we've had Shelley on, so that would be great. All right. And Michael, what is your pick and where can people find you?

So I was going to stick with the theme of what apparently we're doing. And if no one realized that inadvertently, marty and Debbie are supporting blind small business owners. Just throwing that out there. But I'm going to be a little selfish and say I am going with a pick that I may have picked in the past, but I don't know. So I'm going to throw it out there anyways. And it is servant on Apple TV Plus. And they are in the final season. I haven't been excited about a new episode to drop since, I don't know, I was a lot younger, especially when it was TV. And the audio description that Apple does with the content that they produce and they produce audio description in several different languages is superb. So if you're looking for an emotional thriller and a very strange show, check out Servant on Apple TV Plus. You can find me online payone at iaccessibility social for now, unless I switch that over to accessibility social, which I might do because that kind of flows a little better, too. And you can go report some of my content, too, if you'd like. Please let me know if you're reporting it so I know what you don't like about what I'm posting. And to you, Michael.

All right, so my pick this time is another TV show, so I'm going to stick on that pattern that Michael was on. And this one is Star Trek Picard, season three. It just started up last week and oh, man, episode two is so good. I won't spoil anything, but the audio description is good. I have it on Paramount Plus, and oh, man, there's so much action. So it's very Star Trek. I feel like a lot of Star Trek lately has kind of missed the mark. This kind of it's back on a huge starship, and that's really nice. Just having that eighty s and ninety s feel kind of back. It's really kind of refreshing. And I'm just really loving just the show. It's just a fantastic show. And the first two seasons were okay. This one, I think, is very much back to the roots of Star Trek. So Star Trekard season three, check it out. If you're a Star Trek fan or even if you're not, you like Sci-fi. Check it out. It's great. As for where you could find me, I'm at Mikedoey's at Techoplus Social. You can find me on Twitter as Mike Doey's. I'm still there. I'm staying till the lights go out, and you can email me at [email protected]. I'm on Facebook. Just do a search for me and I'm pretty much anywhere online, so hope to see you there. And that's going to do it for this episode. I would like to thank Michael, Marty and Debbie for being here again. This has been a fantastic episode of the IA cast, and we'll be back with you again in another two weeks, and we will see you then.

Thank you for tuning in to the Iacast. We hope you enjoyed the show and found the conversation to be insightful and informative. If you have any feedback or comments, we'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email at [email protected]. You can also follow us on Twitter at iacast network to stay informed about new episodes and other updates. Don't forget to check out more great podcast on the Iaccast Network IACAs net. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.