There is some good news and extremely bad newswithin themail.
Cheers, Ablake.
---- Original Message ------
From: "Rob Turner" <[email protected]
Subject: RE: Re your sites revamp
Date sent: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:02:05 -0800
Hello Blake,
Thank you for contacting us to express your concerns about the
changes
to our website that will temporarily affect our subscribers who
download
our books and newspapers directly onto their portable notetakers.
We thought it was important to answer some of the questions that
have
arisen about our move to the new zip format. These questions
mainly
affect people who have hardware access technology devices such as
notetakers.
Once our new website goes live, our books will be compressed as
standard
zip files instead of our former proprietary compression
technology for
packing books. After much consideration, we decided to make this
change
because zip is a common technology built into the operating
system of
most computers. If your computer does not have zip or the
Macintosh
equivalent, we have links on how to get free software to unzip
files on
the new site.
Access technology vendors also preferred we go to a standard
compression
like zip, which is easier to support and has some exciting
enhancement
possibilities (like AT working with a single zip file without
needing to
unzip). We began working months ago with access technology
vendors
regarding the transition to zipped files. We expect that the
transition
will go pretty smoothly for members who use PCs and Macs for
downloading
our books, either for use on their personal computer or for
transfer to
other devices. For example, the new version of Victor Reader
Soft
provided with the new website will support the zipped files
without
needing them to be unzipped, as well as lots of other cool
improvements.
Hardware devices that used to handle our packed files by
connecting
directly to our website need to have software upgrades to support
zipped
instead of packed files. Note taker vendors are already
preparing
upgrades to their software to handle zipped files. Many of the
vendors
have their upgrades ready, and others are expected to be ready in
the
coming month. The Wizard that you'll see on the new site on your
first
visit has contact information for your vendor.
The only people adversely affected will be those with obsolete
devices
that used to support packed files and cannot be upgraded. You
can work
around this problem by using a computer to download the books you
want,
unzip them and then copy the book files to your note taker.
The change affects the following vendors and note takers:
HumanWare
BrailleNote and VoiceNote mPower
BrailleNote PK
The BrailleNote Classic will not be updated, since HumanWare no
longer
maintains or updates their proprietary software for these models
Freedom Scientific
Pac Mate and Pac Mate Omni
Level Star
Icon
American Printing House
Braille Plus
Springer Design
BookCourier
GW Micro
Braille Sense and Voice Sense
Bookshare wants to thank our users very much for their comments
responding to our email regarding the new site upgrade. We
thought it
was important to answer some of the questions that have arisen
about our
move to the new zip format. These questions mainly affect people
who
have hardware access technology devices such as notetakers.
Once our new website goes live, our books will be compressed as
standard
zip files instead of our former proprietary compression
technology for
packing books. After much consideration, we decided to make this
change
because zip is a common technology built into the operating
system of
most computers. If your computer does not have zip or the
Macintosh
equivalent, we have links on how to get free software to unzip
files on
the new site.
Access technology vendors also preferred we go to a standard
compression
like zip, which is easier to support and has some exciting
enhancement
possibilities (like AT working with a single zip file without
needing to
unzip). We began working months ago with access technology
vendors
regarding the transition to zipped files. We expect that the
transition
will go pretty smoothly for members who use PCs and Macs for
downloading
our books, either for use on their personal computer or for
transfer to
other devices. For example, the new version of Victor Reader
Soft
provided with the new website will support the zipped files
without
needing them to be unzipped, as well as lots of other cool
improvements.
Hardware devices that used to handle our packed files by
connecting
directly to our website need to have software upgrades to support
zipped
instead of packed files. Note taker vendors are already
preparing
upgrades to their software to handle zipped files. Many of the
vendors
have their upgrades ready, and others are expected to be ready in
the
coming month. The Wizard that you'll see on the new site on your
first
visit has contact information for your vendor.
The only people adversely affected will be those with obsolete
devices
that used to support packed files and cannot be upgraded. You
can work
around this problem by using a computer to download the books you
want,
unzip them and then copy the book files to your note taker.
The change affects the following vendors and note takers:
HumanWare
BrailleNote and VoiceNote mPower
BrailleNote PK
The BrailleNote Classic will not be updated, since HumanWare no
longer
maintains or updates their proprietary software for these models
Freedom Scientific
Pac Mate and Pac Mate Omni
Level Star
Icon
American Printing House
Braille Plus
Springer Design
BookCourier
GW Micro
Braille Sense and Voice Sense
-----Original Message-----
From: blake [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:40 PM
To: Info Bookshare.org
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re your sites revamp
Dear Bookshare. I am Blake, not a current user of bookshare
myself, but I know how many people use and love your site. To
put this new site on line would mean that you were cutting off a
farely large number of your customers, and meaning that they
would not be able to download books from your once userfriendly
site. Even if you just kept the site you have now as a sub
website under the new one so us braillenote users could come and
download books rather than having to resourt to a pc, I am
positive that this would be highly appreciated and recognised. I
have coppied the braillenote list in on this message also, so
that they can see what is happening, and add to it if they wish.
I know most braille note users would be extremely saddened if you
cut off their access to the books that they have even maybe grown
up on (I am not talking for everyone in that light, just some) So
if you would at least consider my proposal to you, and respond to
me privately (As you won't be able to get a message through to
the list) That would be much appreciated. Kind regards, Blake.
___
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