Coming up on Main Menu Live for the week of January 31st, 2007 - it's VISTA time!

This is it folks! The week that Microsoft and many in the world have been waiting for! It is Windows Vista launch week and we cover it this week in a very special 3 hour edition of Main Menu Live! As a very dear friend said, VISTA may stand for "Visual, information, spoken to all". Come and find out if this is indeed the case with the first two screen reader companies to publicly support Vista and Microsoft Corporation as we present all things Windows Vista! Darrell Shandrow (a co-host for Main Menu Live) and myself will be bringing you this very special Main Menu Live. Our guests will include:

• Daniel Hubbell from Microsoft's Accessibility Technology Group will be joining us to tell us all about Vista.


• Jamie Pauls from Access Watch brings us another mini product review of Rhapsody 4.0 as we prepare for one of our guests to bring them on live.


• We may be hearing from Dolphin all about Hal for Vista. This is still in progress and if we can not bring it to you this week we will have it on an upcoming edition of Main Menu Live.


• Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell from Serotek will be joining us to talk all about System Access and Windows Vista. Serotek has already announced support for Windows Vista and we ask Mike and Matt all about the experience of using Vista with System Access. In addition, we will talk all about ScriptSure with System Access.


• This past week at ATIA, GW Micro announced that they will be shipping a public beta of Window-Eyes 6.1 for Windows Vista and other operating systems. We bring Doug Geoffray on Main Menu Live to talk to us all about Windows Vista. What will Window-Eyes users expect to see with this new operating system?

As you can see, it will be a jam packed show full of great news. Should you go out and buy Windows Vista? Wait a day or so and listen to this very special Main Menu Live before making your decision.

If you have any questions for any of our guests this week, then please get them to us. They can be mailed to mainmenu@acbradio.org. If you would prefer to call into the show and ask your question then simply call 866-400-5333 when the show starts. We will have open lines during the entire 3 hour show.

The on demand and podcast archives will be immediately available after the last airing of Main Menu Live on the Main Stream channel. Refer to the On Demand archives for the download or add this link to your PodCatcher to subscribe to the Main Menu podcast feed: http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=mainmenu. You may also want to join the ACB Radio Main Stream replay podcast feed
which is: http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=replay. Keep in mind that this weeks show will be a bit larger download for those of you that receive it with a podcatching client due to its length.

Please let everyone know about this weeks show. This is sure to be one not to miss. This new operating system will affect everyone eventually, you can count on that.

Main Menu Live can be heard on Tuesday evening at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, and at 1 universal on Wednesday morning on the ACB Radio Main Stream channel. Don't forget that this will be a 3 hour show.

Jeff Bishop

Main Menu Producer

Coming up on Main Menu and Main Menu Live for the week of January 24th

This week begins a new era for Main Menu.  We begin our interactive portion during the second hour of Main Menu starting this week.  First of all, what
is coming up in the first hour:

• We first hear from Stephen Guerra from Independent Living Aids to talk to us all about the Dora the Explorer Interactive Talking Crayons.  This is a very innovative product to assist parents in engaging with their young children who may be blind or who may have low vision.


• We next hear from Marc Mulcahy with a very in-depth review of the Icon from Levelstar.


• During the second hour we open the phones and bring Marc and Stephen on to Main Menu Live to talk with all of you.  You will be able to call in and ask either of our guests questions.  In addition, we will have three panel experts on the show with us to answer any technical questions you may have. Randy Knapp will talk about serial ATA external drives and Don Barrett will discuss with us some interesting things about File Dir and TextPal among others from Jamal.  Both gentlemen have very technical expertise in the assistive technology industry and in computer technology as well.


• During Main Menu Live, we will also be presenting the Access Watch Review of the week.  This will be a 1 or two minute segment each week with a short review from the Access Watch web site.  This week we hear all about Windows One Care Live from Microsoft.

Coming up on January 31st on Main Menu we talk all about Windows Vista in a very special live edition of Main Menu. We will have Daniel Hubbell from the Microsoft Accessibility Technology Group, Mike Calvo from Serotek and Doug Geoffray from GW Micro coming on Main Menu that week.  Get your questions ready and call in and ask away.  This is going to be a fun one for sure!

Main Menu can be heard on Tuesday evening at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, and at 1 universal on Wednesday morning on the ACB Radio Main Stream channel.
 

Jeff Bishop

Main Menu Producer

Don't Miss Jamal Mazrui on the January 8 Marlaina Program

Hello Friends,

Now that all of you have partied the New Year in, it is time to get back to some since of normality on the Marlaina program.  Marlaina and Gary the Board Guy are sailing the ocean blue for the next two weeks, so I will be filling in for Marlaina.

This week we present a fascinating guest.  Jamal Mazrui joins us this week to talk to us all about himself.  He is the author of such computer applications as pdf2txt (a PDF to Text file conversion utility), FileDir (a very robust file manager), TextPal (a very accessible text editor) and many more.  All of these applications are free.  Who is the man behind all of this work?  Come and listen to this fascinating interview all about Jamal. We will discuss with him his childhood, career, and some on his programming skills (from a non-techie perspective of course).  Many of you know his wife Susan who works for Cingular and we will touch a bit on that as well.  A new baby joined the Mazrui family and we will ask Jamal how he and
Susan are doing with all of that, like how he can continue to pump out all of these tools with a new little one in the house.

During the second hour, the phones will be open.  What New Year's resolutions have you made?  What gifts did you receive for Christmas? We will also be announcing a new show debuting on the Main Stream channel starting the week of January 21st.  It will be a very exciting show, so come
and find out what is up on Main Stream.

All this and more is up for grabs on the next Marlaina, heard on ACB Radio MainStream. It all starts on Sunday night at 8 PM Eastern, 5 Pacific, which is Monday
morning at 1 Universal. The program will replay for 24 hours, and of course, is available via podcast from the ACB Radio replay page. As always, we'll take your calls at our toll-free number, 866-400-5333. I can't wait to spend time with you there!

Feel free to distribute this announcement to others whom you think may be interested.

Jeff Bishop