Links: docs for new version of JFW, more accessible iPhone apps, holiday shopping, Internet radio

From the Top Tech Tidbits newsletter for this week
http://www.flying-blind.com/tidbits2010.html

1. JFW version 12 is now a full public release, out of Beta. This version includes a Text Analyzer feature to help find format inconsistencies in Word documents, improved support for web pages written in ARIA, a more efficient Settings Center, and support for fully operating in contracted braille.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws/JAWS-whats-new.asp

2. As he has done for the last several versions, Jamal Mazrui has created a comprehensive text archive of the documentation for JFW 12.
http://EmpowermentZone.com/jfw12doc.zip

3. The seventeenth game in the Blind Gamers series from Ian Humphreys is BG Brainiac, Spoonbill Software's version of a game you may know as Concentration. It is blind accessible but graphics allow sighted players to play along with blind players. email requesting BG Brainiac and Ian will send you the download link.
games@spoonbillsoftware.com.au

4. The next two weeks on Tek Talk will be the annual Stocking Stuffers programs. Each week, sellers of some low-tech products of potential interest to the blind will discuss their products. The first installment is GMT Tuesday, 2 November at 00:00.
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rsc9613dc89eb2

5. Serotek Tech Chat 74 covers the Latest and Greatest Accessible iPhone Apps
http://www.serotalk.com/2010/10/22/tech-chat-74-latest-and-greatest-accessible-iphone-apps-2/

6. Fred's Head informs us about the free RadioSure player with some 10,000 stations you can listen to and record.
http://www.radiosure.com/

Book review of Pictures Matter

Book review: Because Pictures Matter published by National Braille Press

Because Pictures Matter: A Guide to Using, Finding, and Creating Tactile Imagery for Blind Children
written by Deborah Kent, illustrated by Ann Cunningham (National Braille Press, 2008)

This book is available for free from NBP in large print format, and is also available in Spanish.
To order, go to
http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/BPM.html

As a former art student, one of the things I find most frustrating about being blind is the attitude on the part of others that how things look is something of which I am uncaring, oblivious, or entirely ignorant.

As human beings, most of us have brains which automatically attempt to find out information, patterns, stories, and even a sense of aesthetics. An aesthetic is, after all, one's sense of what is good and beautiful, what affects each of us emotionally and psychologically and even sometimes physically.

Let me underscore that last bit, because sighted individuals often seem to forget this: beneath all the linguistic and conceptual abstractions of aesthetics lies the fact that we are talking about reacting to what is, after all, the physical world and it's affect upon us.
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