This is truly innovative technology and the latest version's new
features make it even more stunning and best of all, it is free.
Depending on your purpose, you can use a flat bed scanner that is twain
compliant, a web cam or any cam you can use on your computer or no
device but images from your pc that are imported via the web or other
means that are in many formats can be examined.  One of the things that
is being concentrated on with this technology is use as an aid to
orientation.  Note, I did not say mobility but orientation because,
using this software which is free with a notebook pc, a microphone if
desired and it should be desired for this setup, headphones hopefully of
the kind that allow you to continue to hear what is going on around you,
and a pc camera, you can litterally find out about what is around you
(in the camera's view) once you learn how to imterprit the audio output
of the vOICe software.

I encourage all of you to step into this world of audio vision listening
to the world around you with new eyes or your pc or your clothing or a
sign or printed sheet of paper perhaps.  It might even be possible to
read hand written documents with this software if not now, at some point
in the future.  Please download, install, examine end experiment with
this software, join the list and examine the extensive documentation on
the web pages to find your best fit and join us in a technological
revolution!

If you are already on the list and working with the software, you know
of its power and potential.  Please encourage all who might benefit and
who can take advantage of it to become envolved in this process.  You do
need a windows pc which I know may hamper some of you and you can use a
screen reader but it is not absolutely necessary to have one.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Meijer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 2:32 AM
Subject: [The vOICe] Version 1.55 of The vOICe available


Hi All,

Version 1.55 of The vOICe Learning Edition is now available.
It can be downloaded from one of the following three direct
download URLs (executable file size is less than 500 K):

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/voice.exe
http://home.hccnet.nl/peter.meyer/voice.exe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voice.exe

So what is new?

Any known bugs were fixed. Some improvements were
made in detecting the connection and disconnection
of USB video capture devices, preventing most of
the "false alarms" that used to trigger version 1.54
into reconnecting to your video capture device even
if it was never disconnected.

A more sophisticated contrast enhancement has been
implemented, giving you a more detailed view within
dark areas as well as with any smooth low-contrast
textures. I had to strike a balance with visual
clutter though, because any enhanced visual item
inevitably also draws attention away from other,
potentially more important, visual items. Also, if
your camera is of poor quality by showing a lot of
visual noise (random pixel brightness variations),
the new image enhancement will make little difference
because The vOICe tries to avoid boosting visual noise.

An experimental "binaural motion" feature has been
implemented, which could bring some of the advantages
of binocular vision, while using only a single camera
such as a regular webcam. It is in the menu Options |
3D | Binaural Motion. It can also help in detecting
motion. With the "binaural motion" turned on, slightly
different views are sent to your two ears while moving
around, much like the sighted get slightly different
views in their two eyes. Theoretically it should be an
improvement, but perceptually it may initially appear
very confusing - so it is up to you to decide whether
or not to use this new feature. It is very difficult
to predict what the human brain can learn to handle.

Experimental support has been added for OCR directly
from a TWAIN device, allowing you to apply OCR from a
digital still image camera, or a flatbed scanner, and
using the high resolution snapshot rather than the low
resolution webcam view. Keyboard shortcut: Control Alt R
(instead of the keyboard shortcut Control R that you
would apply for OCR from a webcam view). The vOICe will
also apply the spoken "recognize" command for OCR from
a TWAIN device if no video capture device is connected.
Otherwise it will just get the input for OCR from your
video capture device. So the same spoken command has
different effects depending on whether or not a video
capture device is connected. One current limitation is
that you cannot interrupt the results spoken after OCR.
Work on that may follow later, depending on usage. The
default options for the GOCR OCR engine have also been
adapted, resulting in much better recognition accuracy.
The "djpeg" command in the "recognize.bat" batch file
now by default gets the options -greyscale -dither none.
You will have to delete the "recognize.bat" file if you
already had one, because The vOICe will not overwrite
it if it exists. This is because users may apply other
recognition engines via an adapted "recognize.bat" batch
file, to recognize faces or whatever third-party suppliers
may come up with.

A change detection option has been added to the menu
Options | 3D | Change Detection (Control Alt F1). It
will show only any changes from one view to the next.

Special thanks to Pat for some highly valuable beta
testing, and thanks to Pranav for a last-minute useful
suggestion.

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm