This is an announcement posted publicly to describe all the incredible
enhancements in store for those of us who own the Victor Reader Stream.
Karen and I have one of these excellent devices, and if you don't yet have a
portable accessible electronic book reader, we would strongly recommend
Victor Reader Stream!
Dear Victor Reader Stream Customer:
I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2008. The first couple of weeks
of 2008 have seen our R&D engineers hard at work continuing to add exciting
new features to the Stream in pursuit of our goal of responding to your
feedback to help us make the Stream the best DAISY, NISO and MP3 player in
the market place.
This email will summarize recent Stream activities, provide news from RFB&D,
and give a sneak preview of the next software release version 1.2 expected
in just a few weeks.
Many of you will recall we closed for the Christmas break releasing the
Stream Companion software and offering a very comprehensive audio tutorial
for the Stream. Both the Stream Companion and tutorial are now part of the
CD that is shipping with the Stream and both are also available for free
download from the Stream product page for existing customers. Please visit
http://www.humanware.ca/stream.html
And look under the documentation and software sub headings to take advantage
of these Stream resources.
However, 2007 was by no means the end of the Stream project. We continue to
be busy in these early weeks of 2008. Already by mid January we are pleased
to provide support for several new languages. Version 1.1.15 of the Stream
is now available for download in Dutch, French, German, and Swedish. These
versions have both the Victor messages and Vocalizer text-to-speech
localized to those languages. We will soon add Danish, Norwegian and
Spanish.
We are aware of the interest in the U.S. for a male Vocalizer voice. This
voice named Tom, has been delivered from Nuance and will be made available
as an alternate version 1.1.15 download as soon as Nuance makes some
adjustments we have requested. That work is in progress now. Also, on order
from Nuance is a male voice for U.K. English named Daniel. In the next few
days we will put samples of these Vocalizer voices and languages on the
Stream page. We will announce that on the News Wire.
Also for our U.S. customers we are pleased to advise that RFB&D has
concluded their preparations to provide the UAK (User Authorization Key)
required to play their AudioPlus books on the Stream. We are preparing
information and instructions on the UAK process and will post it to the News
Wire in the next day or two.
We are very excited that the next release version 1.2 of the Stream software
is ready to enter our quality assurance review which is the last stage
before a software release expected in early February. This will be another
free upgrade to our customers. Full details will be provided on this News
Wire once the Q/A process is finished but as a sneak preview here are some
of the version 1.2 features you can look forward to:
– support for NIMAS text books which is great news for our students who use
the Stream in the classroom
– a Stream built-in SD card format utility
– increased loudness of the Stream's built-in speaker
– significantly faster data transfer when the Stream is connected to the
computer with the USB cable
– more control of the audio for music which will make listening to music
even more fun
– a Go To Time feature to move to specific locations in unstructured audio
books such as podcasts or recorded lectures/meetings
All of that and more is expected in version 1.2 in early February.
Already we have some popular requests to enhance the Stream Companion
software just released December 21. We will continue to work on extensions
to the Stream Companion and will announce those when available.
There is much to say about the Stream but you, the customer, are the most
important factor in its success. HumanWare appreciates your support of the
Stream. The excitement about the Stream and its use for school, work, and
leisure continues to grow. Stay tuned for future news on this exciting
technology.
Best wishes,
Gerry Chevalier
Victor Reader Product Manager