»
Direct mp3 download
| »
Streamed version [wma]
Show Notes (Play time 34 minutes)
"Once upon a
midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came
a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
door."
--E. A. Poe
(wiki), The
Raven(amazon)
 |
Raven (Corvus
corax)
Alaska Dept. of Fish &
Game |
It's cold and rainy in Southern California.
All is going well at Palomar. The
tech-talk-topic this week, as promised, will be
text-to-speech. In addition we have news and
events around campus, a new Blackboard database
server to install, a new (7.1) Beta version of
Blackboard to consider (much more on this next
week), Dave's feature of the week (controlling the
view in gradebook), and this week's gizmo, the
mysterious Microsoft project Origami.
Campus Tech News
-
Software upgrades this week:
- iTunes has yet another upgrade, to version
6.0.4.
More...
- Watson has been upgraded to version 2.2.
More on Watson...
-
The Future of eLearning webcast from last week's
Blackboard World conference is now available in
archive.
Click here for the Ready2Net archive.
-
May 31-June 2 at CSUMB the
The Wireless Community & Mobile User Conference
will be held focusing on cutting edge
applications in dducation, connected
communities, government and public
safety...broadcast & webcast live from in
monterey, CA.
- April 22-26
National Association of Broadcasters
conference in Las Vegas.
-
The Concert Hour next week (March16)
will feature CORAL MACFARLAND THUET. A
blend of jazz and Latin music in English,
Spanish and Portuguese. Pianist Kamau Kenyatta
guests.
-
KKSM streams live, 24/7, on Academic
Technology servers. Just click the "Listen
Live" button on their web site.
Upcoming AT Training Workshops
- Tuesday, 3/14 "How to Use Adobe Acrobat" 2-4pm,
LL-109, Terry Gray will be facilitating.
- On Wednesday, 3/15 we had scheduled the "Basic
Test and Survey Design in Blackboard" workshop,
but we have had to cancel it.
- Go to our
training schedule to get the details
Blackboard Feature of the Week
This week David will discuss controlling the view
in the Blackboard gradebook. Specifically, how
to filter the gradebook view so that just a list of
students and their overall grade can be seen.
Click here for a Flash video on this topic.
Contact Blackboard Support for more
information.
Listen to this segment [mp3 - Play time
= 3:33]
Tech Talk Topics
This week's topic is a continuation from last
week. The subject is speech synthesis, and
specifically text-to-speech. I will compare
various voices (and their related text-to-speech
engines) reading a common passage, and describe how
to change voices in the Windows Control Panel.
To turn on the language bar in Windows XP, right
click the task bar, select Toolbars from the pop-up
menu, and click on Language Bar:
The language bar looks like this:
It can be floated anywhere on the screen or
docked to the task bar.
To
change the default voice for text-to-speech
synthesis go to Control Panel > Speech > and use the
drop down on the Text-To-Speech tab to set the
voice:
Note that you can specify the voice speed and
audio output device from this control also.
Links
Listen to this segment
[mp3 - Play time
= 12:31]
Gizmo of the week
Microsoft's
project Origami was finally revealed this week.
They have been conducting an assiduous campaign of
viral marketing on this one and, as speculated, it
turns out to be an ultra-portable, media capable
computer the size of a large paperback. The
device shown here is from Samsung. Devices
will be available from various vendors.
It should be available for sale in April and will
be priced around $500.
Music
The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com, and is used through their
Creative Commons license for podcasts. Today's
album was
Happenstance by
touchingGrace. The sitarist for
touchingGrace is Jay Kishor. We used tracks 5:
Sunday Driver; 4: Stormfront; 7: Stickdance; 10:
Afternoon Lament; 11: Eastern Sky. Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity.
Magnatune is not evil!
"If only we'd stop
trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." --Edith
Wharton
Subscribe |
How? -
Podcast Help |
ATRC Podcast Index
|
ATRC News
Podcast
for March 10, 2006 - Episode 9
