The meeting was called to order by President Maria Rueters at approximately 1:10 p.m. After introductions, Evan Silver, an instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind demonstrated the features of the Windows XP Media Center. This was a special limited edition of the windows xp product. The demonstration of the operating system was done predominantly with the use of Jaws screen reading software, but Windoweyes and Microsoft's own speech software the Navigator was also used, particularly when it came to determining what was on a particular channel at any given time.
At 3:00 p.m., the business portion of the meeting commenced with the reading of the minutes for both August 13th and September 10th. Both sets of minutes were approved with amendments. Ed Gilbert mentioned that with respect to the letter we were going to draft and send to the head of the Mass Information Technology division regarding its conversion to an open source model, the comment period had expired before we began to talk about it.
There were no contested elections for any of the 5 vibug officer positions, and all of the candidates recommended by the nominating committee were elected by acclamation. As of January, 2006, the officers of Vibug will be as follows: President, Amy Ruell, Vice-President, Ted Filteau, Vibug Clerk Gill Bush, Treasurer Jim Roberts (re-elected), and Webmaster Steve Dresser, (re-elected. Jeannette Kutash once again thanked the nominating committee members for their hard work. The committee members were Jeannette Kutash chair, Pauline Downing, Jen Bowes, and Don Breda.
A potential location for the Christmas party is Vinie Testas Italian Restaurant, (commonly known as Vinniey T's), located on 867 Boylston St., not far from the Hines Convention Center T station on the green line. There would be no group fee, and we would have the option of using the lunch menu and paying as individuals anywhere from $6 to $12 for the lunch entrees, not including drinks, or paying up to $26 a person and using a family style menu. Doyle's Restaurant was also looked at, but the contact person was not available. It is located in Jamaica Plain. Most of the members seem to favor viney T's if the logistics can be worked out. The lunch menu at Viney T; s is available in Braille and it can be shared. The only question left would be whether we have to guarantee a certain amount of people so the restaurant can have enough servers on hand for us. Lisa will check into that and a decision will be made in November. The president has the NBP Christmas carol book.
The president announced the availability of a demo web site which may allow persons to surf the net over the phone. The site is www.internetspeech.com. Go to the link called web browsing. The site is menu driven.
At the November meeting, Steve Dresser will demonstrate the Victor Classic plus, a digital book daisy player available from Humanware. It can also play cd's and SD cards. The November meeting will be on November 12, and December 10th is the annual Christmas party. On January 14th, 2006, the meeting will feature demonstrations of various gadgets. Also, Amy Ruell, (now President Elect), would like to discuss the future direction of Vibug. Pod casting may also be a potential topic for a future meeting.
New members who wish to be placed on the Vibug mailing list should see Jeanette Kutash at the end of the meeting. Amy Ruell has also requested that the Vibug mailbox be updated on a regular basis.
Amy also announced that Jaws 7.0 was released and that it has new features which support the use of the Packmate and controlling it from your personal computer. The packmate does Not support the US version of AOL instant messaging at this time, even the literature from packmate said it would.
Don Breda indicated that the latest windoweyes beta was also being released. Check the GW Micro web site for more details. Both Jaws 7.0 and windoweyes 5.5 both support the use of the Firefox web browser.
After the computer questions, the meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted:
Dennis Brady,
Vibug Clerk.