Every Tuesday at 10:00, a.m Pacific time. Myself, Michael Babcock and Marty SoBo, go live in ACB community to answer your technology questions. How do you join in? Couple ways. Use Alexa, your computer, or the new ACB Link app to listen to ACB Media Five. You can also join in in Clubhouse or visit ACB Community to learn how to join us live in Zoom every Tuesday day at 10:00 A.m. Pacific Time. We'll see you there with your tech questions.
Hey all, marty here and back with another Friday finds with Lynn. So what do we got first, Lyn?
Well, we have Streamlabs has a new editing tool to help Streamers jump into podcasting. And that was an article that we.
Found in The Verge.
And apparently some of the things that.
It helps you do, it has filters, right, that you can take out the ohms and the owls and stuff like that. It allows you to do clip management so that you can more easily have cross platform clips. I'm trying to think of some of the other advantages, but it's sort of a great sort of set of tools to help people who are getting into podcasting.
And it's something that I don't know.
About the accessibility of yet, but I.
Think that creators are always looking for.
Things to help them out and sort of get them started.
Definitely.
As Marty and I were talking about.
Earlier, it does bring up the question.
Of these free tools.
Yeah, you always have to really dive in and make sure when you're using a free tool, on one hand, there's some good features about it. It's free, so that's really good and you get the experience of learning the basics in a free environment. But I will say that on the other side of things, you want to make sure that you know who's going to own your content at the end of the day. For example, there used to be a company and they were called Anchor. And Anchor was a great free podcasting platform. And what you would do is you would sign up, you would get on there, you could record, edit and do distribution through that app for your podcast. Now the issue is, do you or do you not own your content? Well, I have a friend who did just that. He was using Anchor for his podcast. He took a break from his podcast, came back later, couldn't log in. He comes to find out Spotify purchased the company, so he's locked out of his account. He can't get his names or his podcast or anything. So he doesn't own it anymore. Spotify owns it, so he's pretty much sol. He's going to have to start all over again. So you just want to be cognizant of all of these tools and make sure you do your research and do your due diligence before you dive in.
So that's definitely things to think about, right?
Especially if you want to monetize your content?
I don't know.
I think creators, we work so hard.
To get things right and there are.
Just a lot of things we need to be aware of on the legal front. And again, I think I know I'm guilty of this myself to just click the accept button without reading terms. And we're not saying that streamlabs is.
We'Re just saying that in general, when you're using any of these tools, you.
Really just need to make sure that you know what you're saying yes to what you're consenting to. Because some of these legal agreements can be like crazy. You look at them and you think, I don't understand any of this. I'm just going to click the box.
Yeah, sometimes it might as well be.
In another language that you don't even understand, right?
And creators, especially people new to the.
Scene, really don't think about the legal aspects much, right? We're all thinking about microphones and do we have the right microphone and how.
Do we make the music and the background fit together and all this stuff. So we're thinking about the content, but.
We'Re not thinking about the legalese, the stuff that can really get you in.
Trouble if you're not careful.
But it'll be interesting to see if.
This streamlabs, the set of tools that.
They have, I really do hope that they're successful and I'm hoping that somebody.
Will try them and see if they.
Can actually be of help to creators next. I wanted to talk about something that's sort of been on my mind a lot lately. As many of you know, I do.
A crafting podcast with the American Council.
The Blind Blind Crafters. And I do a podcast on Friday.
Where we talk about different things pertaining to crafting and the blind.
And one of the things that I.
Have talked about on that program before is the need for blind folks to.
Have access to a graphical environment or pictures.
Basically, we tend to really focus a lot on text.
And to varying degrees, we've had some.
Success with getting people to use alt.
Text, which is like image descriptions, right?
But that only goes so far when.
You'Re doing things like investment reports. I'm trying to think maps, for example. There are a lot of things that.
You just need to have access to.
More of a three dimensional visualization of something.
There are just certain things that text just doesn't do well with.
And I saw an article, a blog.
Post, it was posted, it was sort of brought to my attention by David Goldfield site. The Tech VI list has great it's a great resource. And there was a blog post by Chancy Fleet.
And I don't know how many of.
You know Chancy Fleet, but she is just an amazing person.
And she is the head of accessibility.
At the New York Public Library, which, by the way, is an awesome resource, very forward thinking library, has done a.
Lot of blindness specific or disability specific.
Workshops and things of that nature.
But she brought up the idea, for.
Example, she was saying that she and.
Her husband were buying a house during.
The pandemic and they were looking at floor plans.
Well, obviously you can't do floor plans.
With alt text, right? It's just really hard. That's just one of the things that you need a graphical concept of.
So she was talking about how difficult it was.
And so her husband, who was an.
Architect, and she sat down and sort of figured out ways that those floor.
Plans could be more graphical so that she would have a sense of what.
She was going to say yes to. Speaking of what you're going to say.
Yes to, but she talks about that.
Her feeling that blind and visually impaired folks really need more graphical access. We need access to visual things and.
There are some barriers.
But she talked about some of the.
Technology out there, the Monarch, which is.
Supposedly like my understanding it's like a.
Tablet that can display more graphical things.
And it's in testing and it's, I.
Think, human wear and AP eight American Printing House for the Blind are going.
To be demonstrating The Monarch.
I might have a chance to see it soon. So I'm excited about that. She talks about 3D printing and how with 3D printing you can make more of a three dimensional representation of things.
With.
Like layers of plastic or I don't know how it works.
But basically she was talking about, of.
Course, for kids, for blind kids.
And I have always said in my.
Craft group that it's so important.
I was born blind, so I don't.
Have a good concept of what most things look like. If you were to say, what does an elephant look like or what does a certain type of bird or whatever.
Look like, I would really have no.
Idea because if I haven't touched it.
I just don't know.
And this is what she's saying, is.
That technology is being developed now with The Monarch and with 3D printing and.
Some of the other graphics tools out there. But she says one of the barriers is of course, cost.
One of them is that the software.
To operate the 3D printers is often not accessible.
I just think that we have a thing in our craft class or our.
Craft organization where we talk about the.
There'S a thing called the Cricket.
It's C-R-I-K-U-T cricket. And it is like a 3D thing for crafters.
And we are just trying so hard to get the software that runs that.
Machine to work for us.
And we've had some difficulties in that.
Regard, but again, just have more of a graphical representation of the world around us I think is really an important thing.
It's important for kids, for blind kids, and it's important for adults in situations.
Where, for example, investment material right when you're looking at the investment reports that.
Come out and you have all these graphs and the reality is that most of us don't have access to those graphs.
It's just really important that we think.
About it and that we demand, as Chancy says, that we demand that access, that we start to say, hey, I.
Want a map that I can read. I want not just the textual representation.
Of things, but I really need that three dimensionality. And so I think this is something to watch.
I think there are a lot of.
Things happening right now in this space.
And it would be awesome to be able to go to the New York.
Public Library and they have a lab.
There that does graphics for the blind.
And you can contact the New York Public Library and contact Tense Fleet if you're interested in this.
Because.
I would definitely suggest if you're going to have something, for example, like you're talking about the cricket, reach out to the company and let them know the issues that you're having and say, hey, is there any way to make this accessible for people who are blind or visually impaired?
Right.
Maybe they'll work with you to try.
And figure out how to get it there.
Yeah, because I think people find it.
Interesting that a blind person would want.
Access to a picture or something graphical.
People say, well.
We'Ll do like alt.
Text or whatever, but obviously certain things for certain things, alt text just doesn't work.
Pictures worth 1000 words, they say.
Yes, well, I know that our audience is very charitable people, right?
Yeah, definitely.
And it seems as though somebody is.
Going to lose their place soon and maybe we all can get together and help them out.
Right.
I'm talking of course, about our friends at Twitter. Elon has neglected, forgotten to pay his rent and the bird is going to.
Get the boot in about a month.
They've got to be out.
It's ridiculous.
And apparently Musk has a history of sort of not paying people.
He has numerous lawsuits right now and from everybody from his cleaners to his landlord. I don't know why he's not paying the bills. Maybe he just needs he laid off. The person that is in charge of that.
I don't know.
But yeah, it's interesting because he also.
Now has huge copyright lawsuits.
From music industry companies and people record labels and whatnot.
Because apparently there's just a lot of copyright violation going on on Twitter. I don't know. I haven't been on Twitter in so.
Long and I don't know how or why.
Well, we're not going to get political on this show.
But anyway, you should be moving to.
Mastodon if you haven't moved to Mastodon yet.
Come on now, let's go.
Let's make it happen. That's going to be your goal for the weekend.
Just get on Mastodon because it's a.
Dumpster fire at Twitter and I just don't understand how someone wealthy people, why.
Don'T they pay their bills? Especially their landlord bills.
Yeah, we might have to come up with a GoFundMe page for Elon and.
His crew because they're going to be.
Out on the street.
I know, it's going to be so sad.
It's going to be awful. Yes.
On that note, thanks so much, Lynn.
Thanks guys. We're going to have more exciting news soon. I think right now everybody is just.
Taking deep breaths, right? We've had all these different things, the Google thing, the Apple thing, Microsoft, all these people, and now everybody's like they're just tired, we need a breather.
And I think vacations are going to start. So I don't know, this week seems to be a little bit of a.
Slow news cycle, but there's always next week.
There is.
Keep everybody informed and see what happens next week. And on that note, thanks everyone, we appreciate it. If you have any questions, comments, you can always reach us at feedback at unmute show and we'll see you next time.
And make sure to read the fine print, okay? That's our public service message for always.
Read the fine print.
If you can see it, you have access to it.