Over the past months, I have resisted getting involved in Social Networks like Facebook, HI5 and the rest. Some of the solicitations are just so way out, but you can always refuse them eh…To be honest, I don’t seem to have the time to keep up to date…keeping this blog up to date is hard enough…
Anyway, I was recently contacted by some long lost friends (and family) through Facebook, which made me think there must be something there after all…
Last November, 2007, my company launched an initiative, Sustainable Construction, and I was so proud with the way everything turned out. The book and the website looked great. Then I presented it to someone with visual difficulties. This is not to say that the person was blind, they just had difficulties reading the small letters on websites. When designers want something to look sexy, they don’t really care about people with seeing difficulties, and font size of 8, or 10, may look good, but is not easily readable for people with a visual problem.
So, I did some research and found, among others, Spoken Text.Net, and I really couldn’t believe the voice reproduction quality. Listen to this text buy clicking the MP3 Icon at the end of this article. I think it’s great.
I think Spoken Text.net will have to resolve their business model, as making the recordings available for just 7 days doesn’t make sense. Nevertheless, it’s a great platform, which I will try to see how I can support and utilise in the future.
I did wonder if a similar platform for sign language was being worked on somewhere in the world? I asked about this in Portugal, but nothing going on here.
Yesterday was the 21st December 2007…the shortest day of the year and (because I really don’t like winter) which I affectionately refer to as the first day of next summer. I mean, if we just focus on the spring or even the hot summer and yes, even autumn, the cold winter will just wizz by in an instant. Try it…
And coupled with this is obviously the fact that all eyes are on the celebrations of next week…yes, it’s Christmas, the time of the year most of us really wish we could just crawl under a heavy stone and resurface sometime on the 31st December…ah a great day…my birthday by the way ☺…in time to welcome in the New Year. (more…)
It takes a lot to surprise me these days (i am just too old I guess) but I have to tell you that last night I was surprised…very pleasantly I have to say. I was invited to the first anniversary of the BNI Lisbon Lider Club (which when said in Portuguese sounds like Bennie…). BNI is a 22 year old business and professional organisation that allows one person from each trade or profession to join a chapter (group…and you can have various chapters in a city). With over 4,900 active chapters, and 100,000 members, it is said to be the most successful business referral organisation in the world. (more…)
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