Since our July article reviewing the 4.1 update of the Victor Reader Stream New Generation, HumanWare has added wireless capability for the Stream to access several sources of media. In version 4.2, released in September, HumanWare added support for NFB Newsline and Bookshare. In February, the 4.3 update for the Stream added access to Internet radio stations and Wikipedia/Wiktionary, as well as enhanced support for downloading Bookshare content. For this article, I will review the online content available on the Stream. Earlier AccessWorld coverage is available of the original Victor Reader Stream New Generation and of version 4.1.
NFB Newsline
The Victor Reader Stream can now download content from the NFB Newsline service wirelessly directly to the device. NFB Newsline is a free service from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), which offers over 300 newspapers and magazines to qualified subscribers. The service can be accessed in several ways including a telephone hotline and an app for the iOS operating system. To learn more about the service, visit the NFB Newsline webpage.
To access NFB Newsline you must first switch the Stream to the Online Bookshelves. You can accomplish this by pressing the Online button, the round button above the 2 button on the keypad. Once you have successfully transitioned to the Online Bookshelves, you must activate the Newsline service on your device. To do this you must press the 7 key twice to open the Online Services menu. The first item in this menu will be the Add NFB Newsline Service option. You can activate this option by pressing the Confirm (#) key on the telephone keypad. First, you will be prompted for your confirmation code. You can enter this using the telephone keypad followed by the Confirm (#) key or the Play/Stop key. You will then be asked for your security code, which can be entered on the telephone keypad followed by Confirm (#) or the Play/Stop key. You will be alerted that your log in was successful and be returned to the Online Services menu.
You will now be on the option to remove your NFB Newsline login. From here, you can press the Bookshelf key, the 1 key, to move to the NFB Newsline bookshelf. NFB Newsline downloads publications that you have set in your pocket favorites on the NFB Newsline Online interface. If you have not established any favorites, your NFB Newsline bookshelf will only contain the option to "Synchronize NFB Newsline Content." If you have content in your favorites, you will not be able to access the bookshelf until your content is synchronized. If you attempt to navigate to the bookshelf before this occurs you will be alerted that synchronization is in progress. NFB publications are read in a similar way as other text-based materials. The materials can be navigated by levels 1 through 3, screen, phrase, line, sentence, word, spell, and character. Level 1 contains the full publication, level 2 the sections of the publication, and level 3 the articles. NFB Newsline automatically refreshes the content on the bookshelf, replacing the items with new releases. You can also use the "Synchronize NFB Newsline Content" to force a refresh of the bookshelf contents. This item appears after the last publication on your bookshelf and it can be accessed by pressing the Go To key twice while navigating the bookshelf. Old publications are removed as new publications are added. As with other Online bookshelf contents, the NFB Newsline publications are saved to the Stream's internal memory. You can save a publication to your SD card by pressing the 3 key while either on the bookshelf or while in a publication. The stream will say "Copy current book from internal memory to SD card." You must then press Confirm (#) whereupon the stream will ask if you are sure you wish to proceed. You can press the Confirm (#) key to continue and copy the book to your SD card. The stream will alert you when this has been successfully completed. Copied publications appear on the Talking Books bookshelf. Because the Stream will delete publications automatically, you cannot use the 3 key to remove publications as you can with other files on the Stream.
Bookshare
To access Bookshare books wirelessly on your Stream, you must first log in. You can do this in two ways. From the Online Services menu, you can select the "Add Bookshare Service" where you will be prompted for your e-mail and password. You can enter this using multi-tap text entry on the telephone keypad. This can become frustrating if, like me, your e-mail contains a symbol appearing many places along on one of the symbol keys. In my case this was the underscore, which is the 13th option on the 0 key. In the Settings menu, you can set the text entry to announce each letter as you come to it before inserting it. This should give you enough time to find your desired character and wait to have it inserted. However, I found that for many symbols the character readout would fall far behind the currently selected symbol and by the time you waited for the voice to catch up, you didn't have enough time to press the key again to move to the next symbol.
Luckily, the other option for logging in to Bookshare allows you to use your computer. You can use the HumanWare Companion software to generate a file with your log-in details. This process is painless and straightforward. You must first connect your SD card to the computer and launch HumanWare Companion. You then can navigate to the Tools menu and select the option labeled "Bookshare Configuration." From here you can enter your e-mail and password. To send it to your SD card, you must press the "Export" button, not the "OK" button. In the Online Services menu on the stream, activate the option labeled "Import a Bookshare Configuration from File." If you confirm this option, you will be asked to wait and then alerted once your credentials are verified. When you first navigate to the Bookshare bookshelf, you will be presented with the option to "Search for Bookshare Books" which can also be accessed by pressing the "Go To" key twice. Selecting this option will present you with a menu of search options. You can navigate the list with the 2 and 8 keys. The first items allow you to search by pre-generated lists. The first is most popular, the second is most recent, and the third is by category. The most popular and most recent items will present results immediately. The browse-by-category item will present a list of categories that you must choose from before results will be displayed. The final three search options allow you to enter search text to find results by title, athor, and full text. You can use the multi-tap text entry method to enter text and submit the search with the Confirm (#) and Play/Stop buttons.
Once you have submitted your search or selected a pre-generated list of results, the Stream tells you the number of results and presents them to you in batches of 100. There is an option to display more results, which will replace the current results with those further along the list. For example, if you are viewing results 1 through 100 and activate "Show More Results," you will be shown results 101 through 200. In addition to the "Show More Results" option, you can access an option labeled "Show Previous Results" to show the previously viewed results. To navigate results, you press the 4 and 6 keys. The 5 key will read the book synopsis. If the book does not have a synopsis, it will repeat the currently selected item. To download a book, press either the Confirm (#) or Play/Stop button. When the book has downloaded, you will be returned to the search results. To leave the results, you can back out of the menus using the Cancel (*) button or jump directly back to the Bookshare bookshelf by activating the 1 key. The Bookshare books on the Bookshare bookshelf act the same as those transferred from a computer; you do have the option on the 3 key to transfer the book to your SD card to save internal memory. You must press the 3 key twice to move, followed by the Confirm (#) key twice to move the book to your SD card. After a successful transfer, you will be placed back on the Bookshare bookshelf and the book will have been removed from the Bookshare bookshelf and placed on the Talking Books bookshelf in the offline bookshelves.
Internet Radio
The Stream offers the ability to listen to Internet radio, which can be accessed from the Internet Radio bookshelf. Initially, you will only have access to the HumanWare sample playlist, which is based on the language of your Stream. For example, I use the UK version of the Stream software (I prefer Graham, the UK voice) so my HumanWare playlist was based in the UK. I was able to change this to the US version by navigating to the Online Services menu and then moving to the HumanWare Playlist option. The 4 and 6 keys can then be used to select the desired playlist region. When you select a playlist with the Play/Stop button, the first radio station in the playlist will begin to play. If you have previously played the playlist and were on another station, this station will resume playback. If you use the Confirm (#) key, you will be taken into the playlist where you can navigate to the desired station then use the Play/Stop button to begin playback. You can search ooTunes for radio stations. ooTunes is an iOS app for listening to Internet radio stations. The Victor Reader Stream has access to the ooTunes database of radio stations which consists of over 32000 streams. To learn more, visit the ooTunes website. The search is similar to searching in Bookshare: the search option appears after the list of playlists and can also be accessed by pressing the "Go To" key twice. OoTunes allows you to browse stations by genre and to search for a particular station. If you select to browse by genre, you will be presented with a list of categories that you navigate with the 2 and 8 keys. Once you select a genre, you will be presented with a list of stations that you can navigate with the 4 and 6 keys. You can play the station from the list by pressing the Play/Stop button. To save a station to your device, you must press the Bookmark key to add the station to your Favorites playlist. You must press the Confirm (#) key after pressing the Bookmark key to add the station to your favorites.
You can also add stations manually by importing them from a file from your computer using HumanWare Companion. The option to create a playlist file is in the Tools menu. You must enter the title of the playlist and the name of the station followed by the URL. You then must press the "Add" button to add the station to the playlist. After the station is added, you will be returned to the add station form with the Station and URL fields blank for further stations. Once you have added as many stations to the playlist as you desire, you can press the "Export" button to send the playlist to your SD card. On the Stream, you will find the option to import a playlist from a file in the Online Services menu. You can delete stations and playlists by using the 3 key. The HumanWare playlist and accompanying stations cannot be deleted and the Favorites playlist cannot be deleted but its stations can. If you delete all of the stations in a playlist, it will vanish from the list. When you are playing a station and it pauses for buffering, the device will alert you that this is why the station has stopped.
Wikipedia and Wiktionary
When you are in a textual book, you can search for words on Wikipedia and Wiktionary. You must press the Go To button four times for Wikipedia and five times for Wiktionary. The last word that was read in the text book will be ready to be searched; you can do this by pressing either the Confirm (#) or Play/Stop button. If you would like to search for something else, you can delete the selected word and use multi-tap entry to enter your own search string. When you search for a word, you will be read most of the beginning of the opening paragraph of the article. You can return to the book by pressing the Play/Stop button or read the entire article by pressing the Confirm (#) key. Any other key will reread the section of the first paragraph that was just read to you. You can save the article to a Reference bookshelf on your online bookshelves by pressing the 3 key. The file will be saved in HTML to your Reference Bookshelf. This shelf does not appear unless you save an article. You can move the article to your Text Files bookshelf by pressing the 3 key twice. You will be able to navigate by the heading levels on the HTML page as well as by screen, paragraph, line, sentence, word, spell, and character.
The Bottom Line
HumanWare has done an excellent job implementing wireless content into the Stream. The media is easily accessed and even with the restrictions of a telephone keypad it does not seem clunky to search for and download content. I was initially skeptical that downloading content on the Stream would be faster than simply using a computer but I was very pleasantly surprised that the process is mostly effortless and that it greatly increases access to content. It would be useful if you could search for Wikipedia and Wiktionary articles without having to be in a textual book and it would be useful to be able to manually delete publications when using NFB Newsline but I was very impressed by the wireless content options on the Victor Reader Stream. Now that it is possible to download content directly to the Stream wirelessly, I would recommend the Stream to those who are considering a talking book player and who do not mind listening to content with Acapella voices.
Product Information
Product: Victor Reader Stream New Generation Software version 4.3
Price: Free Upgrade
Available from: HumanWare
