MacEdition Pro News : September 16, 2002: Listen, Dump, Fire! ... Sweet!
by MacEdition Staff (feedback)
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We’re all ears
MacSpeech Inc. is expanding the range of its voice-recognition software iListen by producing versions of the program for French, Italian, UK English, Dutch and German speakers.
Version 1.5 of the program – recently updated to run on Jaguar – will be showcased at this week’s Apple Expo in Paris, where eager beavers will also get the lowdown on distribution deals MacSpeech has in hand to sell its wares in the Old World.
From the company’s press release:
The updated version of iListen 1.5 takes advantage of Mac OS X V10.2’s Universal Access environment for improved speech recognition and easier navigation by voice. iListen 1.5’s Correction feature now works more proficiently with Mac OS X applications as well. The updated version is free to current users of iListen 1.5.
“We are committed to providing the best speech recognition experience for Mac OS X worldwide,” said MacSpeech’s Donald MacCormick. “The Speech Experts at MacSpeech, Ltd are providing the best possible iListen experience.”
Those interested in updating their current versions of iListen should point their browsers to www.macspeech.com. Those interested in acquiring the software will also find themselves welcomed there.
Packed up and ready to go
Max Programming announced a recent update to Web Dumper, a utility that allows users to download Web sites for offline browsing (where the rates are always cheap and there is no need for a phone or LAN jack).
According to the company’s news release the array of new features include:
- Proxy support.
- Better anchors management.
- ‘BASE HREF’ tag better support.
- ‘HREF’ better support.
- ‘Chunked’ transfer encoding marks removed properly.
- Better relink. Post linker fully rewritten.
- Better HTTP status code handler.
- Link history out of bound exception when loading links with CRs.
If you’re interested in looking at Web Dumper 1.6 for either Classic or Mac OS X you can take a look-see at www.maxprog.com/WebDumperShots.html
Locked ’n’ loaded
Ambrosia Software has announced a new update to EV Nova, the newest version of the classic interstellar spacefaring game. The update (modestly flagged as a 0.0.1 update) fixes a huge whack of bugs, adds a whole schmoozel of new scenarios and tops the whole shebang with a truckload of enhancements.
The full list is detailed here: www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum26/HTML/007714.html
The nearly 10MB patch is available here: www.macgamefiles.com/download.php?item=17206
And, in case you’ve been off-world and haven’t yet download this one, just point your high-speed connection to: www.macgamefiles.com/download.php?item=17107 and grab the 75MB game. Just remember to pay your shareware fees or Andy Welch and Co. will fly by in a kickass rig and stick your butt in a world of hurt where nobody will hear you scream.
What’s it like outside?
Those interested in the world beyond their monitors might want to take note of a couple of developments on the weather front.
First, Glucose Development Corporation has drastically altered its WeatherPop and WeatherPop Advanced software and is asking users to download the 1.5.1 versions from its server at www.glu.com since the older versions no longer work.
In its press release, Glucose offers the following explanation:
We have made these changes because WeatherPop has grown so quickly that it has become necessary to limit the amount of traffic WeatherPop users create. The only way to keep WeatherPop a viable service was to switch the freeware version to use a completely free service until we are able to establish WeatherPop as a viable “browser” of all types of weather data from a vast number of sources.
In order to make this happen, we have completely redesigned WeatherPop to use artificial intelligence algorithms to detect and display the appropriate data from varying sources. This algorithm is designed to adapt to changes in the pages being browsed so that, in the future, users will not have to discard old versions of their software when service changes occur.
Second, the winds of change have blown in another shareware offering on the weather front. Colorfull Creations has recently released Simple Weather 1.0 for both Mac OS X and OS 9. The company’s brief press release describes the program succinctly as:
Simple Weather puts the weather on your desktop for fast and easy reference. Simple Weather has an easy to set up and easy to understand interface that “just gives you the facts” that you will need to keep you informed throughout the day and week. For more information and to download go to: www.colourfull.com
Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.