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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Show Notes: Beam Messenger App with Alec Gordon
Alec Gordon, Beam Propulsion Lab CEO and founder | http://www.beammessenger.com/ | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beamlab.beam
Osteoarthritis and Farm Youth: An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure | Tuesday, July 28, 2015 3:00 p.m. EDT” http://buff.ly/1JPcymM
ATCoalition News – Free Webinars http://buff.ly/1JPbH5I
Sailing: He prevailed where others failed http://buff.ly/1KOByec
App: Apple Music and Siri www.Apple.com/music
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ALEC GORDON: Hi, this is Alec Gordon, and I’m the CEO of Beam Propulsion Lab, maker of Beam Messenger, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 215 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on July 10 of 2015.
Today my guest is Alec Gordon who is the developer of Beam Messenger which is an app that won the FCC Chairman’s award recently for real time text messaging. Interesting stuff.
We also have information on some webinars about assistive technology; a story about a student who created a sailboat with assistive technology designed to be accessible for people who have quadriplegia; and I do this week’s App Worth Mentioning about how Apple Music and Siri are working together in a way that I think is pretty cool.
We hope you’ll check out our website at www.eastersealstech.com, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject.
Like our show? Do us a favor. Tell someone else about it. Head on over to iTunes and give us a review. Give us a rating. Let people know that you like the show. It’ll help others find us. It’ll help us. Thanks.
***
Another free webinar that I learned about. It comes to us from our friends over at AgrAbility, the accessible farming folks over at Purdue University. They are doing a webinar on July 28 at 3 PM Eastern about osteoarthritis and farm youth. The subtitle is “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” What they’re getting at is that osteoarthritis exists in a lot of folks, and that doesn’t exclude people on farms. They talk about the fact that there is research that shows that young athletes might experience osteoarthritis later in life and problems with joints and those kinds of things. But they also talk about how that might happen on the farm.
In this webinar, they’re going to talk about some of the common risk factors. They are going to talk about some of the assistive technologies that might help with this and then resources and information from leading arthritis research organizations. The presenter is Amber Wolf who is a personal friend of mine. She’s been with national AgrAbility since 2009. She’s going to be talking during this webinar about how farm youth might experience osteoarthritis and how technology might kind of help with that. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to the registration form and you can go and register there.
***
I get this really cool email every once in a while from the Accessible Technology Coalition. They talk about free webinars that are happening. They kind of collect them up and send them out in an email. There are several that are coming out after the release of this particular episode of Assistance Technology Update, and they include turning text into speech, a real-world application of examples from ADA online. They have one about creating and reading accessible e-pub documents for beginners. Then a couple from Freedom Scientific, one about using JAWS and Magic with Amazon, and JAWS and Magic with Facebook. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to this newsletter from ATC, Accessible Technology Coalition, and you can find these webinars that they’ve dug up and put in an easy format for you to find and participate. Check our show notes.
***
I became aware of this story from our friends over at RESNA. It was reported in the Newport Daily News out of Rhode Island. The headline simply reads, “He prevailed where others failed.” They’re talking about a young guy named Tyler Fleig, who is from Portsmouth, and he is a recent high school graduate, kind of a smart kid who is an honor roll student, created a computer club within a school, and was heavily into robotics. He became familiar with a gentleman named Paul Callahan who was with an organization called Sail To Prevail. Sail To Prevail is a nonprofit that helps people with disabilities do therapeutic sailboating. It’s an interesting thing because they do a lot of work there.
One of the challenges apparently has been there hasn’t been a completely accessible sailboat for somebody who has quadriplegia. Callahan, who is a person with quadriplegia himself, said that the ultimate challenge would be to use robotics and different kinds of assistive technology to create a boat that can be sailed by somebody who has quadriplegia. Tyler Fleig did that, or at least he got most of the way finished with it. He worked on a 2.4 meter sailboat. He used a series of cords and robotic, mechanical, and electrical systems that created a switch array. The switch array is tied to the rigging of the boat so that somebody with quadriplegia could use switches to control where the sail appointed.
I’m not a sailor so I don’t know the technical details, but it’s interesting because I was going to try to contact Tyler and get an interview with him about this project, but it turns out that this kind of rockstar student is headed to the US Naval Academy and was inducted just a few days before the recording of the show. I may still reach out and try to get a hold of him for an interview in the future, but he is taking his passion for sailing, and he’s taking his brain to the Naval Academy, and he’s going to be there studying computer engineering.
So I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to the Newport Daily News and you can learn more about this very interesting program that helps people who are quadriplegic to sail a boat using robotic assistance technology. Check our show notes.
***
Each week, one of our partners tells us happening in the ever-changing world of apps, so here’s an App Worth Mentioning.
So for today’s App Worth Mentioning segment, I’m going to do something a little bit different. I want to talk about Apple Music. You know, there’s a lot of stuff coming out with the new Apple operating system for iOS and some of the new developments there. But one of the things that was announced recently at WWDC was the changes in Apple Music. I’m a music lover. I love all kinds of music from jazz to country to rock to classical, just all kinds of music. I listen to music a lot. In my office, music is often playing. In the car I’m listening to music.
I have kind of moved over the last few years from having a pretty well-developed iTunes collection that included something like 11,000 or 17,000 tracks — I forget how many — and then I moved away from that a little bit into using the Pandora service for a while because I like to just let it picked music for me. And then a year or two ago I switched over to Spotify because I like the fact that it would give me that Pandora kind of discovery experience while at the same time allowing me to choose a particular artist Particular song, and build playlists that I had more control over.
So when Apple said they were going to basically redo the Apple Music service, I kind of shrugged my shoulders a little bit. So I’m pretty happy with what’s happening over at Spotify. I signed up for the three three-month trial of the new Apple Music service, and I got to tell you, I wasn’t thrilled with the user interface. It wasn’t very intuitive to me early on to figure out how I’m going to access this. I like the fact that my Apple iTunes music collection was still there and the songs that I’ve collected over the years were there. I like the idea that the pricing is very attractive for the streaming service. Basically pay $10 a month for a person, I think $15 a month for family, maybe up to six people can be on that. That gives you access to your existing iTunes music collection and then also gives you access to most of the things in their store as a streaming service. It also gives you access to their Beats1 radio station and some of the other more human curated radio services as well.
I tried it for a couple of days. I asked my wife to try it for a couple of days, and my 18-year-old daughter, and we are all a little bit not terribly impressed I guess with the user interface and the difference between what we got from the Apple Music service and Spotify. Until I was listening to another podcast that I follow called Mac Power Users. The host of that show were talking about the benefits of Apple Music and the pros and cons. Katie Floyd, one of the hosts, talked about Siri integration. She talked about how easy it is to ask Siri to do things in a music playlist withinApple Music. I thought it was kind of remarkable how much control I was able to have over the music in my collection. It allows me to play playlists, to ask for a specific song, to ask for songs from years or categories or genres or those kinds of things. Because I spend so much of my time in the car listening to music, I like the idea that I can just hit the button and ask for a particular kind of music and get something back that’s meaningful and that I enjoy listening to.
And then from an assistive technology perspective, which I’m eventually getting to the point here, it’s really helpful for folks who use Siri for other things where you can get a really high degree of control over Siri by using these voice commands. What I did was I plugged my iPhone into the board here and did a few of the commands that I’ve become familiar with. There may be others that are developed or things that I don’t know yet. But I just want to give you a quick feel for how you can use Siri to control the new Apple Music service. The “asterisk” is that you have to be subscribed to the Apple Music service. At the time of this recording, early July 2015, you can get a free three month trial period, after that you’ve got to play the monthly fee. Like I said, I think it’s $10 a person or $15 for the family.
Anyway, here are some examples of what I figured out how to do with Siri and music. Listen to this.
Play me some bluegrass.
[Peppy banjo and guitars]Play me some classical music.
[Soft cello]Play some Brahms
[Brahms Symphony No. 1]Play me the most popular music from the year 1990.
[Hold on, by Wilson Phillips] [Audio commands continue]WADE WINGLER: So a couple of things. I edited out some of the delays one serious processing so those clips were a little faster than they actually occurred. You may or may not appreciate my taste in music as we go through here. How cool is it that with Siri and Apple Music you have, for 10 bucks a month, that level of access to music that you want to listen to? Now there’s a lot of criticism about the collection, what’s available, and what happens to your old music, are you renting music or buying music or whatever. There’s a lot going on there. But from an accessibility standpoint, pretty impressive stuff. That’s this week’s App Worth Mentioning. If you want to learn more, just head over to Apple.com and they’ve got more there about the music service.
***
A few weeks ago on the show, I talked about the fact that the FCC here in the United States did some awards. They’re called the Chairman’s Awards for Advancements in Accessibility. There were a few award winners. But one that caught my eye was a thing called Beam Messenger from a gentleman named Alec Gordon. I have not talked to an FCC award winner in the past. I thought it would be cool to get him on the show and talk a little bit about what is the Beam Messenger app and what is it relevant to folks with disabilities. Before we jump into this, Alec, thank you much for being on our show today.
ALEC GORDON: Hey, wait, to be here. Thanks.
WADE WINGLER: Thanks for spending some time. I know they we’re both kind of, as we record this, cruising into the weekend and getting ready for that. But I’m interested in knowing about Beam Messenger and what it is and how you kind of got into the business of doing an app like this.
ALEC GORDON: Beam Messenger is the first true real time texting app. Basically, unlike conventional SMS, third-party apps — those work by turn-based tracks. Basically, I type, you wait; you type, I wait. It’s asynchronous. Beam Messenger transmits text in true real time, basically as each letter is typed it’s transmitted. So it’s a radical new way to protect based communication, and it’s right now available for Android platform.
WADE WINGLER: So let me make sure I understand. If you and I were communicating via Beam Messenger right now, if I type “Hi”, you would see the letter H and then you would see the letter I, as opposed to me typing the entire word “Hi”, hit the send button, and you would see it as a word, right?
ALEC GORDON: Absolutely. Basically any longer string of text, as you type it, we try to preserve basically the dynamics of how you’re typing it. So all of the pauses, the accelerations and stuff like that, you will see it reflected on the other app. So just like with speech, I can moderate it, I can vary the speed and technology and stuff like that, well some of these things we actually tried to carry through to text based communication.
WADE WINGLER: So if we’re texting back and forth, you’re going to see my misspellings, and you’re going to see if I change my mind about what I want to say, you’re going to see that thought process midstream, right?
ALEC GORDON: Basically, yeah. That’s why it kind of feels a little bit different to what we are used to. For twenty years, from ’92 or something, basically a message was that one way, I type and you receive the full message one it’s delivered. If you think about emails and even letters, they’re all kind of in this asynchronous fashion. You see the full message. But we communicate verbally by actually talking in real time. You’re interpreting it and making assumptions. There’s all this processing that takes place as you hear the message come in. So it kind of feels a little bit different. Some people have said that it’s kind of like their thoughts are more closely linked to the thumbs because now it’s like that stream of thought is being transmitted without as much filtering.
WADE WINGLER: That makes a lot of sense. That is a different way to communicate. I can say that I went on the website and I watched a demo and sort of got a feel for that. It’s kind of cool. Before we talk more about the technology and the app itself, Alec, tell me, how did you get in the business of being an app developer?
ALEC GORDON: Initially I kind of studied life sciences in school, so it was a bit different. At some point I just decided that I wanted to try my hand at building something. I had a couple of ideas. Previously I was involved in hardware and notably computer vision, so we’re actually developing sort of gestural tracking software for natural user interfaces. When we were developing, we thought this could potentially benefit some folks with disabilities and things. But yeah, after that, I decided to do something else and do mobile, something that could potentially upend an existing industry. I started prototyping a couple things and [Inaudible] it didn’t exist and it was fun, it worked, and people liked it.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool. You kind of hit on this a little bit. It wasn’t necessarily your intention to create something that would be specifically targeted for folks with disabilities, right?
ALEC GORDON: Initially you come up with something, and if it’s fresh in you, you don’t really know the direction it’s going to go. You build it and you see what groups start adopting it and then you kind of steer from there. The thing is I knew very well that this was a group that we would be helping. This is one thing. The FCC award, as great as it was, it wasn’t out of left field. It wasn’t completely unanticipated. I studied the history of the real time. Real time has existed for these groups for quite some time in these niche applications where they are able to communicate through emergency services in real time with one another. So I knew that this was always a group that we would be helping. This was just an added bonus. We were intending to actually open up this technology to the average consumer as well. We knew that there was a duality.
WADE WINGLER: Some of the best assistive and adaptive technology does that anyway. It’s sort of a universal design kind of thing that works with everybody, not just folks with disabilities. When the FCC gave you the award, tell me specifically about the disability population that they were thinking about with Beam Messenger. Was it just deaf, hard of hearing? Also did it include people that have speech challenges? What kind of disabilities are we addressing here?
ALEC GORDON: Basically any sort of communication impairments that people may experience in all facets. Those are the ones that can be helped by real-time technology. The reason it was adopted by these groups is because it more closely resembled natural speech, which they were deprived of. So they prefer that to this asynchronous method that others with normal speech use and don’t mind and don’t give it a second thought. So yes, those groups could benefit from real time.
As far as the FCC is concerned, I’m pretty sure it was just the fact that — the way I see this award is the fact that we took this technology that was needed and it was helpful and we just made it into a mass-market application where now anybody can download it. Then it becomes indistinguishable whether you’re downloading it for an impairment or as a normal thing. We took this technology that a lot of people could benefit from and we made it available for everybody. Now anybody can download it on their mobile phone in most countries.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool. So tell me about the business model related to that. What platforms are you on? Is there a cost to use or to download? How does the business side of that work?
ALEC GORDON: Right now we are on Android, and iOS is coming out very shortly. It’s a free app. Anybody can download it and use it. There’s no restrictions. Basically we’re going to try to go to other platforms as well. But if you have a mobile phone right now, anybody can download it and use it freely.
WADE WINGLER: And there’s no cost for the ongoing service? That’s something that you guys take care of?
ALEC GORDON: It’s a free app. It’s basically a texting app. We’re going to keep adding new features. We have a lot of really cool things in the pipeline so the service is going to get better from here.
WADE WINGLER: I want to stop on the award again just for a second. What is that process like? Is this like when somebody wins a Nobel Prize and they call you at 2 o’clock in the morning and say standby because CNN will be here at your doorstep? What was that process like? You said that you kind of had some suspicion that you might be winning? Have you met the chairman of the FCC? What has that process been like?
ALEC GORDON: It’s definitely not winning the Nobel Prize. It was a major thing though. The FCC itself was very cool. Basically it was just an email. We were told that we were nominated. We are all very excited obviously. We were nominated in the category real time text. The curious thing was when we found out about it, we were like who else is nominated? We don’t even know anybody else that’s working on this. We’re not sure how the category came about. We had a good amount of confidence that, since there was an actual category for real-time, we were probably a good top contender because we don’t know of too many other organizations that are working on similar things so far. About a week from then, we got — well, actually there was a phone call as well. So initially, yes, I got to talk to one of the directors. During that conversation, I was also able to tell them — I studied up on my history of real time and this and that — so I knew where I was coming from. So I didn’t stumble upon this accidentally. We actually had this in mind. When we won, it was really cool. We went down there. One of the commissioners was there. The chairman unfortunately could not make it, but the whole ceremony was really fun. It was actually during another conference so the FCC had their ceremony during that larger event. It was a nice venue. The whole process was really cool.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool. It’s got to be a good feeling to be recognized like that.
ALEC GORDON: Absolutely. Some of the other awardees were some really good technology. Captcha won an award. It was Captcha’s reCaptcha. What they’re doing is really interesting, just the information that they’re able to source basically from just people doing verification. It’s really great.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool. So, Alec, tell me a little bit about the other kinds of things that beam propulsion labs does and tell me a little bit about what’s the future for Beam Messenger. What’s in your crystal ball?
ALEC GORDON: Right now we developed this technology, obviously it’s time to get popular in some regions and in adoption. We are going pretty fast. From here on out, just expansion to other platforms. IOS is next up after that likely a desktop version. Real time with a keyboard actually feels a little bit different so it’s fun to use. We have some of the things that we are planning basically were just looking right now to really develop real-time technology and develop this kind of – the way we look at it is from one end of the spectrum there’s phone calls, and on the other and there’s text messages. We’ve kind of placed beam in the middle. So we’re going to look to keep improving the technology so that it becomes this alternative that somewhat less committal than a phone call but also a little bit more personal than just one off text messages. So we’re going to try to better this technology and bring cool new things to users.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. If folks are interested in trying the app, downloading it, getting involved, what do you offer in terms of contact information, website address, that kind of stuff?
ALEC GORDON: Our website address is BeamMessenger.com. There you can get a link to the Android Google Play store app download page. If you go to the Google Play Store you can type Beam Messenger and find it. If you have an Android phone, check it out. We source a lot of feedback from our users. So on the settings page, if you have an idea to suggest or if you find a bug, because, you know, this is still kind of an early version of the overall product. You can always help us make the service better by suggesting ideas, come up with cool things. We’re going to see what we can implement. We’re also bringing conflict group checked into the next update so the next up is going to be a major revision. All the contact information is inside the app.
WADE WINGLER: I’ll pop a link over to Beam Messenger website so that folks can get to that easily.
ALEC GORDON: Sounds good.
WADE WINGLER: Alec Gordon is the CEO and founder of beam propulsion lab and the creator of Beam Messenger. He’s been our guest today. Alec, thank you so much and congratulations on the award.
ALEC GORDON: Thank you very much. It’s been fun. Take care.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to EasterSealstech.com. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.