Stream 3.0 announced

Greetings. I received the following note from HumanWare today regarding version 3of the Stream. From the brief list of new features, it looks like they've made a genuine effort to appease those looking for music improvements and those looking for other improvements. While I can appreciate the music enhancements, I don't just have the Stream to play music, but rather to listen to books and play other kinds of files. Though I know people who do have the Stream just for playing music. If you want to do that, why not get an iPod? Oh well, to each his/her own I suppose. One particular feature that looks good to me right off is a bookmark notification when reading a book or file. I've increasingly used more and more bookmarks in my books and files, so this will be helpful. Anyway, read on for details of Stream version 3. It looks like it should be ready for download by the end of March, which is good. This will make 9 months between version 2 and version 3. Pretty good in my book. Enjoy.

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Los Angeles California, March 17, 2009 -- Today at the annual CSUN technology conference in Los Angeles, HumanWare announced the latest version of its popular Victor Reader Stream DAISY NISO book player, MP3 player, and voice recorder. The latest release of software for the Stream is version 3.0. It is a free upgrade software for the tens of thousands of users who now enjoy their Stream worldwide.

Version 3.0 is a major release packed with new features that continue to distinguish the Stream as the industry leader among pocket size accessible players. Version 3.0 responds to popular requests received from many Stream customers. New features include:

• Multi-level bookshelf navigation for Other Books, Podcasts, and Text. Now you can optionally organize these bookshelves into multiple levels of folders and navigate at those levels.
• Multi-level folder navigation within Music files. For example, now you could choose to organize your music by levels such as genre, artist, and album and navigate at those levels to more quickly find your desired music.
• Further you can now instantly create temporary playlists of any subset of your music collection and limit Random play to only that portion of your music.
• Moreover, you can turn random play on or off with a single key press like many commercial MP3 players.
• Text Search. Yes, now you can enter words to search for in your text files or text-only DAISY books.
• Bookmark alert. You can enable an optional bookmark alert feature to notify you when you are playing a book and pass over a previously bookmarked position. It will even automatically announce your audio bookmarks.
• Two text-to-speech voices. The English version of Stream 3.0 will now include both a male and female text-to-speech voice.
• A 30 minute Time Jump feature and many other usability improvements have been added.


"With the increasing use of 8gb, 16, and even 32gb storage cards, users are managing ever increasing amounts of data on their Stream", says Gerry Chevalier, Victor Reader Product Manager. "With thousands of music files and hundreds of podcasts or text files they have asked us to provide more efficient navigation and version 3 delivers just that."

Says Chevalier, "The improved navigation as well as the bookmark alert, text search and other usability improvements in Stream 3.0 renews HumanWare's commitment to our Stream customers that we would continue to enhance the Stream over time to maximize their Stream investment."

And there's more. HumanWare is pleased to announce that Stream 3.0 will also be accompanied by a completely new-look Stream Companion software. The new Stream Companion 3.0 Windows software has a completely new menu driven interface, support for the new Bookshare zip format, and more.

HumanWare expects to have both the Stream 3.0 and Companion 3.0 available for free download before the end of March. The software will be made available on the Stream Support Page
http://www.humanware.com/en-usa/support/victor_reader_stream