Today was a pretty fun day. We went to two different companies, Benetech and Sierra Ventures. Benetech is a company that helps people with disabilities get the things they need. Sierra Ventures is obviously a VC company.
Benetech told us a lot about their bookshare program. It is a really cool program where they are allowed to distribute books, even copyrighted books, through a copyright 'loop hole'. This loop hole is a copyright law that says that you may distribute books to the learning disabled, or those who have a disability to learn /read without permission of the owners of the material. So what Benetech does is kill the books. Then scan them into their computers at a rate of 90 pages per minute. The machine that does this scanning is very impressive, and we were all wowed by it. 'Killing' a book consists of removing the cover and then taking off the spine as well. I was able to kill the book for the demonstration that we got of the process. I have the binding to the book, which will be uploaded at a later date, well a picture will be.
They acquire their books through donations. If they receive a book they have already scanned they will just put it in the donation piles and ask people to take them. Once they have scanned the book it can be read on their special devices. These devices are made to make the process of reading easier for those who have disorders like severe dyslexia. It is very good at helping with this because it will both speak the word and highlight it as it moves along, by activating both senses at once, the effect of dyslexia is lessened, thus helping the person learn and read better. The one thing that is a bit of a downside is that for textbooks to get uploaded they have to pay nearly $1,000, whereas a bestseller costs around $20. When a book is uploaded it is given a difficulty rating, and these ratings help define how hard it will be to proof read the system that interpreted the text, and put it on the screen.
When the machine goes through the text and reads it, it cannot decipher between part of the book and a footnote, or an indexing number. So if there is a blind person listening to a book being read, and they start getting random numbers, or a completely different subject in mid-sentence, they will be very confused. So the more of these types of things there are, the harder the book is to proof read. This makes textbooks very hard to proof read, and make sure that they are correct; there are not very many people who volunteer to sit and read, while proof reading, a text book.
After Benetech we had some time to go and get something to eat. I was boring and went to subway, something a little more normal, but also a bit healthier and more diverse in the food groups than I have been getting normally.
After lunch we headed over to Sierra Ventures. We met with an investment specialist who focuses on solid state lighting. He is a big believer in the ideology of LED's. He gave us a nice background about the company, and the lighting industry. He was a very smart person, and really gave a lot of good overviews about the whole VC business as well as the LED world. I don't know what else to say about his presentation. It was very complete, and super interesting but it is so easily summed up in what I have just said.
The internet is still being very touchy and not letting me get pictures of videos up, but when I get back to Buffalo or Luther they will all go up. I will make sure that they make their way onto here so you can all see them.
GOOGLE TOMORROW!!!
Thanks for reading,
Aaron
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