Today I heard about a very cool new tool developed by NASA. From their press release:

The MDE (Math Description Engine) distinguishes itself from other accessibility software by determining the key characteristics of a graph "on the fly." Using this determination, it builds natural-language text descriptions that enable visually-impaired users to view spatial relationships through sound alone.

Check out the demos at the MDE web site for examples of the text and sound the software can generate. It's pretty neat. I can see a great use for this, as I work for a research center that deals with a lot of data. So far, we've laid graphs out and written their alternative text manually. But with this new tool, it might finally be time to look into graphs that are built dynamically, because now they can be accessible too.

If you've been following my Ubuntu articles here on CMX, or if you've read about Ubuntu elsewhere and have considered installing it, you may be curious about today's announcement of an Ubuntu "maintenance release", Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS.

Not to worry: if you installed Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake") earlier, and have installed the updates as they were announced, chances are you're already running 6.06.1. You can easily find out: press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to escape the GUI, and you'll see your Ubuntu version number (press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to revert back to the GUI).

This .1 update is mainly concerned with fixing various glitches with the 6.06 installer, although it also incorporates all the updates and security patches since the initial Dapper release. If you've already installed Dapper you can safely ignore this maintenance release (assuming you've been good about installing updates when prompted). If you haven't yet installed Ubuntu, this new maintenance release promises to make the process smoother, and also save you from downloading a lot of updates.