Icon User's Manual

V1.05
LevelStar, LLC
1500 Cherry St. Suite D
Louisville, CO  80027

Telephone:  800-315-2305
Email:  support@levelstar.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Orientation

The Icon Application Environment

Input Techniques

The Address Book

The Music Player

The Library Menu

The Internet Menu

Browsing the Web

Email

RSS Reader

The Tools Menu

The Utilities Menu

The Games Menu

Appendix

Detailed Table of Contents

 

Introduction

Congratulations! You now have in your hands the most powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use personal data assistant (PDA) available today. The fact that it has no screen and is designed specifically for use by blind students and professionals makes the unit even more compelling. Icon's developers have vast experience in the field of blindness and technology and many are users of such devices themselves.

In The Box

Please make sure you have all of the following items when you unpack your Icon.

If you are missing any of these items, please contact LevelStar at (800) 315-2305 or (303) 926-4334. You may also contact them by e-mail at info@levelstar.com.

Let's take a moment to go over the organization of this manual: Conventions used in this Document.  This documentation represents multiple key sequences, or rather, keys that are to be pressed simultaneously, by separating the individual keys with a plus sign. So, if you were asked to press and hold the pound key while you press the number 1, the key would look like this: # + 1. Keys that are to be pressed in succession, or one after another, are separated by a comma. For example, the keypad shortcut used to get to the RSS application from the Applications Menu is to press 4 followed by 3 and appears as 4, 3.  

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Orientation

Hardware Specifications

The Icon comes standard with the following hardware:

You may also elect to purchase an optional docking station with either a Braille or QWERTY keyboard. This docking station provides the small hand-held unit with a full keyboard, phone modem, Ethernet connector, USB connectivity, better stereo speakers, and 4 times the normal battery life. This accessory will prove especially useful to those students and professionals who prefer a full sized keyboard with the convenience and power of the PDA.     

Location and Definition of Buttons

The Icon is designed for easy, intuitive one-handed operation when it's not being used in a docking station. You can hold it in the palm of one hand, and enter commands with the other; or you can easily operate it with one hand while it's on a desk or clipped to a pocket or belt in the included carrying case. For this orientation, place your Icon so that the keypad faces up and the earpiece (an oval-shaped bump with vertical ridges) is furthest away from you. We will review the Icon's buttons and features by surface in the following order:

(There are no input elements on the right edge of the Icon)    

Front Face

The way you navigate through the Icon's suite of programs will be familiar to you if you've ever used a cell phone; except that every feature is accessible without a screen, and the buttons have been designed to be prominent and easy to tell apart.

On the lower half of the front face, there are twelve equally sized keys grouped together. These make up the telephone keypad. The telephone keypad allows you to use numeric shortcuts to get to any program from the applications menu, enter contact numbers, and write text.

The Icon phone pad is laid out like a standard telephone keypad, and like a standard telephone keypad, allows for entering either numbers or letters depending on context. When you're in the Icon menu system, all key presses on the phone pad are treated as digits; however, when you're in an application that requires text input, such as the word processor or your list of songs in the music player, pressing one of the 9 main number keys yields letters or punctuation symbols. By default, you have one second between presses before the system inputs the letter you have selected. You can change the time Icon waits to input the character in the general settings section of the Utilities Menu described later in this manual.

On the upper half of the face, just above the telephone keypad, there are several more buttons. Directly above the telephone keypad is a row of 3 keys. The corner-shaped key on the left is the OK button: this button agrees to any action the Icon's operating system needs confirmation to perform, opens a highlighted file or program, saves changes in a dialog, serves as Enter in text editing environments, and answers yes to Icon questions. The central button, which is rectangular, is called the Program Menu button: Pressing it within an application, yields a list of options relevant to the task you're working on. For example, in the music player application, you can access options such as Shuffle and What's Playing? To the right of the Program Menu button, there is another corner-shaped key; this one is the Cancel button, and pressing it briefly allows you to abort, or call off, any operation you've chosen by mistake. In addition, cancel exits a program or menu, and answers no to Icon questions. A long press of about a second turns the Icon on and off. A short tone and a vibration indicate the unit is on; a double tone and double vibration indicate it is off.

The central group of buttons is shaped like a diamond and is made up of five parts. The corners of the diamond are the up, down, left and right arrow keys; the round button in the center is the select key. Use the arrow keys to navigate through menus and lists of options, as well as to navigate text in documents.

In text environments, the left and right arrows move backward and forward by character; the up and down arrows move backward and forward by line. Holding down the up and down arrows moves you to the top and bottom of a document respectively. Holding down the left and right arrow keys takes you to the beginning or end of the current line. Holding down the 0 key while using the arrow keys moves in larger steps: doing so with the left and right moves by word; doing so with the up and down arrows moves by paragraph. Finally, holding down pound while pressing the up and down arrows moves you by page.

In menus, the up and down arrows move through your choices. The right arrow key can open a submenu any time one is available: otherwise it opens the highlighted application. The left arrow key returns you to the previous level in a menu system.

The select key allows you to select and confirm actions such as choosing a program or playing a song. The Select key also stops and starts continuous reading in a text environment, stops and starts media playback, and toggles between pause and recording in the voice recorder.

Now, direct your attention to the top part of the arrow diamond. Flanking the up arrow key are two more buttons. The one on the right is the Help key - valuable for new and seasoned users alike, a brief press of the Help key provides a message relevant to your current place in the system. For example, if you're setting the date and time, the Help key places you in the section of the user's manual that lists the steps necessary to set date and time correctly. Once you're done reviewing the information brought up by the help key, simply press Cancel to return to what you were working on when you first pressed Help. A longer press, of about a second, turns on Key Learn Mode. Once you're in Key Learn Mode, press any key to find out what it does; press the Help key again, for one second, to turn Key Learn mode off.

The key on the left is the Status key. Pressing it briefly  repeats the last message spoken by the Icon. Pressing it twice in rapid succession yields program specific status. For example, if you are downloading e-mail, press status twice quickly, and Icon tells you where it is in the receiving process and how far it has to go. Pressing and holding it for about a second  brings up the status application, where you can arrow up and down to check your battery level, the time, pending appointments, whether your wireless connection is on or off, and the software version the Icon is running. To spell the last phrase spoken by Icon, press the status key followed by the help key.

Finally, move your hands above the Status and Help keys. The last three keys on the unit are two dot-like keys with a bar in the middle. Whenever you find these keys at the top of the Icon, you know you're oriented in the right position. The left and right round keys are named Program Key 1 and Program Key 2. The functionality of these keys is reserved for future additions to the functionality of the unit. By default, a long press of Program Key 2 turns your wireless connection on and off. The central key on this row, a rectangular bar, is the Applications key. A quick press of this key brings up the Icon's main menu, from which you can access every application. A longer press brings up the Icon's task manager, where you can review and manage your currently open applications.       

The Left Edge

On the left edge of the Icon, there are several buttons relevant to sound input and output. Starting at the top, just below the left-hand speaker, notice a long rocker switch. This is the Icon's volume control. A press of the upper part of the control raises the Icon's volume, and a downward press lowers it. Unless the Icon is reading text, Icon also announces "louder" or "softer" as you increase or decrease the unit's volume, as well as "loudest" or "softest" when you have changed the volume to the loudest or softest setting.

Sometimes, you may want to control the volume of media content on the Icon without altering the volume of the speech output; or you may want to raise or lower the volume of speech but keep the media volume the same. Hold down the star key while raising or lowering the volume to control only the volume of the speech output. When you do this, you still get the audible announcement of "softer" or "louder" as long as the Icon is speaking text. Hold down the 0 key while raising and lowering the volume to control only the volume of media content. When you do this while media is playing, you get no announcement by way of confirmation, but you are able to hear the media getting louder or quieter. If you change the media volume while no media is playing, you hear a set of beeps, low to high while the volume is being increased and high to low when it is being decreased.

Directly underneath the volume control, there is a round button that toggles the Icon's audio between the external speakers and the earpiece mounted above the keypad. When you have headphones plugged into the Icon, this button has no effect. Toggling between the speakers and the mounted earpiece allows you to choose between a robust stereo sound and a private listening experience. The earpiece is especially handy if you need to jot down a quick note or look up a phone number while you're in public and headphones are inconvenient.

There is one more button below the speaker/earpiece toggle, separated by a small ridge. This lowest button is called the Quick Record button. Later, you'll learn how to manage the file names, quality and storage locations of your recordings, but the Quick Record button allows rapid audio capture without any prior setup. Just press it for about two seconds to start recording. Icon says, “begin recording” to let you know audio capture has started. When you have finished recording, press Cancel to stop. All files recorded this way are saved in a mono, low-bit rate format suitable for up-close voice recording. Quick record always uses the internal microphone with the recording level automatically controlled by the Icon. Quick recordings are automatically tagged with the time and date they were taken, and saved to the Recordings folder of the Icon's internal flash disk.    

The Top Edge

The top edge of the unit contains three audio jacks and a Mini-SD slot. The left-most jack accepts cables from external microphones and line-in patch cables. The Mini-SD slot is located at the center of the top edge just to the right of the microphone jack. You can buy Mini-SD cards for this slot that expand the Icon's onboard storage and allow you to swap data with the owners of other SD-compatible devices. The headphone jack is located just to the right of the Mini-SD slot. It accepts standard 3.5MM headphone jacks, so you can continue to use your favorite pair of headphones with the Icon. The third jack on the top edge of the unit is a sub-mini headset jack and accepts combination microphone/headphone headsets typically used as accessories with mainstream cell phones. This type of headset is ideal for making verbal notes while you're using the Icon    

The Bottom Edge

On the bottom edge of the unit and toward the left side, there is a textured slide switch. This is your Keypad Lock. Normally, it should be in the left position, so that you can use the keypad to type. If you want to lock your keypad to avoid accidental key presses, slide this switch to the right, and the unit, if it is on, announces "keypad locked". Sliding this switch back to the left causes the unit to announce, "Keypad unlocked". If you find that your Icon doesn't seem to be receiving key presses, it's a good idea to check the Keypad Lock switch to make sure it's in the left side position.     

Interface Connector

The center portion of the bottom edge contains the connector into which you plug your power/sync cable. This cable is used for three purposes:

The cable contains a flat connector with releases on the left and right to help keep the connecter attached. One side of the connector is completely smooth, and the other side has an inlaid rectangle that contains some embossed text. The side with this textured rectangle should be facing up when you plug the connector into the Icon. Since the connector to the cable contains several fairly delicate pins, it is important to check that the connector is being inserted properly, and it should connect without the need for much force. Press in on both releases when you want to disconnect this cable from your Icon.

A short cable runs from the bottom of the connecter and ends in a box that contains three ports. On the bottom edge are a USB client and a USB host; on the top edge, to the left of where the cable exits the box, is the alternating current (AC) connecter into which you plug the wall unit to charge Icon's battery. Remember that the Icon can charge itself through your PC'S USB port, so the AC charger is necessary only when you don't have a PC connection available or when it is more convenient to use the Icon for long periods of time away from your PC (for example, if you've integrated it into your home stereo system).     

Battery Care and Use

Your Icon uses a lithium-ion battery with a rating of 1700 milliamp hours. Given this power level and the typical usage patterns and the power consumption of the unit, you can expect to get about six to eight hours of steady use from Icon when the wireless radio is off and about three to four hours of usage with the radio on. Expect about four times this battery performance when using the batteries in either of the docking stations. If you need more time away from AC power, you may consider purchasing an additional battery and use it to supply another charge when the first battery's charge fades. To change batteries, power the unit off, change the battery, and turn the power back on. It's a good idea to have the replacement battery ready to insert before removing the current battery, as you have only about 45 seconds to make the change before the clock settings are lost.

Warning
Do NOT remove the battery while the Icon is running. Removing the battery while the unit is running is strongly discouraged by the manufacturer. Removing the battery while your Icon is on may cause data loss, data corruption, and loss of the clock settings.      

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The Icon Application Environment

Your Icon provides several generalized utilities for manipulating the overall environment. These include

Applications Menu

The first time you turn on your Icon, and any time thereafter when power has been lost or the unit has been reset, you’ll know the Icon is ready to work when you hear the words "Applications Menu". You can access the Applications Menu at any time from anywhere on the unit by briefly pressing the Applications key on the top center of the keypad.

The applications menu provides easy access to any of the unit's applications. Use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow to browse through the list of applications the menu has to offer. Pressing select on some of these options, such as the music player, takes you directly into the application. However, when an option is followed by the word "menu", pressing select brings up a list of options in that category. For example, the fifth option, "tools menu", contains both the word processor and the planner, among other tools. You can explore these menus without opening any applications; when you're ready to back out to the previous menu, press your left arrow key. to open a program, press Select or OK.

The Icon is designed with some very efficient numeric shortcuts that let you jump straight to a particular application. As you arrow through the Applications Menu, notice that each item is associated with a number: you hear "1 - address book", "2 - music player", and so on. Pressing the number associated with any of these items opens the application or menu immediately, with no need to arrow directly to it. For example, from the Applications menu, you can press 5 for Tools, then 1 for Word Processor, and the word processor opens immediately. Similar shortcuts are also available in program specific menus. Continuing with the example of the word processor, to navigate to the top of the document, you can press the program menu key followed by 93 in quick succession; 9 takes you to the navigation menu, and 3 gets you to the start of the document.    

Task Manager

Sometimes you may be performing more than one task on the Icon: for example, you might be writing E-mail while music plays at a low level in the background. To switch among the Icon's currently open applications, use the task manager.

You can access the task manager by holding down the Applications Menu key for about a second. When the Task Manager is loaded, the Icon emits a beep similar to the one you hear when turning on the unit, and then announces "Running programs" followed by the first running program in the list. Use the up and down arrow keys to navigate among all running programs. To switch to one of the programs in the task manager, simply navigate to that program and press select. 

Pressing the Program Menu button when a running program is highlighted brings up a list of three options. Option 1, Switch To ..., performs the same function is pressing select on a program. Option 2, Stop ..., halts the highlighted application. Option 3, Refresh, updates the list of programs running in the task manager to reflect any recent changes.

Caution: Stop Programs with Care

Although you can stop any application from the task manager, stopping a program is different from closing it. When you close the word processor, for example, you are given an opportunity to save your document. When you stop the music player, the Icon allows you to resume playing right where you stopped. When you stop a program from the task manager, the application is unloaded immediately, and information accumulated since the last time you ran the program may be lost.

In practice, it's best to stop an application from the task manager only when you find that the application is behaving in an unstable manner, or when you're running too many concurrent applications and your Icon becomes too sluggish. To avoid the potential data loss inherent in stopping programs, try to avoid running more than three programs concurrently.    

Status Menu

Once you learn the layout of the keys, one of the first things you may wish to do is access the time, date and battery level of your Icon. You do this from the Status Menu, which you can access by holding the Status key down in a long press of about a second. When you release the button, the unit places you in the Status Menu, where you can review information about battery status, network connections, appointments, and the date and time. Each of the options pertains to specific information about your Icon. As with any menu in the system, use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys to move from option to option in the menu. The order of items in the Status Menu, by default, is the same as the order in this manual:

You can press the Program Menu key while positioned on any of the items in the Status Menu to bring up a list of options relevant to that item, and although some of these options differ, every item has the options "move up" and "move down". Selecting "move up" positions the current item above the one that comes before it; and selecting "move down" moves the current item past the item below it. If an item is at the beginning of the list, "Move up" is not available; and if an item is at the bottom of the list, "move down" is not available. You can also press select on the time and date, the appointment notification, and the wireless status to access the clock settings, the planner, and the wireless control panel respectively.    

Time and Date

By default, the first item in the Status Menu is the date and time. Use this information to check the current date and time from any place in the unit. To set the date and time, bring up the Status Menu by pressing the Status button for about a second. The unit announces "status", and then reads whichever item within the Status Menu is currently selected.   

Use the up and down arrow keys to find the line which reads the date and time. You may simply press select to bring up the clock settings or press the Program Menu key, just under the arrow diamond, to open the Clock menu. The Icon responds "1: set time and date." This means that you're in the clock options menu and on the correct option, so just press select. You are prompted to select the time format you prefer. Choose between 12-hour (AM/PM) time and 24-hour (military) time with your left and right arrow keys. When you have chosen the time format you want, press down arrow, and you are presented with the current selected time zone.

To change the time zone, press select. You are then presented with a list of countries. Arrow down to the country you want, or press its initial letters on the phone pad (for example, press the 2 key three times in rapid succession for the C in Canada). When you have chosen the country you want, press select again, and you are presented with a list of time zones within the selected country. Arrow down to the one you want, and press select once more to return to the Set Time and Date main dialog. If, at any time, you select a country in error, use the left arrow key to back up a step.

After choosing the time zone you prefer, arrow down once more, and you are prompted to enter the current time as a four digit number. If you are setting 24-hour time, simply enter two digits for the hour, then two for the minute. If you're entering 12-hour (AM/PM) time, enter the two digits for the hour, then two for the minute, and then use the pound key to toggle between AM and PM. When you're done, press the down arrow key again.

You are now ready to enter in the date. Enter it as an eight digit number in the format mmddyyyy, enter two digits for the month, two for the day, and four for the year. For example, to enter March 3, 2007, enter "03032007". Once you have done this, press the OK button, and the unit responds "Time and Date Set."

If you have a working connection to the Internet, either through your wireless connection or the USB cable, you can choose to bypass these manual steps and have the Icon retrieve the time and date automatically from the Internet. To do this, follow the same steps as described above to enter the Set Time and Date dialog, but instead of manually filling in all the fields, choose your desired time zone as described above, then arrow down to "Retrieve time from the Internet" and press OK. The Icon says "Synchronizing" and attempts to synchronize with a time server on the Internet. If synchronization is successful, Icon says Okay and then reads the time. If Icon responds that it was unable to connect, this most likely means that your Internet connection is not working properly, or that you are not connected at all. The time synchronization feature is great for ensuring that you never run five minutes too fast or too slow, and also for checking, quickly and simply, whether your Internet connection is operational.    

Battery Status

Below the display of time and date in the Status Menu, you find your Icon's current battery level. Remember that your Icon should perform for between six and eight hours per charge with the wireless radio off, and three to four hours when the wireless radio is on. The battery level is expressed as a percentage, and may be erratic for the first minute or so after you turn your wireless radio on or off. Start looking for an alternate source of power when your battery level dips below 20 percent; and remember that, at 5% of full battery capacity, your Icon automatically switches off. The Icon does this to maintain a sufficient charge to keep your clock settings and other preferences intact until you can recharge the unit.    

Appointments

Below the battery level, is a line that displays what appointments, if any, you have scheduled on any given day. If the Icon finds no appointments for the day, it announces "You have no more appointments for the rest of the day." If you have one or more upcoming appointments during the day, the Icon announces the one that is chronologically coming first. Pressing Select on the appointment line, opens your planner to the current day, and from there you can review all your other appointments.    

Wireless Status

Beneath the appointment line, is a status line that tells you whether your wireless radio is on or off. In addition, if your wireless radio is on, the Icon announces whether it is connected to a network and, if so, the strength of the wireless signal. Remember that you can toggle your wireless radio on and off with a long press of Program Key 2, located at the very top right of the Icon keypad. If you are connected to a network and want details about your current wireless connection, press the program menu key while the wireless status item is highlighted, and select wireless details.    

Icon Software Version

The very last item in the Status Menu is a line displaying which version of the Icon software is running. This information is important whenever you call technical support, and helps you to confirm whether software updates to the system have been successful.     

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Input Techniques

Icon offers a variety of ways to enter text and numbers. Use the telephone keypad, an external QWERTY keyboard, or a docking station with a Braille or QWERTY keyboard.    

Telephone Keypad

The telephone keypad lets you type characters or numbers in an application. Depending on the specific application in use, the keypad may be in numbers mode, Braille mode, or in letters mode. Each of these keypad layouts provides alternate ways to type text.


1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
* 0 9

Numbers Mode

When an application requests information from you that consists of numbers, it lets you type the numbers directly. So, If you were in the planner and wanted to enter the date as 08152006, you would type those numbers directly on the keypad. If you are in a field such as a date field in the planner or journal, or a phone number field in the Address Book that uses Numbers Mode, Icon announces the name of the field followed by “Numeric” to alert you that the keypad is now a numeric telephone keypad.    

Alpha Numeric Mode  

Many applications expect letters rather than numbers. If you were writing an email, for example, most of the characters you type would be letters, but there would be occasional need to type a punctuation character or a number. Alpha numeric mode of the telephone keypad lets you accomplish just that. Here is how it works.

Each key has numbers and letters printed on it. To type the second or third letter on a key, press that key a second or third time within a short amount of time. If you wait too long, the PDA accepts the character and the next time you press that same key, the unit gives you the first letter in the series.

You may still type numbers even when the keypad is in alpha numeric mode. The number associated with a key is usually the fourth press of the key. There are exceptions for the numbers 7 and 9 as each of these has 4 letters associated with it. So, when you press, for instance, the 2 key once, you get the letter A. A second press yields B, and a third produces C. A fourth press produces the number 2. You can type capital letters of A, B, or C by pressing the 2 key a fifth, sixth, or seventh time.

Pressing the 1 key allows you to text the following punctuation marks and the number 1 in this order: dot, at, slash, colon, 1, question mark, line, and equals. . The 2 represents, in order, A, B, C and 2. The 3 represents D, E, F and 3. The 4 represents G, H, I and 4. The 5 represents J, K, L and 5. The 6 represents M, N, O and 6. The 7 represents P, Q, R, S, and 7. The 8 represents T, U, V, and 8. Finally, the 9 represents W, X, Y, Z, and 9.

The * or star key is called the Splat key. Press Splat to delete the character to the left of the cursor or, in some program specific lists, to delete the highlighted item. The 0 key works as a space bar, and if pressed repeatedly, will also yield 0 and plus; the # or pound key, to the right of the zero, brings up navigation options in text-based applications.     

Modifier Keys

In addition to typing normal letters and numbers on the telephone keypad, you can also use the three keys at the bottom of the telephone keypad as modifier keys. The * keys serves as the shift key, 0 acts like Control, and # is the Alt. So, to press Alt + B, press and hold down the # key then press the 2 key twice (once for A and once for B).        

Braille on the Telephone Keypad

In addition to number and alpha-numeric modes, Icon offers Braille input using the standard telephone keypad. To toggle between Braille and ABC keypad layouts, press Pound + Program 2. If you are familiar with Braille, this is an effective means of entering a large amount of text in a short amount of time. If you aren't familiar with the Braille code, you may wish to invest some time learning it; it will save you a lot of keystrokes in the long run.

The left row of keys on the telephone keypad represents the left row of dots of a Braille cell. The number one serves as dot one. The number four serves as dot two. The number seven is dot three. Similarly, the right most row of keys acts as the right half of the Braille cell. Dot 4 is produced with the number three. The number six produces dot five, and number nine produces dot six. To enter a letter that requires more than one dot in Braille, hold down the desired keys all at once. So, to type the letter l which is represented in Braille with dots 1, 2, and 3, press the telephone numbers 1, 4, and 7 simultaneously.

Thumb Braille

Once you use the telephone keypad to enter Braille, you soon notice that multiple dot characters may become difficult to press, especially with two fingers or your thumbs. The primary cause of this problem is trying to press more than two non-adjacent keys on each side of the Braille cell. In other words, pressing dots 1 and 2 at the same time is easy to do with one finger or thumb, but pressing dots 1 and 3 or 1, 2, and 3 all together is problematic. 

It is for this reason that thumb Braille exists. Thumb Braille takes the four keys in the middle row of numbers and assigns them the four combinations of non-adjacent dot combinations. The combination of dots 1 and 3 is entered by pressing 2. The number 5 produces dots 1, 2, and 3. The number 8 produces dots 4 and 6. And the number 0 produces dots 4, 5, and 6.

Now, to type the letter l, just press the number 5 on the keypad. To produce p, press 5 and 3 together. The number 5 gives you dots 1, 2, and 3, and the number 3 gives you dot 4.

Other Keys

The next two rows of three keys are easy to remember, because they mimic the arrangement of the six keys normally grouped together on a traditional keyboard, often referred to as the 6-pack.

Other Modifier Keys

Hold down # while pressing the numbers 1 through 0 to get F1 through F10. Hold down 0 to get Control. So, to bring up the Find dialog, using Control + F, hold down 0 and press keypad numbers 1, 4, and 3 simultaneously to produce the letter F.

External Keyboards: In addition to the built-in phone pad on the unit for entering text, there are a number of external keyboards that work well with the Icon. The most basic of these, the USB keyboard, plugs into the USB client port on the power/sync cable that comes with the Icon. You can also choose to use a Bluetooth keyboard wirelessly with the Icon. See Appendix C for a list of QWERTY commands.    

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The Address Book

Now that you've become acquainted with the Status Menu and how to enter and navigate text, you'll probably want to start exploring the applications that make the Icon so versatile and powerful. The Address Book is a good place to start as it is the first item in the Applications Menu. To open any application, first press the Applications Key to reach Icon’s main menu. The unit announces, "Applications menu". At this point you can either arrow down once, hear the announcement "1: address book", and press select; or you can simply press the number 1. Since option 1 is the Address Book and it contains no submenus, pressing 1 from the Applications Menu always takes you directly to the address book.    

Adding New Contacts

When you open the address book, you are automatically positioned on the list of contacts currently saved. If there are none, you hear the prompt "addresses: empty list." To add an address, press the Program Menu key, and then select the first option, "1: New Address". You are prompted to enter a first name. After you have done so, down arrow to the next field, "middle name", which you may either fill in or leave blank. Continue down the list of contact details, which include last name, street address, street address line 2, city, state, zip code, home phone, work phone, cell phone, webpage, and comments, entering information for each field or leaving it blank according to your preference.

Note that when prompted to enter items such as zip codes and phone numbers, Icon announces “Numeric” after the field name to alert you that the telephone keypad is in Numbers Mode. In the same way, Icon announces “computer Braille required” after fields such as webpage and e-mail addresses to alert you that, if using Braille to enter text, you may not use grade 2 Braille in these fields.

The last item in the list of details to be filled in is "E-mail addresses" and, rather than simply typing in an E-mail address for your contact, you must first press Select on this item to open the e-mail address list. Once you press Select on the E-mail Address line, you are presented with a list of E-mail addresses currently saved for the contact. If you are creating rather than editing the contact entry, this list is empty. To add an E-mail address, press the Program Menu key, then select "New E-mail address". You are prompted to give the "real name" of your contact. This means the name that is associated with the E-mail account you are adding. You may choose to fill this item in or leave it blank. When you arrow down, you are prompted to fill in your contact's E-mail address. Arrow down once more, and you can choose whether the E-mail address you are adding is the default for future correspondence with this contact. Press Select to toggle between "yes" (this E-mail address is the default for your contact) and "no (this E-mail address is not the default.) When you're finished, press OK to return to the e-mail address list. If your contact has more than one e-mail address, you can add as many additional addresses as you need to by repeating the steps previously described. To delete an e-mail address from this list, arrow to it and press Star, or choose option 2 after pressing the  Program Menu key. When you’re finished editing the e-mail address list, press OK to return to the main details for your contact, and press OK again to save your entry and return to the list of addresses in the address book.  

Reviewing and Editing Your Contacts

Once you have created and saved a contact, it appears in the "Addresses" list in your address book. To review the information contained in a contact's entry, just press Select on the contact and the entry opens. You can navigate among the fields with your up and down arrow keys. Repeat the contents of any line by pressing Status, and use standard editing commands to change the information on any line. When you're done, press OK to save any changes and return to your list of Contacts or press Cancel to return to the list without saving any changes.

To delete an entry from your contacts, arrow to the contact you want to delete and press the star key. The Icon asks you whether you're sure you want to delete the entry. Press OK to confirm the deletion; or press Cancel if you decide you do not want to delete the contact. 

Remember that you can use the telephone keypad to type in part of a contact's name in order to find an entry more quickly. Since contacts are organized by first name, type the first few letters of a person's first name to jump to his or her entry. For example, you might press "2, 2, 2, 6, 6, 6" to create the "CO" that would move you to someone named Constance.    

Custom Contact Groups

Some users may want to avoid intermingling their personal contacts with business contacts; or they may be importing multiple sets of contacts from a PC. If you press your left arrow from the address list, you find yourself in a folder list which, by default, only contains the folder Main. This folder may also contain contact lists you have imported; or, to add a second folder into which you can organize your contacts, press the Program Menu key and arrow down to "new folder". Pressing select brings up a prompt for the name of your new folder. Enter the name of your new folder, and press OK to save it. You should now see the newly created folder listed in alphabetical order along with "Main." To delete a folder, press the Program Menu button and arrow down to "delete a folder". After pressing Select, you are asked to press OK to confirm deletion or Cancel to opt out of deletion.   

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The Music Player

Icon's Music Player lets you organize, manage, and play your audio content. However, it is not just for music! You may read audio books, listen to podcasts, as well as play your favorite music even while you work on other activities.

When you select an audio file from another application; for example, an mp3 file in the file explorer or a podcast in the RSS reader; the music player automatically launches with that file loaded. To launch the music player directly, press the Applications key from anywhere in the Icon, and then either arrow down until you hear "2: music player", and press select, or press 2 to open the music player directly.     

A Word to the Wise: Organize your Tunes

Before transferring music to the Icon, consider the following. When your manual writer loaded her music collection onto the Icon and began to browse by genre, she was dismayed to discover that her music collection had been segmented into redundant, tiny and unhelpful genre categorizations. There was "Alternative rock" (4 songs), "Alternative, rock" (1 song), "Andrew Lloyd Webber" (1 song), and on and on. How could this be?

Although the Icon does a great job of helping you manage your music by title, artist, album or genre, it's only as good as the file information with which your music files are tagged. From your PC, you can bring up the properties associated with each file. In Windows, the Summary tab of a music file's properties allows you to edit the title, artist, and genre for a song. To reach this information, highlight the file in Windows Explorer, and press Alt + Enter to get to the file properties. Navigate to the summary tab, then go to Advanced. Here you are presented with a list containing title, artist, album, and genre information which you can edit.  When done, tab to the OK button and select it. The most common problems with song classification that can be fixed in the Summary tab include inconvenient or nonexistent genre classifications; and song titles that actually begin with the name of an artist, making songs more tedious to find. Although getting your music collection properly labeled is a somewhat time-consuming project, it may pay off the next time you forget whether "Walk Like an Egyptian" is by the Bangles or the Buggles; and if you plan to share your MP3s, your friends will thank you for taking the time to label them right.    

Importing Audio Files into the Music Player

Before using the music player, you need to load audio content onto your Icon. The simplest way to do this is to connect your Icon to your PC with the included USB cable and your Icon power/sync cable. Once you have connected your Icon to your computer, press 6 and then 3 from the Applications menu. This launches Disk Drive Mode. If your Icon is properly connected to your PC, your PC should emit two ascending tones, and your Icon shows up as a removable drive from the My Computer dialog in Windows. Open this drive and then open the Music folder within it. Then, paste any audio content you want to transfer into the Music folder. On average, most songs take 5 to 10 seconds to transfer, depending on their file size. Your PC should display the name of each song while it is being transferred, as well as an overall estimate of how long your file transfer will take. If you have a lot of music you want to transfer, you may start the transfer overnight and your transferred files should await you in the morning.     

When you're finished transferring content, press the Cancel key on your Icon to exit disk drive mode. You are now ready to play your audio content. You may also use the Icon Sync program located on Icon's companion CD to synchronize Icon's music folder with the My Music folder on your Pc.  For more details, see appendix A on the Icon Sync program.     

Updating the Music Catalog

The first time you launch the music player, or anytime thereafter when you have added or removed audio files, the system takes a few minutes to update the music catalog. When this process is complete, the Icon announces, "music catalog updated". If this process is interrupted or needs to be restarted, you should press the Program Menu key from within the music player, navigate down to the "rebuild catalog" option and press select.     

Disabling automatic update of the music catalog may cause the Icon to perform more responsively if your loaded collection of music is very large (5 GB or more). This is because, when the option to auto-update is enabled, the Icon checks for updates to your media content every time you load the music player. To disable this option, press the Menu key, and choose “Disable Auto Music Catalog Update”. If you choose to disable the automatic update, you must remember to manually select the Rebuild Catalog option every time you add music to or remove music from the collection in your Music folder.    

Program Menu Options within the Music player

There are three other options in the program menu that are available in any part of the music player. The first, Shuffle, announces whether Shuffle is currently on or off. Pressing select toggles this option from "on" to "off" and back again. When Shuffle is off, files are played in alpha numeric order or, if you are playing a playlist, in whatever track order the playlist specifies. When Shuffle is on, the files you have chosen to play are randomized. The Resume item, just below Shuffle, allows you to return to the exact track and position where you last stopped listening. This option works even if the music player has been closed and then reopened. However, it does not work if you have updated your software version or allowed your battery to run down completely since the last time you listened to music. Underneath the Resume item is Rebuild Music Catalog, described above; and finally, below that, is the option of disabling automatic updates of the music catalog. If Auto Catalog Update is disabled, this option reads “Enable Auto Music Catalog Update”.      

Accessing your Audio Content

When the Music player opens, you are placed in a list of options for sorting your audio content. These music management options are numbered, so that you can jump quickly to any of them with just one press of a number key.

Option 1, Songs, brings up a list of every audio track available in your Media folder. At the top of this list is an option to Play All. Press select on this option to start playing your tracks in sequence, and use the Program Menu while audio is playing to toggle whether shuffle is on or off. If you want to play just one track, you can arrow down past Play All to review all your other songs. A long press of the up arrow takes you to the very top of the list, and a long press of the down arrow takes you to the very bottom of the list. As with any other list in the Icon, you can input the first few letters of the song you're looking for to jump straight to that song. For example, you could press "66, 2, 7" to input the "nap" that would jump you directly to a song called Napoleon's Hat. This process is not case-sensitive, which means that it finds songs by title regardless of their capitalization.  

To back out of your list of songs and return to the list of music management options, press your left arrow key. You may then arrow down and explore the other options.  

Option 2 is Artists. It works the same way as the Songs option, except that there is no Play All option at the top of the list. Once you navigate to a particular artist and press Select, you are presented with a list of all the songs you have available by the artist you've selected, with a Play All option at the top and the individual songs below it. One press of the left arrow key returns you to the list of artists; a second press returns you to the list of music management options.  

Option 3 in the list of music management options is Albums, and it groups songs by album name.

Option 4, which works the same way, is Genre, and finds songs based on the genre specified in their file information.      

Creating and Using Playlists

You may wish to organize your music according to your own preferences. Icon, like many media players, allows you to create your own playlists. To do this, select option 5, Playlists, from the music management options in your music player. If you already have playlist files in your media folder, these show up in a list; otherwise, the list starts out empty. To create a new playlist to which you can add tracks, simply press the Program Menu key and select option 1, New Playlist. You are prompted to give your playlist a name, which can be just one character or several words long. When you're done entering the name press the OK button. Your newly created and (for now) empty playlist now shows up in the Playlist list. (As in any list that offers file management options, you find a delete Playlist option in the Program Menu, which you can select and then either confirm or abort by pressing cancel or OK.)   

Once you've created a new playlist to which you'd like to add audio tracks, left arrow to return to the music management options. You can highlight any song, artist, album or genre to add to a playlist. For example, to add all your blues songs to a playlist, you can arrow down to Genres (or press 4), press select or right arrow to bring up a list of available genres, and then navigate down to Blues. The next steps are the same whether you have chosen an individual song, an artist, an album or a genre: press the Program Menu button, then navigate to and select the option "Add ... to playlist", The prompts are somewhat different depending on what you're adding: you hear "Add this song to playlist" if you're selecting an individual song, for example, and "Add all songs in this genre to this playlist" if you are selecting a genre.   

After you have chosen a song, artist, album or genre to add, and selected the "Add to playlist" option, you are prompted to choose from a list of currently saved playlists to add the selected music to. Navigate to the one you want either by using your up and down arrow keys or by inputting the first one or two letters of the playlist's name. When you've highlighted the playlist to which you want to add music, press either the Select or the OK key. The Icon responds "OK", and your music is added to the playlist.   

When you return to your music management options, either by using the left arrow or by reopening the music player at a later time, Playlists is Option 5. Select the playlist you wish to play, and you are presented with a list of all tracks in the playlist, with a Play All option at the top. Remember that you can toggle whether tracks are played in alphanumeric order or randomized by selecting Shuffle from the Program Menu.    

Controlling Playback in the Music player

Pressing Select on an individual song or a Play All option within the music player menus launches the music player, and the music you have chosen starts playing. While music is playing, you can press the Select key to pause and resume the audio. A brief press of the left arrow returns you to the beginning of the current track; pressing it twice briefly skips you to the previous track. Conversely, a quick press of the right arrow advances you to the next track in the sequence you have chosen. Holding down the left and right arrows causes the Icon to rewind or fast forward through your audio selection.    

The Icon's keypad offers several other options for navigating through longer audio tracks. You can use the 1 and 3 keys to move back and forward by ten second intervals; the 4 and 6 keys to move back and forward by one- minute intervals; and the 7 and 9 keys to move back and forward by 10-minute intervals. Press 5 to find out your current position in the file or rather, how much time has elapsed in the current track. A press of the star key brings up a multi-line display called What's Playing which you can navigate with the up and down arrow keys and which includes the name, file path, and duration of the currently playing track. Pressing the Cancel button returns you from this dialog to the main music player.  

From within the music player itself, four options are available in the Program Menu. The first, discussed earlier in this documentation, is the Shuffle option, which toggles between On and Off each time you select it. The second option is What's Playing, which brings up the same file information as the star key and can be exited with the Cancel button. The third option is Current Position which gives you the same information as does pressing 5. After you hear this information, you are automatically returned to the main music player with no further action necessary. The fourth and final option available in the main music player's Program Menu is Rebuild Catalog, which starts the process of updating the music available on your hard drive without the need to interrupt the music that is currently playing.     

Supported File Types in the Music player

The current release of the Icon software supports mp3, OGVorbis, and Wav files. Icon also supports mp3 streams in PLS and M3U.   

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The Library Menu

The Icon provides a host of tools that let you conveniently download, manage and read electronic books and periodicals in a range of formats. All of these options are classified under the Library Menu, option 3 from the Applications Menu. The three options within the library menu are:

From the applications Menu, pressing 3 for the library menu followed by 1, 2 or 3 for the specific library application you'd like to use brings you directly to the application of your choice.    

Bookshelf

Selecting Bookshelf from the Library menu brings up two different ways to browse your book collection: you may choose from Authors or All Books. Selecting Authors brings up a list of authors, and you can select a particular author to explore all the books classified under the author's name. Selecting All Books brings up an alphabetized list of all books available on your hard drive. From the authors list, you can press the program menu key and get the option to delete the author; selecting this option will delete all books by the highlighted author.  From the alphabetized list of all books or a list of books by a particular author, pressing the menu key will give the option to edit book information (discussed below) or to delete the book.   

Importing Books to Your Bookshelf

Just as you need to transfer media content before you can use the music player, you need to transfer some books to the Icon or download some directly (see the section on Internet Book Search.) To transfer books, connect your Icon to your computer with the included USB cable. Then, press 6, 3 from the applications menu to enter disk drive mode. Your Icon shows up as a removable drive on your PC, and you can open first the removable drive, then the Library folder, and finally the Books folder. Paste the books you'd like to read into this folder, and then press Cancel on your Icon to exit disk drive mode. It may be most helpful to organize books by author, with the books by each author being contained in a folder with the author's name as the title as this is how Icon naturally organizes books that are downloaded.    

Icon's current software release supports a range of file types including DAISY2, BRF, Microsoft Word (.doc), RTF and TXT (text), and HTML. However, only DAISY books come encoded with author information, so all books with other file types are classified under the author "Unknown" until you re-label them manually.    

Editing Book Information

To edit the label information for a particular book, you must first find the book either through choosing the author and then highlighting the book, or by navigating to it directly in the All Books list. Once you have highlighted the right book, press the Program Menu key. Option 1, Edit Book Information, is the first available option, so just press select to choose it. You can now use standard editing commands to read and edit the selected book's title. Pressing the down arrow key results in the prompt "Authors: press select to change." To alter author information for your book, press Select here. You are placed in the field containing the book's first or only listed author. If there is more than one, the up and down arrows move among them; and you can edit the information in each field. You may also highlight an author, press Program Menu, and choose to delete that author. To add another author to the one or more already listed, press Program Menu, down arrow to Add Author, and press select. You can then enter the name of the author you are adding, and press OK to save the change.    

Press OK from within the book information dialog when you're done editing your book's information, and you are returned to the list of titles where you started.    

Opening and Navigating through a Book

To open a book, simply highlight your choice and press Select. The Icon responds "opening book" and, depending on the file size of the book you're loading, starts reading after between one and five seconds. If you are opening a book for the first time, the Icon starts reading from the top. Otherwise, you begin reading wherever you were positioned when you last closed the book. You can stop and start continuous reading at any time by pressing the Select key. The up and down arrow keys move you through the book line by line, and the left and right keys move you character by character. To move forward by word, use the right arrow key while the 0 is held down; use 0 with the left arrow key to move backward by word. To move to the end of the current line, hold down right arrow; to move to the beginning of the current line, hold down the left arrow. To move forward by paragraph, use 0 with down arrow; to move upward by paragraph, use 0 with the up arrow. To move to the previous page, hold down pound while pressing the up arrow; to go to the next page, hold down pound  and press the down arrow. And finally, to move to the top of the document, press and hold up arrow; to move to the end of the document, press and hold down arrow.     

Navigational Options for DAISY

DAISY books offer additional options for navigation. Depending on how a DAISY book is constructed, the navigation markers may represent print pages, chapters, sections, or a combination of all three. To bring up the navigation options available in a DAISY book, press the pound key from within the book. You can then arrow up and down through the first layer of navigation options. Sometimes there is a second layer: for example, you might find that there are navigational markers for every section within a chapter. If a navigational marker contains other markers within it, the Icon tells you how many subsections it contains, and you can press the right arrow key to move into the list of those subsections. Pressing the left arrow after you do this returns you to the first layer of navigational markers.    

Once you have found the navigation marker to which you wish to jump, press the OK or Select key and the Icon positions the cursor at the location of the marker you have chosen and starts reading. If you have been browsing through the navigational markers but wish to go on reading where you left off before, instead of pressing select or OK, press Cancel and you are returned to your previous location.    

Using the Edit and Navigation Menus

When you press the Program Menu key from within the Bookshelf application, you can arrow between two menu choices: Edit and Navigation. The options under the Edit menu include Set Selection Mark, Copy Selection, Select All, Find, and Read from Cursor. You can read more about these options in the section of the manual dealing with the Edit menu of the word processor, since commands in both applications work similarly.    

The Bookshelf's Navigation menu includes four options. The first, Document Navigation, brings up the same dialog of DAISY navigational markers as does pressing the pound key. When you select the second menu option, Go to Page, Icon prompts you to enter a page number to which you want to navigate. Enter the number on the phone keypad, and press OK. As long as the page you specified is within the range of pages available in the document, you are jumped immediately to the page number you entered, and Icon begins reading at that point.    

The third and fourth options in the Navigation menu allow you to jump directly to the beginning or end of the currently open book. Remember that to browse through the menus and then return to your book without selecting a menu choice, you can press Cancel and you are returned to the position where you stopped reading.     

When you wish to close the book you have open, press Cancel and you are returned to the list of books from which you made your selection. Press Cancel a second time and you are returned to the Applications Menu. Remember that pressing the Applications Menu instead of pressing Cancel allows you to open another application while still keeping the Bookshelf open in the background. You can navigate back to the Bookshelf at any time, while it is running, by holding down the Applications key to bring up the Task Manager and selecting it from there, or simply by pressing its shortcut from the Applications Menu.    

A primary difference between the Bookshelf and word processor is that you cannot edit books in the Bookshelf. Any attempt to press alphanumeric keys will result in the prompt "Document is read only". However, you may still copy passages from a book into the word processor to be edited or added to a document you are working on. Find details on how to copy and paste text in the section of the manual dealing with the word processor.    

The Icon with Bookshare

The second and third options in the Icon's Library menu, Newsstand and Internet Book Search, require a subscription to Bookshare.org to work. Bookshare is an online repository of books and periodicals that had over 30,000 books and 150 newspapers and magazines at the beginning of 2007. Memberships can be purchased by any person with a print-reading disability, or can be earned through "sweat equity": in other words, by volunteering to help build the website's book collection. Visit the website, www.bookshare.org, for information about how to become a member.     

Newsstand

Subscribing to Newsstand Periodicals

The second option in Icon's Library menu is the newsstand. From the applications menu, it can be accessed by pressing 3 and then 2. When you open the Newsstand for the first time, you hear the announcement "Periodicals: empty list" because the Icon does not come preloaded with any periodicals. After ensuring that your internet connection is on -- either through the USB cable connected to your PC, the wireless radio, or the Icon's docking station -- press the Program Menu key and select option 6, Add a Periodical.   

If you have not elected to save your Bookshare information previously, you are prompted for your Bookshare.org user name, which is the E-mail address you used to sign up. Enter it using the keypad, and then arrow down once to enter your password. (Remember: capital letters come after digits in the rotation when you enter alphanumeric characters on the keypad. The @ (at) symbol is second in the punctuation sequence offered by the 1 key, and the . (dot) is the first.) Arrow down once more and you are prompted to decide whether you'd like to save your password. A saved password stays active until the Icon is reflashed. If you are the sole user of your Icon, you will probably want to save your password to avoid the need to type it in the future. Press the Select key to toggle between "yes" and "no" in response to this prompt. If you have previously performed an Internet Book Search, you may have already saved this information, and Icon simply says “Logging in to Bookshare.org.”    

When you have entered your user name, password, and preference in regard to saving the password, press the OK key and your Icon attempts to log you in to Bookshare. If your user information is invalid or your internet connection is not functioning, Icon tells you that the log-in has failed and you are returned to the user name and password prompts. Otherwise, you are placed at the beginning of a list of all the periodicals Bookshare has to offer.   

Move through the list with the up and down arrow keys, or type the first couple of letters of the periodical to which you would like to subscribe. The list is alphabetized with the exception of the economist which appears at the bottom of the list, and can be quickly reached with a sustained press of the down arrow. When you come to a periodical that interests you, press the select key. You are prompted to specify how long you would like the Icon to keep old issues of the periodical you have chosen. Simply press the OK key if you want old issues kept until you manually delete them; enter the number of days you want to keep issues if you want them eventually to be erased, and then press OK. Down arrow once more to choose whether you would like to subscribe to the periodical you have selected. By default this item is set to yes, but you may set it to no if you do not want the periodical in question automatically downloaded, but want to access it at will.   

Once you have chosen the settings you want for the periodical you've selected, press OK. The Icon announces "periodical added" and returns you to the list of periodicals. From here, you can choose to subscribe to as many additional periodicals as you wish. To leave the subscription dialog when you're done, press the Cancel key.    

Downloading Your Periodical Subscriptions

When you are ready to download the periodicals you've subscribed to, press the Program Menu key from the periodicals list in the Newsstand and select option 1, Get All New Issues. If your Internet connection is working the Icon downloads all the newspapers to which you have subscriptions and announces when it has finished with an ascending set of clicks. During the download, you hear a swishing sound every few seconds to let you know that the download is progressing. You may press status twice in quick succession to hear information about how many issues have been downloaded and how many are left. Remember, if you have added a periodical, but have chosen not to subscribe to it, it will not be included in the Get All New Issues operation.  

To update a particular periodical rather than downloading new issues of all your subscribed periodicals, arrow to the periodical you would like to update and select option 2 from the program menu, Get New Issues For This Periodical. To modify the settings you selected when you added a periodical, highlight the desired periodical and choose the third option in the program menu, Periodical Settings. If you no longer want the periodical on your Icon, highlight it in the list of periodicals and delete it using the 4th option in the program menu. If you want to delete a particular issue of a periodical, arrow to the desired periodical and use the right arrow to get to the list of issues. Highlight the particular issue you wish to delete and choose option 3 under the program menu, Delete Issue.     

Opening a Periodical

From your list of subscribed periodicals, right arrow to open the list of all issues for the one you have highlighted. Right arrowing again, or pressing select, opens the specific issue you have highlighted.   

Bookshare periodicals come in the DAISY format, which means that navigation within them is similar to navigation using the Bookshelf. There is one notable difference: when you open a periodical in the Newsstand, you start out in the first layer of navigational markers as opposed to being placed at the top of the document. Generally, these markers refer to main sections of the paper, e.g. National, Foreign and Editorial. Use the up and down arrows to navigate among these main sections, and the Icon announces how many subsections are contained in each one. Right arrow once to bring up the list of articles within a particular section, and press Select at any time to jump to the relevant part of the periodical.    

From within an article, press Cancel to return to the navigation dialog. You may read continuously for as long as you like across articles and sections, but when you press Cancel you are placed in the navigational position from which you opened the first article you chose.    

Using the Edit and Navigation Menus in Newsstand

The Newsstand offers exactly the same Edit menu as the Bookshelf. For details on copying and pasting text, and performing a find, see the information about the Edit menu in the manual's section on the Word Processor.    

The Newsstand's Navigation menu is also equivalent to the one available in the Bookshelf. Use it at any time to bring up the open periodical's navigational markers; to jump to a page; or to go to the very beginning or very end of the periodical. The Newsstand's Program Menu also offers the Subscribe to a Periodical and Check for New Issues options from within a periodical.  

Internet Book Search

The third option within the Library menu is the Internet Book Search, which interfaces with bookshare.org to allow you to quickly and easily download books for offline reading. You can select it from the Library menu, or press 3, 3 from the Applications menu.     

Searching by Title or Author

When the Internet Book Search opens, you are presented with a menu of three choices. The first two, Search for Author and Search for Title, operate in the same way: press select on one of these two options, and you are prompted to enter a title or author to search for (It is acceptable to enter partial titles and authors). When you have finished entering your search query, press the OK key and the Icon responds, "Searching". After a few seconds, you are presented with a list of titles or authors that match your search. (If nothing matched your search, the list is empty.) Navigate using the arrow keys to the title or author that interests you.  

To download a highlighted title, simply press Select on the title you would like to download, and the downloading process will commence. If you have not elected to save your login information for Bookshare, you are prompted to enter this before your first selection begins downloading. If you have saved your information, Icon announces “Logging in to Bookshare.org: and begins downloading the book. The Icon lets you know when it has finished downloading by saying "done". You may then select another book in the list to download, press left arrow to return to the search menu, or press cancel to exit the internet book search program. Pressing Select on an author brings up a list of all titles by that author, and you may then select one or more to be downloaded.    

Accessing Additional Book Information

Sometimes, you may want more information, such as the copyright date, number of pages, or synopsis of a book, before you decide whether to download it. To review this information, highlight the title that interests you, press the Program Menu key, and choose option 1, Book Information. You can arrow down through fields describing the book, including synopsis; title; date added to the Bookshare collection; the quality of the electronic book (ranging from excellent to fair); the number of pages; the ISBN; copyright date; and the name of the copyright holder. Some of these fields may be blank. When you are finished reviewing a book's information, press the Cancel key to return to the list of your search results.    

Searching by Category

When you choose the third menu option within the Internet Book Search, Browse Categories, the Icon retrieves a list of the categories of books available on Bookshare: for example, there are categories for Art and Architecture, Teens, and Cooking, Food and Wine. Press Select on any of these categories to bring up a list of the books contained in that category. Press select on any book to download it, or press left arrow to return to the previous menu.  

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The Internet Menu

You can use your Icon while connected to the Internet to browse the web, check your E-mail, keep up to date with your favorite RSS feeds, and download podcasts. There are four possible ways to connect to the Internet:   

A Few Words on Getting Connected

You may use your home Internet connection with the Icon, either through your home wireless network or USB connection or, with the optional docking station, with the Ethernet or dial-up modem. However, it is often possible to find free wireless networks away from home. Your friends or office may have a wireless network; or you may find free, open networks at commercial locations such as coffee shops, hotel lobbies and airport waiting areas. In densely populated urban areas, it is increasingly common to find at least one wireless network almost wherever you go.    

The Wireless Control Panel

Since the wireless radio included in the Icon system drains the battery life of the unit about twice as quickly as normal, the wireless radio is turned off by default. There are two ways to turn it on. You may either hold down Program Key 2, at the extreme upper right corner of the keypad, for about two seconds; or you may select Wireless Control Panel from the Internet menu. Either action activates the wireless radio and brings up the Wireless Control Panel.    

Once you turn on the wireless radio and start the Wireless Control Panel, Icon shows a list of all the wireless connections in range. You can attempt to connect to any of the listed networks by highlighting it and pressing select. Each item in the list contains the network SSID (or name), whether the network is open or secure, and the signal strength of the network. Ideally, you should try to connect to a network with a listed signal strength of a higher number: you'll get a more stable connection from a network listed at -40DB than one listed at -80DB. Remember the higher a negative number, the smaller its absolute value; so in actuality the smaller the number, the higher the signal strength. Once you press select on a non-secure network, a connection attempt is made right away. If the network to which you want to connect is listed as secure, this means that it requires a security key. If you press select on a secure network, you are prompted to enter the security key. After entering the key, press the OK key to proceed with the connection. When the Icon announces "connected to" followed by the name of the network you have chosen, you have a working Internet connection. The message "Connection attempt failed" is spoken if the wireless signal for the network you're connecting to is too weak or if you enter an invalid security key for a secure network.   

Your Icon remembers the connection settings for networks you have connected to successfully. You may delete these in the Network Manager, discussed later in the manual, but by default your Icon automatically connects to any network to which you have connected to previously.  Remember, turning your wireless radio off when you are not engaged in tasks that require an Internet connection maximizes your battery life. You can toggle the wireless radio on and off with Program Key 2, or turn it on and off through the program menu in the Wireless Control Panel; or you can end the Wireless Control Panel process, if necessary, from the Task Manager.

Setting Up a USB Network Connection through Your PC

When your Icon is connected to your PC with the USB cable, use your PC's internet connection from the Icon. To do so, select the USB connection from the Network Manager option of the Internet menu.   

before using the internet through the USB connection for the first time, you must create a network profile on Icon and install the USB network drivers and bridge your internet connection to Icon's network connection.

Installing Network Drivers 

Installing the network drivers is a two step process. You first install the handler, then once the Icon tries to connect to the PC, the handler finishes the network driver installation.<