Greetings Dear Readers,

The good news is that we have been accepted into the iTunes affiliate program! This means that whenever you use a link on ATMac to buy an app from the iTunes App Store- like Proloquo2Go - a small percent of the price will be paid to ATMac and hence to me. The price for you as a user is the same, and it means that I can get some money to help ATMac grow by doing things like paying other writers, and paying myself for some of the time ATMac takes to run.

ATMac is already an affiliate for [msd] and Amazon.com, and the income from those things helps me a lot.

Because I want you to know that opinions here are not influenced by any income opportunities - at least as far as human psychology permits - at the end of any post with affiliate links you will see this disclaimer:

[disclaim]

Or one with very similar wording but telling you exactly which product links are the affiliate ones. You may already have noticed these around on posts about MacSpeech Dictate, for example.

I will never lie to you about my opinion of a product and I will never take money to change what I write (for example, I have in the past been offered several thousand dollars to put hidden advertisements here, disguised as my own opinion - I declined). I don't want any of you to ever doubt the integrity of what's written here - the fact that ATMac is trusted is very important to me.

If you have any questions about this, please leave me a comment or contact me privately.

- Ricky Buchanan

[disclaim]

Speech commands are one of the great new features of the iPhone 3GS. It's an accessibility feature that will help blind and mobility impaired users, and will also have significant benefit for people driving or doing other things while using their iPhone.

Here are all the speech commands I've seen people list for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. The asterisks after some commands link to the place on the internet I saw the command reported. If you're looking for something that you can print out as a memory aid, try the iPhone and iPod Touch Voice Commands Cheat Sheet page.

Starting Voice Control

Hold down the phone's home button or the middle button on your headset until the voice control feature comes up on screen and you hear a beep. This should take about 2 seconds.

Phone Commands

Obviously, these only work on the iPhone and not the iPod Touch.

Call a contact

"Call" or "dial" plus the person's name or nickname as entered into your address book. Optionally add the phone number type at the end, such as "home", "work", "mobile". For example, "Dial John Smith Work" or "Call Mum".

Call a number

"Call" or "Dial" plus the number, just as you would recite it usually. For example, "Dial 555 9592".

Make a correction

Say "not that one", "wrong", "nope", "no", or "not that".

Music Commands

These are the same for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Start music

Say "play" or "play music".

Play from a specific playlist

Say "play playlist" and the name of the playlist. For example, "Play playlist gym songs".

Play from a specific album

Say "play album" plus the name of the album. For example "Play album Dark Side Of The Moon".

Play from a specific artist

Say "play artist" plus the name of the artist. For example, "Play artist Pink Floyd". The alternate "Play songs by" plus the name of the artist has also been reported to work*.

Pause music

Say "pause" or "pause music".

Skip to next song

Say "next song". The shorter "next" has also been reported to work.*.

Go back to previous song

Say "previous song".

Shuffle the current playlist

Just say "shuffle".

Turn on Genius feature

Say "Genius", "play more like this", or "play more songs like this".

Get information about the current track

Say "what's playing", or for more specific information say "what song is this", "who sings this song", or "who is this song by".

Misc Commands

These are the same for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Ask the time

Say "what is the time" or "what time is it".

Cancel voice control

Simply say "cancel". With iOS 4 you can also say "stop".

Get help

Say "help".

Other Languages

Thanks to autrefois on the MacRumors forum I've found instructions for locating the iPhone User Guide in your language. These have the voice commands listed in chapter two. Here are the instructions:

Go to the version of Apple's website for your country/language. If you don't know it, go to http://www.apple.com/ and choose it at the bottom of the page.

Click on the "Support" tab (or whatever it's called in your language), on the top of the page by the search bar.

Finally, under iPhone, click on the link for the User's guide; it should be the first link, at least as I post this. If not, you should be able to track down that language's user guide from there.

If others are interested in providing me with the appropriate text for other languages I'd be happy to post it here - just contact me. FJB has helpfully contributed the voice commands in French - thank you!

Do you know of more commands I've missed? How are the speech commands working for you? Leave a comment and let me know.

- Ricky Buchanan

I'm back at home after the tests in hospital, but recovery is proving very slow. I won't have the final results of the tests until June when I see my specialist, but I know that at least some abnormalities were detected. The hospital was noisy and busy as hospitals are, but the staff were helpful and did their best to let me rest.

After coming home last Monday, I'm needing to sleep about 13 hours a day which is frustrating me hugely. It's especially frustrating to me that a lot of the "awake" time I can only manage to listen to audio books or do other very passive and low-energy things. There is a small amount of time every day when I can be as active as I usually am (remember I'm bedridden to start with) keeps being swallowed up with the business of living - paying bills and keeping timesheets for my carers and other necessary tasks.

I have managed to work a little on the designs for my other websites - Not Done Living, No Pity City, Four Walls No Limits, and Not Just Work. These take a lot less mental energy than writing ATMac articles, luckily for me!

Hopefully in another week or perhaps two I'll be up to writing articles again. In the mean time I'd be happy to run any guest posts anybody has to offer - just contact me by whatever method suits you best. See you soon.

- Ricky Buchanan

I need to go to hospital for a bunch of tests including a muscle biopsy operation. The estimate is that I'll be out of hospital in a week and after I've recouperated ATMac will be back in operation.

Sorry for the inconvenience - I've been battling with influenza and two secondary infections so I had not realised the planned hospital visit was so close!

Stay tuned for more articles as soon as I can manage it ... you may want to subscribe so you don't miss them!

- Ricky Buchanan

My computer is behaving very strangely at the moment - occasionally working (such as now), but programs crashing and the Finder having very strange symptoms. Apple's tech support has suggested that I should do a clean reinstall since I had not done that after the main hard drive was recently replaced. Unfortunately, my much-used Leopard install disks have chosen this moment to go missing.

As such, I can't reinstall until the Apple replacement Leopard disks arrive and until that happens I can do almost nothing with my computer as it's liable to stop working at any moment. So ATMac will unfortunately be on a short hiatus for the "three days to 2 weeks" they quote that the new install disks will take to arrive.

Please chat amongst yourselves in the mean time. I'd love to see some introductions in the comments here when I come back - who are you, how did you find ATMac, and what's your interest in Apple and disabilities and assistive technology? Don't be shy!

- Ricky Buchanan