The TAPING RECORDER May, 2004
News from & about Taping For The Blind, Inc. www.tapingfortheblind.org

BIG NEWS * * GREAT NEWS--At our April Board of Directors meeting, the Board
approved putting our radio reading service signal (HTBR) on the
Internet. We will soon be broadcasting worldwide! Our thanks to David
Gillmore, Vice President of Planning & Technology, and his Technology
Committee for bringing this forward, as this is a tremendous step for
Taping. We do not have a timetable established for implementation yet, but
Robert Shuller and Jim Martinez have demonstrated our ability to take our
signal and load it on the Internet, and then to receive it, as they
demonstrated for the Board. We are not the first radio reading service to
be on the Net, but we will be one of the best -- and we will be there
soon. This is an important step for us, enabling us to feed our
programming to other Texas cities without such a service. It will enable us
to bring our high-quality broadcast to fellow Texans as well as the rest of
the world. This will allow listeners to listen to a high-quality broadcast
without the interruptions sometimes occurring on our Secondary Audio
Program (SAP) broadcast on Channel 8. This will be an added service and
will not replace any of our current service offerings.

In addition, David Gillmore announced the formation of a special
committee to do website updating. Lynn Johnson will chair this committee,
assisted by a number of Web-wise volunteers including (but not limited to)
Justin Blount, Ginger Gish, and Jim Martinez from the staff as well as
George Eggleston, Joan Gallo, Robert Shuller, Peter Tsan, Marsha Ulaby, and
Scott Ward. If you go to our website you will notice it has updated
content, and you will soon see more interesting features. Thanks to all
for their work on this evolving technological marvel!

GREAT PARTY!--If you missed the Volunteer Reception on Sunday, April 25,
you missed a great party and getting to hang out with some really wonderful
people. Taping For The Blind Special Achievement Awards were presented to
Joe Laughlin and Marie Roberts. Joe is a book reader and he has also
served as the Vice President of Development, working lots of hours in that
capacity. Marie has served so well in helping us to get better organized
with our databases as well as documenting the care and feeding of these
information storehouses. Congratulations to both Joe and Marie the
awards are very well deserved!

We also want to recognize some volunteers who achieved milestones
in their service to Taping. Not all were at the reception so we want to
take this opportunity to laud their service: 30 years Leila Reynolds; 25
years Ellin Royds; 15 years Norris Jackson, Brian Rodgers; 10 yearsBob
Bartlett, Susan Boggio, Brent Burks, Thornley Hoch, Sandra Reid, Betty
Sanders, Anne Sharpe; 5 years Avery Bonnee, Dr. Ed Bradley, Barbara
Crawford, Randy de La Garza, David Fehling, Deborah Filip, Jane Freeman,
David Gillmore, Jeri Herbsleb, Karl Seibert, Charles Tigner, Robert
Weinberger, Marion White, and RJ "Skip" Williams. If you put a pencil to
it you will see there are a lot of years of service represented here, and
our hat is off to one and all!

And we must also say a large Taping Thank You to the following
volunteers who assisted so capably in setting up and tearing down for the
party: Sam Bertron, Cullom Connely, Deborah Filip, Anna and Tom McLean,
Pat and Paul Pilkington, Soledad and Ettienne Seman and son, and William
"Weav" Weaver. We truly appreciate your help! And kudos to Ginger Gish
for all of her efforts making this party so successful!

CANADA, EH?--Our Executive Director, Cynthia Franzetti, and our Radio
Manager, Jim Martinez, will soon be off to attend the International
Association of Audio Information Services (IAAIS) conference in Toronto,
Canada. Be careful of Canadian dollars and have a great trip!

LIGHT THE CANDLES--We wish a very Happy Birthday to the following
volunteers who celebrate in May: 05/02 Don Wolff; 05/03 Milton Kuhn; 05/06
Carol Esler; 05/08 Otto Schlamme; 05/10 Josephine Tarr; 05/11 Randy de La
Garza; 05/16 Deanna Sullivan; 05/17 Paul Daly; 05/19 Nancy Daly, Agnes
Hortobagyi; 05/20 Margaret Anderson; 05/22 Elizabeth Heeb; 05/23 Lynn
Johnson, Bill White; 05/27 George Nevers; and 05/31 Allan Kohlwes. If you
celebrate your birthday in May and don't see your name listed here, please
let Ginger know so she can update your record.

TO SUBSCRIBE--To subscribe to the TAPING RECORDER and have it delivered to
your e-mail box every time it is published, send a blank e-mail note to:
Tbi-houston-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. You will receive a verification
message to make certain you want to be a subscriber. All you do is open
that message, do the reply function, and send the message.

RLB