First off, Josh Lifton, Plover's first developer and inventor of the forthcoming Stenosaurus, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to offload some of the extra custom keys he commissioned from Matias as a way of raising funds for the very nearly imminent Stenosaurus campaign launch. It's already almost halfway funded, but if you're a hardware hacker with a need for quiet, lightweight, feather-touch keys with a dead simple mounting system, go pick up a bag of 150 for $50. Heck of a deal!
Also, the amazing Ed (aka ezyang of Stenomatic fame) has put a Starter Guide up on the Wiki to help ease new steno learners into the fray. Ed's got a lovely friendly conversational style and extremely solid advice. If you're intimidated about where and how to get started, definitely go check it out.
Speaking of new steno learners, Lars has been keeping an online diary of his learning process. He's only been doing it for a week, but he's already up to almost 60 WPM on single-stroke words! Pretty dang impressive.
Finally: Ellis, a technical author and relatively new convert to Plover who's already been able to double his typing speed, recently wrote a blog post on his company's website extolling the advantages of steno for members of his profession. In his post, Ellis included a link to an Ignite Talk Josh gave to the Technology Association of Oregon some months back, which I'd been dragging my heels on captioning for no good reason whatsoever. But thanks to Ellis's post, I finally just sat down and did it. The captioned version is embedded below. It's fantastic five-minute précis of just how powerful and useful open source steno can be. Check it out!
