Talking Palm

Isotopia writes: "This article from the NY Times is very cool. It's about this guy from IBM who was able to put voice recognition on his Palm III and it talks to him! It can remind him about meetings and it will tell him when his battery is getting low." I bet if you used this much, it would tell you how low the battery is -- frequently. That aside, it's amazing that IBM has been able to squeeze this onto a Palm.

Comments

haha talk to the hand

[digitalsushi]

talk to the hand cause the palm aint liss'ning. oh wait, yeah it is. hey palm, wassup G

yo my battery is audi 5000 aight peace out

lates, palm

Better Uses

[under_score]

Personally, I think this sort of tech is better used in cell phones. A device which already has a decent text input system is probably only made more clumsy by including speech recognition and text to speech capabilities. Why? Because it "requires" switching modes of interfacing with the device which is something humans don't tend to like. Rather, most people will choose one mode and stick with it. And, be honest now, you can guess which mode that will be: stylus or keyboard. On the other hand, in cell phones, the vastly predominant mode is already voice and hearing oriented. It would be really nice to be able to get rid of the keypad (or at least severly reduce its usage). Other reasons cell phones are a better place for this tech: when you listen to a cell phone, what you hear is private. Cellphones cannot speak at you: they ring first. Two different rings would be sufficient to distinguish between a person call and the cell phone telling you something.

Pocket PCs can already do this

[Jenova_Six]

I have a new HP Jornada 567 (Pocket PC 2002), and one of the applications that comes with it is Mobile Conversay (www.conversay.com). It allows me to talk to my Jornada, and allows it to respond in a computerized voice. I can make inquiries (what time is it? how much battery is left?) and it will speak the response. I can tell it to launch or close any program I have installed. It also comes with Voice Calendar, which allows the Jornada to navigate my calendar and read my appointments to me. Very cool. There are other modules in the works, like Voice Tasks, Voice Contacts, and Voice Notes that should be available for download soon.Overall, it works pretty well.

IBM Via Voice is supposed to have similar software bundled with the new Ipaq 3700 and 3800 series, but since those won't ship until November, I haven't had a chance to play with it.

Also, there has been a voice-controlled Contacts lookup program on the Pocket PC for a while (too lazy to look up the link), as well as software that will read the time to you at regular intervals and when you turn the device on (TimeTalk).

I'm not trying to discount what's being done here on Palm (in fact, it's amazing they got it to work given the anemic processing power in Palms), but I wanted to mention that a lot of this functionality is available on Pocket PCs here and now.

Jenova_Six

They used additional hardware

[drinkypoo]

That aside, it's amazing that IBM has been able to squeeze this onto a Palm.

They didn't. They made the palm bigger by adding at least a mic, speaker, and an additional processor to it. The first two are par for this course, though the handspring visor at least has a mic built in. The third makes this into a pretty basic accomplishment for someone with IBM's resources, especially if that CPU has more RAM attached to it, or embedded in it.

All I really want is a speech recognition module for visor. I don't want my palm to talk to me, one of the nice things about a handheld is that only I can tell what's going on on it. The visor already has a mic built in, so now I just need the speech recognition hardware/software in a handspring module.

New To-Do

[KFury]

"Palm, record new to-do item."

"Ready"

"Remember not to refer to boss as 'dickhead' when talking to you. End recording."

"Note saved."

(later) *Bling,bling* "Reminder: Weekly jerkoff meeting with Dickhead in 10 minutes."

"Um, I thought I told you we bumped that meeting up... Now please apologize to Mr. Cooper."

Seen it in action. Proof of concept only

[Ledfoot]

Saw and had several conversations with this person at an IBM-only conference up in Vancouver earlier this year. It's actually just a proof of concept to show off some cool uses of voice rec/synth technology.

It was a standard Palm III that had a snap on module with it's own processor. It ran off special batteries that only last for like 2 hours. Not really something ready for prime-time.

HOWEVER - he was doing some REALLY cool things with it. They have several languages in it. As a result, one of the applications was a basic language translator. He spoke in English, out came japanese. He graphiti'ed in English, out came German speech.

He was able to speak to create memos, appointments, to-dos, etc. It would also read those back to him.

While I'm not allowed (damn NDA!) to discuss the future plans that they have, suffice it to say, that this is just the first step. If they get the funding to take his vision to reality, I'm DEFINATELY ditching my old Palm for a new IBM unit someday.

Also, all those IBM commercials showing really wierd stuff (like the coke machine that dispenses when you use your cell phone, or the guy trading stocks in the middle of that park using the head mounted monocal display) - that's all REAL stuff that they actually DO have working today as prototypes.

God I wish we could fast forward 3 years.... :-)