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Microsoft Voice Command Almost Here
PDA User writes "The new Microsoft Voice Command for Pocket PC isn't supposed to be out until the next Comdex, but someone inside the company posted details to Handango and Geekzone posted a preview.
The application notifies users of appointments, and answer simple English questions. It does not have "Do you want fries with that?" in the vocabulary though."
I've been listening to the voice of Microsoft command me for years.
Great, are they including a new advertising campaign like:
Wear do ewe won 2 goatee day?
As I recall, voice recognition still ain't quite 100% yet...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Every command must be followed with "Make It So."
(somebody in the audience yells...)
format c!
(then another one...)
enter!!
yes!!!
enter!!!!
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Oh, the pain. The pain.
Besides the obvious excuse to use the word "paradigm" I have to ask if this is going to really be that big a deal. I mean, yes it's great to have this kind of thing for the disabled... but the majority of the use cases for this kind of thing seem hampered.
I can't think of a lot of reasons I'd want something like this on a home system. Besides the creepy "I'm talking to the walls" feel, I can't imagine it would be any faster or more engaging to interact in this manner.
Public use cases seem like a good idea, until you realize that background noise and assholes shouting commands over your sholder could end up causing more problems than the system solved.
When this kind of thing can be attached to a really powerfull datamining engine and equiped with a much larger vocabularly I'll be impressed. Right now it looks like more of a toy.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
what happens when it gets a really bad virus?
Suddenly when bill was on the train with his new PocketPC, his speak starter blurting "I BROWSE PORN PORN PORN PORN PORN PORN......."
The next time clippy asks me if I a writing a letter, I can yell, "No, damn you go away!!!" and he will.
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
Okay, so I'm a new Mac user who is currently has a pro-Apple bias after replacing my Sony Vaio Linux laptop with a PowerBook. But: Apple has had voice recognition built into the operating system for a *while* as part of their support for Assistive Devices and disabled users. And, btw, the voice support on Mac OS X is seriously good: out of the box, you can control many of your standard applications, just by turning on the speech recognition feature. Sure, the recognizer is not designed to recognize arbitrary sentences and, indeed, uses a state machine model to recognize compound expressions. But, still, how is MS adding this to one of their OS's a big deal? It's not really that innovative--is it?
"Where do you want me to go today?"
now you'll need three people to reset your machine!
CONTROLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
ALTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!
DELETEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
gives an entirely different meaning to "chording", eh?
Me: Launch Mozilla
(Launches IE)
Me: LAUNCH MOZILLA
(Launches IE)
Me: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LAUNCH MOZILLA.
(Launches word, starts "Thank You, Microsoft" letter with help of Clippy... and uninstalls Mozilla because, well, it is obviously the cause of the frustration it senses).
You might laugh, but...
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Why can't you talk to your computer? Sounds like a good idea, right? Hell, it's a star trek fanatasy come true for 90% of the geeks out there. So why can't you?
The answer is not because the technology is not good enough. Speech command software has come a long way, and in most situations, with the right microphone, it can be very realiable...if you talk clearly.
The problem is that people don't naturally talk clearly. They repeat themselves, add in lots of "ummm"s and "errr"s and "like"s, and generally speak in ways that only another human could symantically understand. Because of this, using a keyboard or mouse to communicate with a computer is always going to me a more effecient mechanism.
Think about it...which is faster: Saying (in a clear, even tone) "Select the 3rd item in the list" or just clicking on it. Even in ideal environments using buttons on a PDA is going to faster and more reliable than voice command.
The only reason humans can use speech to effciently communicate with each other is that along with speech comes tone, body language, and symantic context that conveys as much (if not more) information than the vocal message itself. Computers cannot pick up on those kinds of things.
I seriously doubt that anyone will make extensive use of this feature.
"Using Natural Language it is possible to ask questions in plain English, without training. Things like "What is my next appointment?" or "Call Jonnhy at home". And the PDA will act on that."
"Who's Jonnhy?" she said, and smiled in her special way...
-Adam
Ever sit on a bus or plane and listen to someone talk? If the topic isn't compelling, does it drive you nuts? People strolling down the sidewalk with headset cell phones still scare me, given the conditioned response I have from the crazy citizens that inhabit my town. Do you use a digital voice recorder to dictate notes? It's used in movies and TV to provide a easy device for monologues, but how popular is voice?
The alternative, tiny keyboards or crazy script can be good or bad, bu voice isn't going to be more than just another sub-division of users who think murmuring to their PDA is fun. In fact, there's no perfect input except for those crazy fsking monkeys and their mechanical arms!
The problem with every software that I have used that tries to decipher human language (like Zork or the game included with emacs for X) is that you have to know what words the software understands and in what context.
I have seen the same problems with automated phone systems that are supposed to recognize a generic voice and I can see the same thing happening here.
The main difference here though, is that when entering text, you know exactly what you input before pressing enter. With voice recognition software, how do you know that the software "hears" exactly what you say? If you say somethign like "What are my appointments for the thirteenth?" and it hears, "What are my appointments for the thirtieth?" you would be receiving the wrong information.
I hope this is a success but I don't have my hopes up.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
People in suits talking to machines on next years CeBit while trying to demonstrate that it really works, "yeah, it does!", while all I can see is that dialing on my Nokia 6210 outperforms any voice recognition attempt by minutes. Sorry for beeing cynical, but I was promised these kind of things since back from 0S2-Warp days and everything so far was crap.
If Microsofts attempt on handwriting recognition is any indication, this thing will fail terribly. Have you ever tried to use a Tablet? You must be a real bad typer if this makes you more productive.
Just my guess, please proof me wrong since these things would be really cool if it worked.
cu,
Lispy
http://www.theonion.com/3941/
Voice Recognition Software Yelled At
NEW YORK--Fidelity Financial Services' Gwen Watson, 33, shouted angrily at her IBM ViaVoice Pro USB voice-recognition software, sources close to the human-resources administrator reported Monday. "No, not Gary Friedman! Barry Friedman, you stupid computer. BARRY!" Watson was heard to scream from her cubicle. "Jesus Christ, I could've typed it in a hundredth of the time." After another minute of yelling, Watson was further incensed upon looking at her screen, which read, "Barely Freedman you God ram plucking pizza ship."
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The answer is not because the technology is not good enough. Speech command software has come a long way, and in most situations, with the right microphone, it can be very realiable...if you talk clearly. The problem is that people don't naturally talk clearly. They repeat themselves, add in lots of "ummm"s and "errr"s and "like"s, and generally speak in ways that only another human could symantically understand. Because of this, using a keyboard or mouse to communicate with a computer is always going to me a more effecient mechanism.
You miss the point. Just like with Pen input, everyone wants to think of the tech as a replacement for keyboards when in reality it is simply an alternative form of input that will be extremely useful given the right situation/environment. One obvious one is allowing input/control for those who are disabled (or close to it). A friend of mine's mother had horrible arthritis in both hands, it really kept her from being able to use her computer much. Using voice input allowed her to utilize it much more than what she would have been capable of otherwise. Another general scenerio is someone who needs to use their hands, but would be convenient to "use" a computer while their doing their activity. Heck, this could be useful even driving. One of the biggest complaints about the fancy computer systems in higher end cars today (e.g. BMW) is their complexity. Well this is perfect since BMW uses WinCE (for now at least) and telling the car to "adjust the temperature to 72 degrees" is simpler than wading through the menus (or to "give directions to Hudson St").
So you are correct in that it's not likely to walk into a cubicle farm and hear "File|Save As|myresume.doc" and "10 of clubs under jack of diamonds" coming from the mouths of four dozen workers. But there are PLENTY of other very useful applications for this technology.
PDA: "Where do you want to go today?"
... wait ... what are you doing with that battery hatch? ... no, Dave ... I'm scared, Dave ... will I dream?"
You: "Open http://www.kernel.org"
PDA: "Error 403: Forbidden. You are obviously attempting to circumvent my artificial intelligence by installing Linux -- which is currently legally owned by SCO, by the way -- and therefore I'm going to need to
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
The big deal is that this is in a *Pocket* operating system.
Number one it's much more difficult because of limited resources. I don't know of many who've actually accomplished useable voice recognition on a pocket platform.
Number two, think about the uses of this. The two major bottlenecks of handheld systems are input and output. If the speech recognition gets good enough (which I doubt at this point but which will probably happen sooner rather than later) you might not have to use the little pin-pusher thumb keyboard or handwriting recognition. Also, think of this being used on a combination pda/cell phone. You can use your hands free set for the phone to control the pda and also get information from it. You could use it driving much easier then.
I'm not getting all lathered up over this, but it is kind of cool.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
"Enter!"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Did no one read the article, or even the post? This is software for Pocket PCs. PDAs. Not desktop or laptop PCs.
It's specifically targeted at Pocket PC Phone Edition devices, but will also work on non-Phone Edition Pocket PCs. I've been testing this for a while on my Pocket PC Phone Edition 2003 device.
On the Phone Edition, the ability to call any one of your contacts at any one of their numbers (work, home, cell, etc.) by just speaking the command ("Call John Smith at work"), with no recognition or name training at all, is pretty darn cool. Add in a hands free headset, and you can interact with your Pocket PC Phone, including making calls, checking your appointments, and listing to WMP, all while never taking the device out of your pocket. Or better yet, while in the car, never taking your eyes from the road.
The software isn't meant for Joe Laptop user, and it doesn't replace simple interactions with your PDA (there's no way to create new items, for example), but for Phone Edition devices especially, it does add a lot of functionality and even safety. It's a lot faster for me to call someone by saying "Call so-and-so's cell" than by tapping through my Contacts until I find them, and then tapping the number I want to call. And if I'm driving, it's a lot safer for me to speak what I want than to futz around tapping on the screen.
Nah... this isn't SiFi.... this is just another feature MacOS has had for 10 years that windows is finally getting.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I got into the viavoice pressentation Dave Barnes (I believe that was his name) was doing and he fires the thing up and starts going into his demo. Suddenly someone in the audience yells "format c!" Everyone just cracks up. Fortunately he was in an editor and the mic didn't pick up the audience member anyway, but the ensuing laughter did cause the software to freak out and start dumping garbage into the editor.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... is for one moron at a convention to stand up with a bullhorn and yell "DELETE ALL MESSAGES IN INBOX, DELETE ALL DOCUMENTS, DELETE ALL PROGRAMS, CALL 911" to ruin it for everone.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn