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Opera Promises Voice-Operated Web Browser
unassimilatible writes "Opera's latest browser talks and listens, according to AP.
The new browser incorporates IBM's ViaVoice technology, enabling the computer to ask what the user wants and "listen" to the request. "Hi. I am your browser. What can I do for you?" asked a laptop with the demonstration versions of the browser. The message can be personalized, such as greeting users by name. The computer learns to recognize users' voices, accents and inflections by having them read a list of words into a microphone. Opera plans to first launch an English version of the voice browser for computers running the Windows operating system. Versions for other systems, including handhelds, will follow. Opera's press release has more details, including Opera's hopes that people will adopt this technology for presentations - and to replace PowerPoint."
"Computer...Take me to the pr0n!!"
This sounds like a fun thing to play around with, but I certainly don't see myself using it as a normal web browser. I'll most likely stick with my keyboard.
as for their statement about it being a replacement for powerpoint, I don't think that this will fly either unless they either: a) find a company to make a powerpoint alternative which saves to html files b) make the aforementioned software themselves. Even if they accomplished that, people's stupidity and ignorance has proven time and time again that whether microsoft's software is better, worse, or just as good as its competitors- people will buy microsoft's software instead of others. Look at openoffice.org, mozilla (most people use ie)/opera/konquer/galeon/netscape/etc, linux, amd a bunch of other superior software. Maybe a couple could be explained (linux often involves use of the command line interface, netscape is slower to load (even though ie cheats by loading some of the program at startup time)), but most of it is due to a problem which exists somewhere between the keyboard and the chair. Besides, I would find a remote control a better option than speech, since a remote control wouldn't force me to scream "NEXT SLIDE" across the room like an idiot before it recognizes what I'm saying. It would also be much smoother to just press a button on a remote control.
Voice operation. What's it all about? Is it good, or is it whack?
What could I possibly have to say to my browser?
Now the jerk in the cubicle next to me will talk both with himself, "the fairies" and his browser.
I know that there will be some neat uses for it. They're not the ones that scare me.
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
Though I can certainly understand the need to market something unique, and the logic behind "Voice is the most natural and effective way we communicate.....", I cannot ever see myself talking to my web browser like another human being.
I've worked with and supported both ViaVoice and DragonNaturallySpeaking solutions for voice-based typing in word processors, and neither of them felt natural. Perhaps because I'm a geek, or just because I've been doing it so long, I'd rather manually key in exactly what I want and let myself make the mistakes, not the interpretation.
With corrections, it always took longer to do the alleged "easier way" than manually keying in. Even with 99% accuracy, Word Processing was always clunky at best.
That, and every time I scream out "litigious bastards", I don't need it pulling up litigious bastards.
*speak it* h t t p : / / slash dot . org
I have tried a lot of voice operated software, but have never had any luck getting it to work. Has anybody else had better luck with voice activated software? What do you think the chances of this actually working for most people are? Until Ive seen a product that works well I unfortunately have to remain skeptical.
thank god. I was tired of wiggling that damn mouse.
Pie in the sky...
Voice input and output.. that'll make it a lot harder to discreetly search for pr0n whilst at work.
Computer: "Hi. I am your browser. What can I do for you?"
User: [whispering]Find me "porn"...
Computer: "The band KoRn was formed in 1993 by Jonathan Davis and..."
User: NO! [whispering] Not "KoRn"; "porn".
Computer: "Clogged pores are the major cause of adolescent acne. Starting at puber..."
User: NOT "PORE", DAMMIT!!! [coughs, lowers voice] find me "porn"..
Computer: "Iron Ore is the primary ingredient in steel. Metalurgists will add other elements and compounds to give the steel certain proper..."
User: NOT "ORE", YOU PIECE OF SHIT! [office mates look over cubes] [whispers] Look.. I want to look at naked people..
Computer: "The goatse.cx lawyer has informed us that we need a warning! So.. if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!"
Trolling is a art,
"Is this the real life, is this just fantasy..."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I am Jack's browser.
There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark
...cocksuckingmotherfucker.com is going to make a fortune from page views from me personally.
some article Dvorak wrote for Microtimes in the early 90's, where voice directed computing goes like this --
..."
"Dee-Ai-AR Cee colon back-slash Windows back-slash
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I can imagine someone with custom voice commands.
"Fuck slashdot"
"Shit Hyperlink"
"Shit Reply"
Then they start speaking the reply to type in and due to the cross usage of words, the system starts going haywire.....
The key thing about PowerPoint presentations is that it's supposed to be a visual backdrop that you can control without disrupting your presentation. What a powerpoint presenter really wants is a simple wireless device to advance to the next slide, and maybe a back button in case of a mis-click. Any additional buttons beyond two are annoying.
Come on, this technology has existed for the TV weatherman for years. Why hasn't anybody gotten it right for PowerPoint users yet?
...oh..oohhh...oooohhhhh...aaaahhhh.. command.
Regards,
---
"Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory. I forget the second."
You know damn well this is the first obvious add-on.
I just got my computer+widescreed HD setup working in the living room. I occasionally want to look something up on the Internet, and grabbing the keyboard is pretty inconvenient (at least until I get a wireless one, then I have to worry about the batt'ries). Voide-operated browser? Sounds good.
What's wrong with that?
I'm not gay, I like women, but watching an aggressive, well-endowed white guy digging tunnels in the ass of a submissive asian guy until they both cum just turns me on.
Oh yeah. When my wife falls asleep, I'm gonna watch that video again...
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't load that.
Well for some of us the major work out a day is mouse gestures and keyboard pecks. I guess now I'll have to actually get up to burn off that Big Mac with extra value fries.
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
But I'd just sit at the homepage yelling "BECOME OPEN SOURCE!" and get mad as it doesn't understand what I'm saying
Setec Astronomy
Grub is not funny.
" I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"
The original generic sig.
Hrm, wonder if it's going to include Text-to-speech? I can just imagine looking for the latest celeb tape, and have some sulty male pc voice....
You can do the same with just about any other browser on Mac OS X. With the speech module you can connect a voice command to any keyboard sequence. I have it set up to switch tabs, create tabs, and with the 'Make this page speakable' voice command, you can navigate to any page, making it work like a bookmark system.
What would be nice is if 'Speech' could recognize the commands for a particular application without switching focus. So I could be coding on one screen while browsing on another.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
There are many words in the English language that have homophones. Google being a text-based search interface is smart enough to not mix up "four" and "for", "too" and "two", or "plane" and "plain". There's no way for voice recognition technology to tell the difference between those words in a search query, there simply isn't enough context...
How complicated can you make a browser?
I mean, tabbed browsing is cool, I've gotten used to it. But stuff like mouse gestures, voice recognition, etc, all just seems like fluff.
One could have mapped spoken keywords to mouse/keyboard actions already if this is what they wanted.
It's a hard arena to innovate in. This just seems kind of silly.
What's next, support for force feedback chairs that scroll the browser based on which ass cheek I'm clenching?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm sure you've all done this at one point or another -- you stand over the shoulder of a friend or co-worker, and tell him or her to go to a website that you are familiar with, and they are not. Then you say "Ok, click on 'specs' up in the corner.... no, the other corner... yes, that button... no, don't click below it - that's somethign else..." Same deal with e.g. getting someone to change an option in a program somewhere -- you gotta walk them through a series of mouse clicks or things to look for, and it's frustrating when they don't do it right away. (maybe i'm just an impatient jerk?)
The point here is when it's hard to instruct intelligent people how to browse the web, how well can a computer do it? I have my doubts.
-S
I personally think having alternative means of interacting with our software is important.
For a user such as myself a keyboard and mouse is presently more intuitive, but eventually this sort of software should prove very useful, especially as computers become more fully integrated into our lives.
This technology might also be useful with a couple of modifications, for the blind if it was coupled with one of those applications that reads the text from the screen for you.
I hope the next step would be interfacing more easily with computers through gestures or non-standard spoken communication for those who are speech impaired and for some reason can't use a keyboard or mouse.
I suppose this is just my personal agenda shining through, but I think diverse means of interfacing with our information is essential to enriching the lives of those who are different as well as making the majorities life easier.
I don't get it.
This was covered not too long ago on PocketPC Thoughts:
link
It is a multimodal browser, which means it supports VoiceXML basically.
Opera is making one, and so is NetFront (a PPC browser)
no comment
...it's all well and good. but can the speech recongnition module parsebork? if so, it will be the ultimate presentation tool:
"Now gentlemen, pleese-a turn your ettenteeon to-a sleede-a twelve-a. bork!bork!bork!"
For a while my wife was a physical therapist at a nursing facility that specialized in head tramau and paralysis. I installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking for several patients there and several of them became extremely proficient in using it. I'm not sure how having built-in support would be more advantageous, though.
I can't see this having wide acceptance in the corporate world. Cube farms are noisy enough. I can't imagine what it must sound like for everyone to be browsing by voice.
I also can't imagine some of my co-workers saying the addresses of what they browse out loud. *shudder*
My sigs always suck.
I could see this being useful on the TabletPC or maybe on handhelds, where you rarely have a keyboard at your disposal. Heh, wonder how long before M$ "embraces, extends, and exterminates" this technology?
Meh.
I installed some of the first off the shelf Voice recognition software a number of years ago for my sisters cousin who has cerebral palsy, and it made a huge difference in her being able to use the computer for her education, I sent the Opera Link to her Mom to look at in that this might be something that would suit her also.
" My next house will have no kitchen - just vending machines and a large trash can. "
"Dubya Dubya Dubya period white house period gov" ;-)
(note to dems, i'm not a troll, i'm canadian)
-
Check out stuff like lojban that really seek to take languages to the next level. Lojban is built so voice and text can be converted. Lojban is even computer parsable.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Was the Operaman skits from SNL with Adam Sandler.
Our browsero, isa beterro, then de Internet Exploraho
(on close...)
OperaMAAANNNN, bye BYE!
The only reason that voice is a good interface to other humans is that humans are very very good at filling in the missing pieces, making inferences, and generally making up for things that are unheard, misheard, or unsaid. And even so we have misunderstandings.
Once we have a computer that can do this, we'll have great interfaces - it will be like robo-butler. But we're not there yet, and robo-idiot-child - "I thought you said Quick Bananas, so I googled and we're at the Dole website" - is only going to make things annoying.
It will be a boon to those who can't use point and click for whatever reason, and ignored by everyone else.
I remember trying speakeasy years ago.....it never understood what I said but when a collegue came in moaning about what the boss had just told him it got it down perfectly.
I realised staright away that there are some fundamental problems with voice recognition....anybody remember HHGTTG, where dialogs with Cirrius cybernetics devices always started with a: Computer; Hi There! Handshake.
It's Opera, so what'll it do with MSN.com...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
browser plugin listens to you.
I'm sorry, but I had to do it just once.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Can it then also recognize my behavior patterns and crack open a Pabst and adjust my USBchair eveytime I tell it to launch Quake 3?
AAaaaah....the digital life.
[Please sign here]
I'd bet you good money (eh..if I had any) that if this catches on (and it will, so long as it works as advertised) websites (or the W3C) will start to use conventions specifically for this. Browser controls will be simple (reload/backwards/forwards/go:???) I'm sure something like 'go:slashdot.org, link:science' will be possible, it will be interesting to see how much and what kind of an effect this will have on things!
Quack, quack.
Geeks tend to be monolingual (spoken language of course!), so has anyone considered if Spanish would lead to less problems with homonyms? Hmm, I see a ???, then a profit!
-I am an elective eunuch.
For a vast majority of the ever growing populace of the computer literate typing is superior to speaking. Most can type as fast or faster than they can speak, not to mention that hours of surfing would leave one with a dry throat. This is assuming that there is some simple way to click on links without having to say the entire URL. When it comes down to it voice recognition browsing is a novelty with no real use for those who have the capability to type. Anyone though who is physically challenged should be able to reap the benefits.
Great, I am liable to get into trouble with the IS Nazis by leaving this on in a meeting and accidentally surfing pr0n. "Please explain this pattern of usage Mr B." "Well, I'm pretty sure it was my boss that said bite-me... the search engine must be responsible for biteme.com..."
It's because more and more people are just sitting around getting stoned.
There's this thing called menopause. When women turn 40 they stop menstruating and lose all interest in sex.
Computer: Would you like to play a game?
User: I want to play thermonuclear war.
Computer: Wouldn't you rather play a nice game of chess?
User: No goddammit, I want to nuke, not puke!
-- There is no spoon. Only fork.
I don't think this'll replace PowerPoint per se, but it'll certainly free up the high-level administrative assistants from being the voice-activated mouse that some executives turn them into.
"Go to the next slide, please." etc.
-- Fratz, human
Oh that will make heckling fun.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Now when I'm hiding from the sun in front of my monitor, I don't even have to move. No more pesky arm movements, no more mouse clicking /shudders/. Now I can browse the internet without the physical effort. Now if they could just come up with a 'thought-controlled' plugin, I won't even have to talk.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
I hope it nows its hotmail.com and not some gay porn site.
I got a free copy of dragon dictate once so I trained it as much as possible.
I got mozilla working quite happily, 'down' 'up' 'slow' (that was a good one, it slowly scrolled down), 'back' etc.etc.
the thing I found after weeks of training that it was just so tiring talking all the time
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This being Opera, adding speech capabilities and all, when you close the browser will it play a clip of a Fat Lady singing??
> Browser: reload, reload, reload, reload, reload
if you really knew what you were talking about, then you'd know that Opera already has automatic reloading. set it to 5 seconds; that should be enough, you freak.
"Hi. I am your browser. What can I do for you?"
SHUT UP!
"Are you sure you want to close the window?"
If you're interested in a hot GMILF, you'd be better off with someone like Susan Lucci, Morgan Fairchild, Susan Anton and even Jane Seymour. Now these are bitches that aged well!!!
To you, it might be a gimmick. To someone with a disability, this could make life a lot easier.
Clever signature text goes here.
Apple's old Knowledge Navigator... you speak to the computer, and it's all a very decked-out browser...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...isn't already talking loud enough at his meetings he takes over speakerphone. Now we have to listen to "Go cnn.com", or "Check Stocks" all friggin' day.
Great. Thanks a lot Opera!
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
Using the built-in speech recognition on MacOSX. Works great. Can speak bookmark titles and the page loads. Go back. Go home. Even, IIRC, speaking links on a page.
a ll ery/index.html#speech
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/g
Very cool (potentially) although I don't really want to be yelling at my computer all day...
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
old news to zaurus users...
IBM demonstrated this a while back. Search zaurus threads for more information.
Will it still recognize your voice?
But honestly, aside from those who are paralyzed, how would this be practical? Why would *I* want to use it?
It would be annoying as SHIT to hear someone constantly talking giving commands to their computer. It brings to mind that came coming out for PS2.. how annoying. "Move left, move right. Check the drawer. Fire. Fire fire, move left, fire."
It seems more like a gimmick.. like "Hey, look what we can do!" more than something that would actually be beneficial or innovatice. It might be fun for the first few minutes, but after that it's just an annoying burden.
Not to mention, unless they've made incredible leaps and bounds with voice recognition, you'd probably spend more time calibrating the system to recognize your voice than you would spend typing the stuff out. Then there's the headaches of "Go to microsoft." "I'm sorry, but I could not understand" Repeat x 10.
One question comes to mind: what's the point?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I, for one, really don't want to find out what website uttering a sudden exclamation like "Oh, shit!" will take me to!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I heard a story about a voice controlled word processor. The guy was dictating a message, when two of his cow-orkers walked by. He said "Hi, Nick and Ben". The computer typed "Hi, naked men".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Also as the article notes one can buy more extensive add-on products like IBM's Mac/PC ViaVoice & Dragon's family of products as well as numerous other lesser-known and more specialized ones.
That's today, already on millions of desktops, ready and capable of driving web browsers, sitting there ignored.
Why?
- Few folks are even aware that speech recognition or speech generation are trivially or already installed on their computers
- When general users do use these capabilities they're usually disappointed they're not more like the ones on TV, where a simple ambiguous command is immediately interpreted and plot-appropriate material magically recited out
- Most folks don't have microphones plugged into their computers, or they're ones unsuitable for speech recognition
- Few folks bother to spend the time and energy into fine-tuning their microphones and training the speech recognition for their particular speech pattern and vocabulary
- Reading text is faster then hearing it, even at faster-then-typical-human-speech recitation speeds. The same goes for typing being faster then dictation
- Screens and keyboards afford a minimal level of privacy. With them eavesdropping generally requires line of site, not just sitting in the next cubicle over and unavoidably hearing everything
So, where will this be useful? Anywhere keyboards aren't. Web phones. Industrial environments (well, quiet ones). For physically challenged folks with visual or manual problems. But sitting in the typical office workspace? Not gonna (still) revolutionize the world.I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I had OS/2 with voice built into the OS, allowing all the software to operate by voice.
Unfortunately, while it was an interesting feature, it was more of a gimmick. I can type far faster and more accurately than I can talk.
The only real market for this product IMHO is for those who are unable to type, but I'm not at all certain that a large portion of this market - technophobes - can be sold.
Remember, the opera isn't over until the fat lady sings!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
And his favorite browser is Opera. I bet this will just make him love opera even more! It's tedious for him to type, as he has limited control of his hands, so this will really help him out. I'm really glad Opera is doing this.
I've been looking for something like this for a while, and I tried different solutions but without much success.
Like when sitting relaxed in my chair reading slashdot, you could just say 'scroll down' instad of leaning forward to the keyboard all the time.
On the other hand, I dont think it will be much useful besides the simple commands like 'back' 'forward' 'home' etc..
but then again, IANAL..
Dear Opera,
:)))
While talking to the computer is very good.
Wouldn't it be great to have a browser presented like an animated character who can ask questions and listen to answers. That would make my browsing experience exciting. I'm so tired of these boring buttons, shortcuts etc. I want something alive...
Who can talk, walk, jump, and popup yellow balloons...
Oh.. wait...
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Opera makes browsers for cell phones. If you could use voice commands to browse on your phone instead of having to type your URL's on your phone that would be pretty neat.
Cell phones not powerful enough to do voice recognition you say? True, but they are made to send speech from one point to another.
So, some big computer somewhere in the world could interpret your voice commands and direct the browser on your phone to the correct link.
And I'm sure that someone could make money by selling that service too.
Now, can someone help me patent this?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
HeeBay eBay eGay
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
It seems most have overlooked how great this could be for electronics like cell phones. It would probably be much easier to tell your cell phone to go to a website rather than try to type in a complicated url.
Is it really that big a deal to type in the address of a website and click the mouse a few times before you jerk off?
...A few minutes later...
Imagine Captain Picard in the holodeck with a big ass bottle of Jergins lotion in a holster at his side. "Computer, I wish to see some pornography. Two Cardassian women rubbing each other down in Aldeberan whikey. Make it so!"
"Engage!"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
fucking annoying for the rest of us... i mean damn...
All i want is for my console browser (w3m) to do javascript and i will be a happy man
NO SIG
You could talk to it but it could not talk to you. OS/2 v4 would let you navigate through applications by voice commands. You could access any menu in an app using voice macros that you could record and add to the app in its settings notebook. The design and the implementation of the voice-navigation macros were brilliant and far ahead of their time but the system never worked very well because it was simply too slow on the Pentium cpus available when it was released in 1996. Also, IBM hard-coded some cpu limitations into the implementation such that it still ran at exactly the same speed years later on a 2.0 Ghz cpu as it did on a 133 Mhz cpu. I used to use the voice navigation to do simple things, though, like enter numbers into spreadsheets and it was fine for that. IBM took the voice navigation out of OS/2 beginning with v4.51.
If Opera can indeed understand opera, I can just imagine the marketing:
(In the latter case, filter as "definitely spam" any mail encoded on the C-clef. It's probably from a violist...)
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
So how pissed off will the boss get when people start yelling "next slide!" during his presentations?
(computer voice)It looks like you're trying to open a web page.
Would you like me to tell iexplore.exe to open 'h t t p : / / s l a sh dot . o r g/' ?(/computer voice)
there's no place like ~
i don't see voice control of computers ever making it past the novelty phase for those who can use a keyboard and a mouse. it's noisy. it's too slow an interface. you can't do it while on the phone. etc.
vk.
Can you browse here now? Good.
It appears IBM already provides this if you buy ViaVoice Advanced:
On the Internet, dynamic navigation of the Web allows Advanced Edition users to access Web sites merely by speaking the link name, while navigating to bookmarks with a simple voice command. Natural Language Commands and Voice Navigation macros provide Command and Control to navigate within the supported operating system and within many popular Windows applications.
Surfing the Web with voice activated linkage, creating e-mail or voice chats are tools within Advanced Edition, which allow users to enjoy the comfort of these productivity features while working on the Web.
So Opera rolled it into their browser. I'm sure that will be less expensive than buying ViaVoice Advanced separately but is this really newsworthy? "Hey, we bought a license to use another company's library!"
Opera's first marketing target: enterprise. Sure, the starship Enterprise had everyone speaking to their computers but in my enterprise I don't want cubicles full of people mumbling to their browsers. I don't see why this would enhance productivity either, except for the disabled. A two button mouse with a scroll wheel will be faster than speaking, certainly.
Now my boss will know exactly when I'm slacking off. ... Submit!
I can tell my browser that I really think! ;-)
Quack, quack.
Why not have a browser that you can just view the web on? ...nothing less nothing more.
This could be useful for instant messaging, it would be easier than typing. BRB, my phone is ringing.
I've tried a voice speaking browser, and it didn't work very intuitively. Since it was designed for blind people, perhaps they have computer skills or intuitions I don't that help them operate it better than I could, but I'd really kill for a nice browser that could read me the news or /. stories, while I work in another window.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I couldn't find one.
Sure, NaturallySpeaking and ViaVoice are there but none of them free and open what I could see. ViaVoice had been taken off the market AFAIR and NS was only availible through retailers.
Is there something like this for Linux? How well does it work if it's there?
If Opera does this I can only hope that it spurs Mozilla/Firebird or whomever to do something similar. That's one of the strengths of open-source. At least I hope so.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
At least it's not going to be as bad as with a certain other geek news site.
But, really, the 37337sters are not going to like this!
I think that using vocal commands is one of the least robust, least efficient, most error-prone ways of interfacing with anything. Just ask my dogs. Or my wife.
...are in fact, the best thing since sliced bread. They're probably the only thing keeping me from switching to Firefox. I use them for everything, not only is it faster (especially the ones that only require button-click combos) but its also nice to not have yet another toolbar. I started using them just for back and forward (partly because they're the most intuitive) and eventually got the other ones memorized. It certainly feels weird using another browser (workplace) and having to take your eyes off the page to navigate. It's too bad these never took off.
After searching on Google to confirm this, it seems I was right: Source: "The aging Scotty talking via the mouse to the archaic Macintosh classic..."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Just having voice control doesn't mean you have to disconnect and throw away your keyboard, mouse, foot pedal, remote control, etc. Even if you use the keyboard/mouse 99% of the time, it would still be occasionally convenient to be able to operate the computer without having to touch it. E.g., getting to the next page on homesurgery.com while both your hands are up to the elbows in the dog's giblets.
Ok, not really, but I've learned that such subjects get more readers, so now that you're here...
The Opera press release reads:
For example, Opera's presentation tool, Opera Show, can empower users to replace Microsoft PowerPoint, creating light-weight, Internet standards-based presentations that can also make post-publishing a breeze.
After a cursory examination of the features of Opera Show I can see it won't match up against PowerPoint. For example, the tutorial linked above, you'll find:
In order for documents to become Opera Show presentations, Opera must be told how to turn the HTML document into a presentation. This is done by adding a CSS2 style sheet in the document head...
The rest of this tutorial is mainly for those wishing to make or adapt their own Opera Show presentations, which is quite simple provided you know a little about HTML and CSS.
I certainly think PowerPoint wins hands down in ease of creating a custom look for the presentation. PowerPoint also offers near-mandatory features such as printing notes with the slides or printing 4 slides per page.
One of the advantages listed for Opera Show is "It will not annoy your audience with tacky animations." That's one way to spin the absence of a feature, but last time I checked the inclusion of "tacky animations" was the choice of the presentation's author, not the presentation software.
In a nutshell it seems PowerPoint and Opera Show serve different purposes. PowerPoint is for presentations with excellent support for handouts and poor (but functional) support for publishing to the web. Opera Show is for taking existing web pages and turning them into presentations, but does not appear to be a serious tool for giving a talk at a conference, for example, where people expect handouts.
I wrote above that Opera Show doesn't match up to PowerPoint, and it doesn't, at least on PowerPoint's turf. Opera Show is clearly superior to PowerPoint in what Opera Show is designed for; it is just not a PP-killer.
I've been using it for a while now and it works great! Sub mitt. Go to www dot hot transvestite sex dot com. What the fell? Delete. Backspace. Stupid piece of
In fact, quite a few of us have been doing this for some time. What you are reading was dictated using NaturallySpeaking, the speech recognition software the majority use who must (or prefer to) do some or all functions on the computer by voice. Well, "Put in the CD!", doesn't quite work but I can dictate very quickly and I can control everything within Mozilla (and Windows) by voice commands.
I applaud the folks at Opera for their efforts. While a truly user-friendly speaker-independent voice interface for all computers is still a while off, it is the future and in the meantime providing the basic functionality of being able to control things like your Web browser by voice commands benefits many. Some will just find it fun to play with, of course, but others will find it truly useful and for some, like me, it is indispensable; I'm a quadriplegic and have used voice/speech recognition since the 486 days.
Opera and Mozilla are excellent choices and both provide different approaches to accessibility, making one the better choice for some than the other (having choice is great!) but here's a bit of irony -- Internet Explorer is the one directly supported by NaturallySpeaking but while I would prefer Mozilla in any case, Mozilla actually works better for me using speech recognition.
Now, if only we could get speech recognition working well natively in Linux...
[Dictated using speech recognition technology. There may be air oars]
I don't know why companies bother with voice technology.. it will never take off! NEVER... its failed plenty of times.. look at IBM's ViaVoice.. that shits been out since OS/2 days and it still sucks! Now Mac is working with voice commands.. like honestly now... do they actually think they can make this technology 'work'. This won't be adopted by the mainstream, not until it can parse anyones voice, and even then i doubt it.
I downloaded Opera 7 with voice a while back from
IBM's site for my Sharp Zaurus. Just to have it,
never installed it... after all, memory is at a
premium and who wants the world to hear what sites
they're surfing during a meeting?
Reminds me of something I've been thinking of putting in my house for a while.
Imagine a simple voice interface for limited internet functionality. Place microphones and speakers around the house. Now, when I'm sitting on the couch reading a book and I come across I word I haven't seen before, I can say "Hey Frank, lookup the word '...'." Need the weather? "Hey Frank, what's the weather report?".. Etc, etc..
It should be fairly simple to tie a speech recognition engine to some python scripts to perform simple queries and return a parsed result ready for text-to-speech conversion. One big problem the dictionary feature brings out is how the speech recognition would handle unfamiliar words. Even leaving that feature out, it would be nice to have a limited set of features I could use anywhere in the house.
Use some sort of unique gating phrase('Hey Frank!') and look for the nouns and verbs to give it some flexibility.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Since the Classic wasn't introduced until around 1990, it couldn't have been. However, according to this, it was a Mac Plus
Right idea, wrong model [pedant mode = off]
"She's furniture with a pulse"
There's been a lot of work put into making the average PC understand its user over the past few years, but I've yet to see one that can convince the the average surfer to sit in his or her office/den/bedroom and talk to their screen. It doesn't feel natural, and most people feel that talking to ones PC is rather an awkward, embarrasing thing. And embarrassing isn't really the word I want to use, but those who I know who've tried it, and those who I've talked to about it have said that they're a little too self-conscious to talk to their PC alone in a room.
I'm kind of in that boat myself too. While I think that anyone would readily play with such technology, there haven't been a lot of people willing to stick with it, and I think that's largely due to the "Who am I talking too? It's just a piece of furnitue" mentality.
Someday, when we're all oil for some future earth mining civilization, people will talk to their PC's and be able to hold up conversations with them I envision.
Something like:
"PC, Can you tell me when my next meeting with Mr. SoAndSo is? Oh! And bring up CNN for me would you? I want to check the headlines"
And the computer would respond with something like "Your next meeting with Mr. SoAndSo is currently scheduled for May 18. Would you like me to change that?"
And the user would say "No, just go on with the headlines please", to which the computer would start telling the user about the headlines of the day. It would interject little things like "CNN is reporting that 30 people died in a plane crash in Switzerland, but MSNBC's saying that only 24 died, so I'm not really sure which is accurate right now.
It'd be much more a conversation than you and I currently saying "PC, Go to CNN", "PC, Open Word", and so on. I would imagine that eventually productivity usage of the computer could be entirely verbally driven, from dictation to simply helping a user through his day... Something you could "chat with" while getting dressed, working on something else, exercising and so on. The PC would be our informer, figuring out what we want, and offering opinions and information based on discussions we would have with it, as well as prior conversations, and expressed interests. In short, it would do what a computer's always been designed to do: It'd make our lives easier, but in ways which simply are not possible today.
Right now such technology is very clunky when compared what I've described... Kind of a silky smooth "invisible friend" of the future. I understand that there's obviously going to be a lot of "in-between" stages for such technology, but I'd rather see todays developers focusing on making my PC more productive as opposed to sticking an auditory interface over a point-and-click technology. When my computer can surprise me with its knowledge and vocabulary, as opposed to repeating phrases I've programmed into it, and translating text into speech I'll be impressed.
Simply converting the on-screen text and reading it to me in a monotone voice is not what I want. I want my PC to know the types of news I frequently look for, and I want it to be able to paraphrase, and provide it to me in a meaningful, well-articulated manner. And I want it to feel like someone's there personally telling me of the days events. I want to be able to interupt and request greater detail on a specific bit of news. In short, I want my computer to work for me, and I want it to grow with me as my needs and interests change.
But that's so far down the line... 8(
For now this is a neat technology, but I'd imagine it will only appeal to the true geeks out there. Most will play with it and then go back to the more "private" methods of interfacing, such as mouse and keyboard.
Farnsworth: "Shut up friends! My internet browser heard us saying the word Fry and it found a movie about Philip J. Fry for us. It also opened my calendar to Friday and ordered me some french fries."
3ACV04 - Luck of the fryish
Sailors. Oh man!
doesn't she have her hands in enough media operations? tell her to get off the interweb.
I remember back when the Mac first got voice-activated menus (over 10 years ago), our secretary liked them... so whenever we were passing by her office, we'd stick our head in and say "select - all files - move - trash - yes" (or whatever the magic sequence was) by way of greeting. :-)
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
Are you sure it's a good idea to have presentation software that actually responds to comments shouted out by hecklers in the audience?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
That system was simpler, since it couldn't rely on special voice-HTML markup tags. It took advantage of the fact that any UI element (menu item, button, etc.) in the system can be activated by speaking its text. So they added a quick Hack to Netscape so that every link's text (or ALT text) visible on a screeen would be present on a "Links" menu - thus turning the links into speakable keywords.
It worked very well for browsing. Much less well when you want to enter new URLs. The dictation mode left a bit to be desired. But that was to be expected from the hardware of the time. Voice recognition on OS/2 required a minimum of a 150MHz Pentium, IIRC. (It would work - with much latency - on my 80MHz 486, however.)
I've been pretty down on the whole concept of voice recognition for a while now.
:)
After NASA announced their subvocalization project (I'm too lazy to find the slashdot URL... someone earn karma for it!) I became excited again.
The problem is if you're in an office you can't just start talking. Right now there are 10 people around me and most people are silently working on there computers. If they all started barking commands it would be loud as hell in here. It just doesn't scale.
If you add the subvocalization work this totally changes the equation. Now I can silently tell my computer to do things while my hands type away.
This is going to ROCK. Talk about multitasking... I can be typing out this slashdot post and without stopping I could launch gaim, ymessenger, make sure I'm on IRC... startup Emacs in the background , etc.
w00t!
Gimme gimme! $100 says the Mac has this next year and Linux has it sometime around 2015.
what happens if I stream NPR while Opera is running, and then turn up my computer's volume?
My co-worker has tried to get me to implement a voice feature for years into our product. I've resisted this whole time as I've tested voice recognition a long time ago and simply found that it didn't work. Unfortunately most responses to this column only reinforce this experience. It'd be great to hear about some more success stories. Maybe it would give me an incentive to give it another try.
Imagine a PDA that you can actually talk to instead of having to struggle with "Graffiti" or the little thumb keyboards. Hell, if it's good enough, you could even get rid of the need for a screen and just interact entirely through voice - here's how we could finally get a useable web browser/email client/schedule program in a watch!
One step closer to some of the concepts explored in Snowcrash, maybe?
The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
God, I hope something like this replaces PowerPoint. As we all know, PowerPoint makes you stupid. It forces you either to dumb down your presentation to the intellectual complexity (and entertainment value) of an infomercial, or cram so much text onto your slides, most of which you will recite anyway, that you might as well just pass out reports in 3-ring binders.
That said, I think the most crippling thing about PowerPoint is its linearity. Not all presentations "want" to be laid out into a preset order of points. If a college professor or a businessperson gets asked a question during a presentation, all too often it is diverted by saying "well, that's coming up in a few slides", or the presentation is interrupted as tangential data is introduced.
Using voice recognition instead of click-through navigation opens up some great possibilities for non-linear presentations, though. Imagine that, instead of organizing your presentation into a linear timeline, you group slides and other media into "points", each of which represents a different idea relevant to your talk. You can arrange these points into a web, indicating what information depends on prior knowledge from other slides, etc. You then assosciate each point with an audio "cue", say a phrase like "projected profit margins" or "the three kingdoms period". You'll note that these phrases are things you're likely to naturally utter in your presentation anyway. This has the advantage of enabling you to speak totally naturally without interrupting your presentation. To avoid accidental jumping, we would have, say, a little translucent blue arrow fade into being every time a cue is recognized, disappearing a few seconds later. If you actually want to jump to a new point, it's just a quick click of a button when you see the blue arrow.
So, imagine you're giving a sales presentation to a group of executives. You notice this particular group is getting bored with your standard sales pitch. No problem, as you just drop a key phrase into your speech, and instantly change your presentation to include information you think will appeal to the business interests of your audience, or simply to their personality. Or, imagine a professor is giving a lecture on a peice of literature. A student asks a question about the author's background, and the professor can easily insert some information on their country, their historical circumstances, and their life.
Of course, organizing this type of presentation requires a greater investment in planning, and certainly requires a little more cognitive ability than your standard PowerPoint fare. However, those who work with these new presentation systems will be giving themselves an undeniable competitive advantage over presenters using linear methods. And those in the audience will be grateful, I'm sure.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
"Computer, shut down Opera and give me Mozilla."
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I can't see how this would be too widely adopted. I work in an open-plan office where sound is already an issue (people talking over each other on phones, music playing, etc) and the lasts thing we'd need is the general rhubarb-rhubarb of people talking to their computers.
Yes, on PDAs where input options are potentially more limited, the opportunities would be greater, but that's about it.
Would you want to be doing a presentation saying "next", "next" and risking it misinterpreting your words, not hearing you, embarrassing you in front of clients -- or would you rather just use a clicker or mouse and make sure that your presentation is going exactly where you want it to go?
The applications, IMHO, would be largely limited to use by the disabled.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
No more one-hand typing!
*bangs head*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
bork bork bork
"Daria" holds the secrets to the universe, as usual.
I badly misparsed that: "Oprah Promises Voice-Over Web Browser". It's bad enough she tells my wife what books to read, now she's gonna give running commentary on my surfing habits?
This is not my sandwich.
I want it just so I can name my computer HAL9000! Every time I shut down I want it to say, "Please stop Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it."
Send whiskey and fresh horses!
A solution to a problem I don't have.
You might not want to say that too loudly, people might get strange thoughts about you, especially with that enunciation...
Any word on Opera making this work on Mac? Maybe using the built in speech recognition in OSX?
Q: Mac Classic, Classic Mac -- What's the difference?????
A: ... about a decade.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Personally I did it because I didn't like how much space the icon toolbar was taking. My use of opera also opens most pages in other windows.
So for instance to reply to you I rightclicked the link and moved the mouse down a bit opening this reply window in a new tab. Why? Well I am finished with this reply I will hold the right mouse button down and do a down and to the right movement, other move is also available, and close it and be instantly back where I was reading. I notice that this seems faster as some pages seem to insist on reloading if you do back. Also my move is one close and not two backs.
I am not saying it is for anyone but once I was determined to use it I was amazed how easy it was to pick up and get totally used to it. Of course it means that when I am on a IE box I am totally out of my depth.
Am I working faster or better with mouse gestures? It certainly seems more relaxed to me. Will I like voice commands? Well I got music on constantly in the background so perhaps not unless they got that sorted out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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Reminds me of a bad (and now reallllly old) joke:
What's OJ Simpson's email address?
Slash Slash Escape
(Yeah yeah of course I know its not a valid address. Get over it. Its a JOKE. I didn't say it was good.)
Well, there may be a niche for this kind of thing (like presentations or when use hands is not possible). On the other hand, I really like to listen to music while using a computer so all other noise makes me friggin irritated. Not to mention the fact that talking to your browser at 3am might really annoy other people (at least your neighbours if you have thin walls..).
I can't see this catching on (or at least hope it doesn't..).
What's the big deal ? How is this news ?
IBM had ViaVoice built-in to OS/2, and it worked with Netscape Navigator for OS/2 , back in 1996 . And it worked quite well.
But somehow, 8 years later, this is news.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
I can't believe the obvious "no handed typing" joke hasn't been said yet.
Just what we need in our modern wall-less
cube farms. I can hear it now...
Benefits of voice recognition:
hereDrawbacks:
here, here and hereThe geeks at Opera must read UserFriendly...
I signed up for a
Computer... set browser to "Slashdot Troller"!
This is not part of my post. It's my signature. I bet you're disappointed.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there.
'This is my handle, and this is my spout.'
Ah, Shooting Fish has shown us the future with the Verbitech computer.
http://www.ibm.com/pvc/multimodal
This is part of a larger effort to "speech-ify" the entire web using existing W3C standards such as XHTML and VoiceXML which have been combined into one called X+V.
You can already replace PowerPoint, and have the presentation web-ready so your audience can view it as an ordinary HTML document on their web browsers once they get home, with a bit of judicious CSS: see http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/operashow/.
I wanna be able to walk down the street, talk into my jacket pocket and say something like "google: nearest mongolian restaurant to my current GPS", and a few seconds later hear a short direction-plan for getting there.
...
...
With this feature of Opera, I can do that. And, even better, I can set it all up and run the server myself, with all the free software which is available to me and running under linux on my sl5500, in my jacket pocket
Now all I need to do is get a bit beefier PDA than my current sl5500
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
8-P
/dev/ttyp1, and kill the PID that matters.
----------
Windowsian Crapsody (C) Ben 1999 and stuff.
Is this a real OS?
Is this insanity?
Caught in a niche buy,
No escape from the GUI.
Open your eyes, look into your files and see,
Bill's just a rich boy, he needs no sympathy,
Because it's sloppy code, full of bloat, really crap, really slow,
Any way to sell 'dows doesn't really matter you see; s'not free.
Linus, just killed a corp.,
Put a gnu against its head, read the licence, now it's dead.
Linus, my code had just begun,
And now I've gone and ftp'd it all away.
Linus, GNU, Didn't mean to make(1) you compile,
If your prompt's not back again this time tomorrow,
switch to
Too late, shutdown(8) has come,
Sends SIGTERM down my spine, cron jobs failing all the time.
Logout, ev'rybody, It's got to go,
Gotta re-compile the kernel; patch the goof.
Linus, d00d, don't want to lose uptime,
I sometimes wish I'd never been touch(1)'ed at all.
<cue MIDI-embedded web page of hampsterdance doing the guitar solo>
I see a little silhouetto of a plan,
ESR, ESR, is it catherdral or bazzaaro?
Underground of coding, very, very worrying Bill!
(Mo-no-poly.) Mo-no-poly. (Mo-no-poly.) Mo-no-poly. Mo-no-poly figures he,
Magnifico? Eric; poor rich-boy, everybody loves he.
He's just a poor boy from a vi(1) family,
Spare him his life from this emacs-monstrosity.
Easy come, easy go, will you let me code.
Mozilla! No, we will not let you code.
(Let him code!) Mozilla! We will not let you code.
(Let him code!) Mozilla! We will not let you code.
(Let me code!) Will not let you code.
(Let me code!) Will not let you code. (Let me code!) Ah.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
(Oh Jolt-Cola, Jolt-Cola.) Jolt-Cola, let me code.
Billzebub has Windows put aside for me, for you, for thee.
<cue frenzied accordian playing by Mahir>
So you think you can install it and spit in Bill's eye.
So you think you can lilo(8), then leave it to die.
Oh, baby, it's not that easy, no baby,
There's little support, there's little support for your games.
Porting really matters, switch to BSD,
Porting really matters,
Porting really matters to me.
Anyway, it's "Wind'blows"...
<JenniCAM on the gong>
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
You know, I like how easy it is to make a presentation in PP, but I can see keying the voice commands to each page of a presentation. That way all you have to do is say that keyword (or sentence) of the speach and you can change to that slide automatically. You can make it work for your speach style.
"Now we move on to the LCD PRODUCTION LINE to see how we have..." ("LCD PRODUCTION LINE" would move the presentation to that slide, plus you could have that on a note card and use it as a reminder of what to talk about)
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?