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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.
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.
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.
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
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?
You know damn well this is the first obvious add-on.
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
" I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that"
The original generic sig.
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.
...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 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.
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.
browser plugin listens to you.
I'm sorry, but I had to do it just once.
Sigs are bad for your health.
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 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
To you, it might be a gimmick. To someone with a disability, this could make life a lot easier.
Clever signature text goes here.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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/
Ah, but I use mouse gestures with Firefox every day! There are extensions that add this funcionality. Go to http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/ and look at the "Mouse gestures" section. I personally use Radial Context -- it's basically mouse gestures w/ a GUI that helps you remember little-used commands.
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!
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.
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."
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.