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Thai Students Score a Prize For Speech Software

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the illiterate?-write-for-free-help dept.

Julie188 writes "A team of four Thai students beat out 10,000 competitors to win the $25,000 prize in the Microsoft 2007 Imagine Cup. Their project is text-to-speech software in which computers read aloud typed and handwritten commands. The software will allow people who can't read to interact with a PC. Imagine Cup judge Rand Morimoto has been blogging on the whole experience — from his video of the opening ceremonies to how contestants swilled free Cokes to keep themselves awake during the 24-hour, no-sleep phase of the competition."

51 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Big breakthrough... by Archtech · · Score: 3, Funny

    "The software will allow people who can't read to crash Vista..."

    --
    I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    1. Re:Big breakthrough... by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny, but I gotta ask if someone can't read, shouldn't we be teaching them to read instead of making it easier for them to get by without reading? I guess this would still be good for the blind though.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    2. Re:Big breakthrough... by Reaperducer · · Score: 1

      An open-source reading program is probably as close as most Thais will get to free speech, especially where the King is concerned.

      (It needs to be said. I'll gladly take the -1 off-topic hits.)

      --
      -- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
    3. Re:Big breakthrough... by Phroggy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While they're learning to read, wouldn't it be nice if they could hear text spoken to them at the same time that it appears on the screen?

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  2. Re:You mean... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yep, they just won $25,000 from Microsoft for Reinventing the wheel!. I first saw this technology demonstrated on the TI99/4a in 1979- 28 years ago!

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  3. Microsoft by Dancindan84 · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure Microsoft should be gaging text->voice software with their track record with voice->text software. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y_Jp6PxsSQ

    --
    "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    1. Re:Microsoft by andrewd18 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm aware that this is Slashdot and we can't have anything positive said about Microsoft, but you could at least show the full story, not just the biased, edited clip.

      Here's the full clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX8oYoYy2Gc

      Yes, it's not perfect. But no, it's not as bad as that clip makes it.

    2. Re:Microsoft by Dancindan84 · · Score: 1

      It was just a jab/joke at MS's expense. I hadn't seen the full clip though, just the shorter edited one. Thanks.

      --
      "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    3. Re:Microsoft by guabah · · Score: 1

      It is much easier to make text to speech software than it is to make voice to text.

  4. article by Kenji+DRE · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't find anywhere in the article mentioning about the Thai students.....

    --
    His exploit "just works". Apple fanbois everywhere implode in a self-collapsing vortex of cognitive dissonance. by jjack
    1. Re:article by FRiC · · Score: 2, Informative

      The blog only talks about the IT Challenge category, which is about maintaining and using Windows. The Thai students won the Software Design category. The complete list of winners is here.

  5. Test input by LMacG · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wonder what this system says when the input text is "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"?

    --
    Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
  6. Blind people want to use Vista by Dancindan84 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cancel or Allow?

    --
    "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    1. Re:Blind people want to use Vista by lynalpha · · Score: 1

      Cancel

  7. Judges Blog by BarneyRubble · · Score: 1

    Rob Miles a lecturer from Hull, UK has also been
    blogging the event.

    http://www.robmiles.com/

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertmiles/110370355 0/

  8. Here we go again... by jamstar7 · · Score: 1
    Expect to see this as part of the upcoming Vista Service Pack.

    And in other news, Microsoft sponsors 5,000 Thai programmers with H1B visas. Microsoft also announced today the 'temporary layoff' of 7,500 current programmers. Company accountants claim this move will save the Company approximately 25 million dollars per quarter, allowing it to further aquire intellectual properties ranging from 'the wheel' to 'the zipper' to 'velcro', products that should increase the Company's bottom line to ludacrous profit margins...

    --
    Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    1. Re:Here we go again... by megaditto · · Score: 1

      I didn't see you winning any competitions lately...

      If these guys are better and it is legal to hire them, why would anyone chose you instead?

      --
      Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
    2. Re:Here we go again... by LingNoi · · Score: 1
      Why is the AC modded troll? He is right...

      http://www.siamtube.com/ ... bad youtube clone, XSS attacks and you can login as admin
      http://www.sanook.com/home.php ... god aweful design, no standards
      http://www.mrpavee.com/?p=58 ... Thailands biggest mobile phone company links to porn sites

      I'm sorry but I have worked in Thailand for almost a year now and the quality of code is just poor with no attention for detail.

      Hell I can get free internet in my wifi'ed building by logging in as 'admin' and 'password' and when I am done I just delete the logs!

      checktime.php?action=delete&id=0 or username like 'admin'
      Say good bye to the evidence and now there is no trace of my activity. This is a major ISP. You can also login to ToT's (an ISP) servers using telnet. arrgh!

      Also they copy stuff but badly..

      http://www.thaibay.biz/ - an ebay clone
  9. Re:You mean... by El+Lobo · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Oh, you mean like THIS. Sorry, boy but Apple seems to be starting their photocopyers a little too late. This feature has been included in XP since forever.

    Back on topic: the problem is not reinventing the wheel. I'm sure those kids wrote a hell of an algorithm ot one or two great ideas. Nobody gives money for free, and I'm sure they deserved it.

    --
    It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
  10. More useful links... by Otter · · Score: 4, Informative
    Not that the absence of any information in the linked blog about the winning project has kept people from idiotic disparagement of it, but for those who like to know a little about what they're idiotically disparaging:

    Imagine Cup home page

    Press release about the winners

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    1. Re:More useful links... by mscoder610 · · Score: 5, Informative
      I just came back from the Imagine Cup software design competition, and I saw the presentations for the top 6 software design finalists. More details about the Software Design part of the Imagine Cup:
      • The "24 hours straight through" part of the story doesn't apply to Software Design. It applies to some other of the challenges like Algorithms, Photography, and Short Film.
      • Software Design teams came up with the idea themselves (to improve education), and had multiple months to work on it.
      • Thailand's winning solution isn't just a text-to-speech thing, as the story implies. What it basically does is: Someone with their program and a webcam can place any book in front of the webcam. Their solution not only applies the text-to-speech stuff (for people who can't read the words), but it also tries to make the book more "visual". On a single page, it basically looks through each sentence for the main ideas of it, i.e. actions and verbs. Then it tries to show those ideas visually, with a picture or video. It was a pretty neat project.
      Hopefully that clears things up a little. I looked around for a page with a full description of their project, but I wasn't able to find one.
  11. This just in by rainlord · · Score: 1

    Microsoft announces that due to the success of the "let programmers drink loads of coke to induce 24h no-sleep phases", this has now been implemented into the standard work-week at Microsoft to increase production.

    They now hope to have Vista SP1 out within the next 48 hours, and while SP1 is installing it will now speak out what it patches.

  12. Re:You mean... by everphilski · · Score: 1

    Win XP had a text-to-speech processor back when I was doing XP installs in high school, more than 8 years ago. (we fiddled with accessibility options a few times for special needs users) Who copies who now? :)

  13. Re:You mean... by Otter · · Score: 1
    Sorry, boy but Apple seems to be starting their photocopyers a little too late. This feature has been included in XP since forever.

    It's been in Mac OS since long before XP, maybe even before Windows 95. One of the later System 7 versions had it, IIRC.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  14. Re:You mean... by Solra+Bizna · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...MacInTalk came with late versions of System 6. Also, what the crap does text-to-speech synthesis have to do with full interaction for the visually impaired? Did you even click on my link? _-_

    -:sigma.SB

    --
    WARN
    THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
  15. Jesus Christ by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1, Funny

    The software will allow people who can't read to interact with a PC

    First you bring VB to the world and let those who shouldn't develop ANYTHING software wise do so... now your plan is to let idiots who can't even read to use a computer? And we wonder why the computing world is a bog of what it once was...

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  16. let's see by tazsl · · Score: 1

    Thai students......speech software....there's a joke in there somewhere

    --
    for every complex problem , there is a solution that is simple , neat , and wrong.
    1. Re:let's see by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Thai students......speech software....there's a joke in there somewhere
      Well, go on then.
      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  17. Re:health by JohnFluxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At google, there's no unhealthy food around at all. All the drinks are smoothies, fruit drinks, etc. And all free.

    Interesting difference in culture.

    (Actually I think there might have been a few cans of fizzy drink in the cafeteria. Can't quite remember)

  18. doesn't windows already have this feature? by Cyko_01 · · Score: 2, Informative

    correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that what the narrator in WinXP does? How is this new and innovative? Text-to-speech has been out for years!

    1. Re:doesn't windows already have this feature? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The version in XP sucks, badly, so badly in fact that the blind end up paying around 600 dollars for software that works. The stuff in Vists is actually a bit better. But not by enough. Microsoft really needs to integrate better software into Vista, or at least offer something that doesn't cost more than say, a monitor.

      Linux, incidentally, is supposed to be halway decent with it's built in text-to=speech, but is suffering badly due to lack of driver support for the current generation of harware accessability devices coupled with the removal of serial ports, which are necessary for the ones that do work.

    2. Re:doesn't windows already have this feature? by sarahemm · · Score: 1

      Narrator is only meant to give you enough access to install a real screen reader. Still, what the post describes this as is not really innovative, but from other comments and the name of the project ('Project LiveBook!') it sounds like this is more about reading books than acting like a screen reader.

  19. hmm by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 1

    Windows Accessibility ++

    --
    The game.
  20. duh... by neiko · · Score: 1

    The same reason you reward a student with a C average who gets a B, and try to encourage a A average student who gets a B to do better next time.

  21. Re:You mean... by hax0r_this · · Score: 1

    You are right on the point in question, but I doubt the bit about installing XP more than 8 years ago since it came out less than 6 years ago.

  22. scribd, festival by bcrowell · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's an FOSS text-to-speech system called festival, which sounds robotic, but intelligible. There's a debian package.

    For better free-as-in-beer text-to-speech, try scribd.com. If you upload some text there, they'll automatically make an audio version, and I thought the quality was amazingly good. (If the text is copyrighted, you can set it to be available only to yourself.)

    --
    Find free books.
  23. Huh? by Orig_Club_Soda · · Score: 1

    They could have bought a 1992 Macintosh.

  24. Re:You mean... by sortius_nod · · Score: 1

    hehe... gotta love windows junkies.

    learn to use google... oh, wait, you've only got live search...

  25. Re:health by StikyPad · · Score: 1

    I hope they offer Vivarin smoothies.

    --
    https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  26. Favors Asia by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    25 grand is a lot more relative money in Thailand. That's like a year's salary if not more there. This is kind of outsourcing in disquise.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Favors Asia by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      It is 3 times more then my year's salary I am currently making as a web developer in Bangkok.

    2. Re:Favors Asia by arktemplar · · Score: 1

      yes, it is a lot of money, and I believe they deserved it, I saw the kind of competition these guys had (two teams from my college had made it to the final round), and FFS, I cant beleive that you are comparing this to outsourcing, technically it is outsourcing but not in the sense of the word as used in pop-media.

      no one stopped any one else from applying to the competiotion, if you had applied and done a better job of it than them, the 25K would have been yours.

      --
      blog plug -> The Darker Side of Light
  27. It does that too. by Nazlfrag · · Score: 1

    This enables people to learn to read without additional teaching resources. There doesn't only have to be a single solution to a problem. Nobody learns to read overnight, this would help those still learning to read during their years of study. With handwriting recognition, it could help people learning to write as well. It has potential to be the tutor for when your teachers aren't around.

  28. Write only? by mrjb · · Score: 1

    ...computers read aloud typed and handwritten commands. The software will allow people who can't read to interact with a PC They'll still need to be able to write, though. Of course this has its uses for the visually impaired.

    --
    Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
  29. Re:You mean... by somersault · · Score: 1

    Well I had this on my Amiga in the 80s.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS#Speech_synthe sis

    --
    which is totally what she said
  30. Re:You mean... by Killjoy_NL · · Score: 1

    Thank you, I was born in that year, I feel young again :D

    --
    This is the sig that says NI (again)
  31. Re:health by Zebedeu · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry that you were modded down as a troll, but you do have a valid point.

    I was at the Imagine Cup competition in Japan some two years ago, and one of the things that was pissing everyone off was that besides the meal times (breakfast, lunch and dinner) you couldn't get non-sweet food. Not even plain bread was available, even if you asked the support staff from the hotel.
    On the other hand, chocolate-filled cookies, sweets and all kinds of energetic drinks were freely available in quantities. They did have water, though, so it wasn't completely horrible.

    So yeah, I had exactly the same thought during the competition: Someone at Microsoft wasn't really concerned about the student's health, or was thinking something along the lines of sugar = energy = productivity.

    BTW, not to bash entirely on MS. Other than on the snacks aspect, they treated everyone really well, and it was one of the most amazing experiences in my life.

  32. Re:You mean... by everphilski · · Score: 1

    musta been a beta or NT4, dont remember which. Either way it predated me heading off to college and that was in 2000 ...

  33. Re:health by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry that you were modded down as a troll, but you do have a valid point.
    Yes, it seems far too many moderators don't know what "troll" means. It is truly a pity that the slashdot editors don't provide any incentive for metamoderation. Moderation was a good idea, but it is being badly executed here at slashdot.
    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  34. Re:You mean... by sarahemm · · Score: 1

    Narrator in Windows is just designed to do enough to enable you to get a proper screen reader installed. VoiceOver on the Mac is designed to *be* your screen reader.

  35. Re:You mean... by thibbledorf · · Score: 1

    TTS technologies have been around a helluvalot longer than that. (check out the "voder" part!)