Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the voice-command dept.
malacai writes " IBM has announced that
ViaVoice will be available for Linux." Excellent-IBM does another good thing. Anyone played around with ViaVoice much? I'm interested in potentially using it-once my wrists fall apart.
ViaVoice: depends on the implementation
by
CodeShark
·
· Score: 4
While I am very interested in this announcement, the IBM voice technology I've worked with in Win32 (95 and NT) thus far is not sufficient for full-time use yet. I have used ViaVoice Gold for a couple of years now, and even with IBM's longest voice template "training", occasionally ViaVoice goes loopy and acts like it's dictating to itself, rather than translating from my voice. Thus I have not as yet been able to recommend the technology to my client customers.
However, the state of the art will obviously advance. Optical Charaacter Recognition (OCR) technology four years ago was a "probable buy", however the accuracy has gone up and cost down, so much that it is now a "should buy", and any company requiring significant amounts of document translation is behind the times if it does not have at least one employee competently using OCR.
In voice recognition, IBM is definitely one of the "to market" leaders, especially in the consumer area. My thoughts are that with the cleaner OS code in Linux may actually help IBM develop code that is much more powerful than the Win32 versions. IMHO the number one thing IBM can do to help ViaVoice succeed in the Linux arena (other than GPL'ing the code, which they probably will not do) is provide crystal clear documentation of the API and a powerful SDK to allow other programmers to develop "voice-drivable" applications. This would be similar to how IN-CUBE can be used to drive various applications from small voice commands. BTW, IN-CUBE is already available on Solaris, so maybe the Linux community can persuade CommandCorp to port their product (?)
The faster this technology develops, the better for all of us, especially the motion disabled who can use this technology as a true window to the world. The same group which produces ViaVoice also has a screen reader for the visually impaired which I would like to see in Linux as well.
Let IBM know of your interest, offer to act as a BETA tester, etc. The more we get involved in projects like these, the more quickly Linux will succeed in breaking the M$ stranglehold on the industry.
-- ...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
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However, the state of the art will obviously advance. Optical Charaacter Recognition (OCR) technology four years ago was a "probable buy", however the accuracy has gone up and cost down, so much that it is now a "should buy", and any company requiring significant amounts of document translation is behind the times if it does not have at least one employee competently using OCR.
In voice recognition, IBM is definitely one of the "to market" leaders, especially in the consumer area. My thoughts are that with the cleaner OS code in Linux may actually help IBM develop code that is much more powerful than the Win32 versions. IMHO the number one thing IBM can do to help ViaVoice succeed in the Linux arena (other than GPL'ing the code, which they probably will not do) is provide crystal clear documentation of the API and a powerful SDK to allow other programmers to develop "voice-drivable" applications. This would be similar to how IN-CUBE can be used to drive various applications from small voice commands. BTW, IN-CUBE is already available on Solaris, so maybe the Linux community can persuade CommandCorp to port their product (?)
The faster this technology develops, the better for all of us, especially the motion disabled who can use this technology as a true window to the world. The same group which produces ViaVoice also has a screen reader for the visually impaired which I would like to see in Linux as well.
Let IBM know of your interest, offer to act as a BETA tester, etc. The more we get involved in projects like these, the more quickly Linux will succeed in breaking the M$ stranglehold on the industry.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...