Speaking of mispronunciations , Rick Rashid, senior VP of Microsoft Research, is justifiable proud of the recent 15th anniversary of our labs. But why does the media quote him and then mispronounce his name ? Rick, who grew up in Iowa, is a totally normal...

One more thing about the company meeting: two separate executives pronounced the Finnish phone maker like "knock-ia". I've always thought it was "know-kia". One of the execs, Pieter Knook, is European, so I assumed that was some European pronunciation...

Chuck Opperman is back from Pittsburgh , where he was doing some Vista demos to attendees at Interspeech . I was at the one in Lisbon last year but I'm not nearly academic enough to make this a regular trip, the way our friends from MSR do. Instead, I...

We finally had a face-to-face get-together of the Microsoft speech team bloggers. It was just an informal lunch, a way for us to talk about our experiences, the tools we use, and all those things we think about while blogging but rarely get a chance to...

DoCoMo, the Japanese mobile phone company, has a project for doing what they call " mime speech recognition ". You move your throat and face muscles in the way you do while speaking, only you don't project any air, so you are effectively silent. TRN had...

The Windows marketing team is starting to push out some of their Vista materials, including one called " SeeWindowsVista ". Another one, targeted for Vista developrs is on MSDN .

Bill Poser was my teacher, Japanese expert, and computer geek at Stanford many years ago, and he is now a contributor to Language Log, a wonderful linguistics blog. His latest entry questions Microsoft's use of the word "genuine" to distinguish stolen...

We're trying to get a whole bunch of people to send us audio files for a new project we want to do. So we're thinking of a contest where the winners (a bunch of them) get rewarded with a Starbucks card. But how much should the card be? Obviously everyone...

While browsing on Technorati the other day, I was interrupted by one of those annoying audio ads, but this time I paid attention because it was talking to me. Apparently the company Oddcast wants to sell you some technology that will attach TTS-driven...

This morning's Wall Street Journal has a report about ways cell phone companies try to get you to use more of their features. There are short mentions of Voicebox and PrompTu, plus a nice blurb about Windows Mobile and Voice Command. We are so close to...

Robert Stewart, over at WombatNation is a speech blogger who recently ran into trouble with his Capresso2000 super-duper automatic espresso machine. I've been using a relatively simple Barrista maker my wife bought me from Starbucks about five years ago...

Software development on Windows used to mean two SDKs: the Platform SDK and the .Net Framework SDK. Now they're combined into the Windows SDK, and you can find the latest download information here . Since this is also the way to get the Managed Speech...

I'm using Vista RC1 on my main machine and it's working great. I would never go back. I even have SR configured to go through my TabletPC's array mic and have been using it for quick-and-dirty demos with no problems. It just works! Get a free copy...

This new Blackberry software (reported by WashPost and CNet ) from MobileVoiceControl sounds pretty cool. Subscribe on your Sprint NextTel phone (like the Treo 700p) and not only can you do most of what you get with Windows Mobile Voice Command , you...

There are several ways to talk to a human customer service rep, and now I found another one: Bringo ! You give them your phone number and they'll call you back when they've got a human on the line. Frankly, I'm not sure I understand the fuss. I'll take...

I had lunch yesterday with Scott Meredith, who among other things is a really smart TTS guy who moved to Microsoft from Apple many years ago. He's also a serious martial arts student and recently wrote Let Every Breath , a book about something called...

I found a speech bug the other day. Speak the sentence "Thanks be to God". Oops, we don't capitalize 'God'! Is that disrepectful, or what? Now say, "Thanks be to Allah". Try saying other words for the Almighty: Jehovah, Yahweh, Krishna. Our original training...