Rob's Rhapsody : Customer Feedback

Controlling your PC via PowerShell and Speech Recognition?

robch — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:52:41 GMT

I just read a pretty cool post by Joel 'Jaykul' Bennett from HuddledMasses.org where he shows his readers how to use a PowerShell script he wrote to invoke other PowerShell scripts using Speech Recognition. Great idea, Joel. I like it!

Check it out here.

"I've started using the speech recognition features and I'm blown away!"

robch — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:29:00 GMT

Quote of the day from the blogosphere (from Carl Franklin) that caught my eye: "I've started using the speech recognition features and I'm blown away!"

Thanks Carl. Now ... Have you tried using the WSR Macros we just released? You might like that too...

"The Vista Show" podcast talks about Vista's Windows Speech Recognition

robch — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:27:00 GMT

The Vista Show is a podcast that broadcasts a weekly show in podcast format each week from thevistashow.com. This week Jack discusses Vista's Windows Speech Recognition. You can jump ahead to the 18 minute mark in the MP3 file.

Jack says Windows Speech Recognition has come a "long way. A long long way..." His daughter (who is eleven) was excited to use it. He says, "That will be her future... Our future of computers will be no more keyboards..."

That's pretty similar to my experience with my son, Zac. He recently used WSR to do about 50% of a report for school. It's that easy to use. He's 9 years old!

Jack closed his podcast with saying, "It's very user friendly!"

If you haven't tried it out, go buy Vista and give it a shot.

Extreme Tech reviews Windows Speech Recognition

robch — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 18:26:00 GMT

Another good reivew of Windows Speech Recognition in Windows Vista:

"If you have Windows Vista, even the Home Basic version, you already have one of the more powerful speech recognition systems available. Microsoft has invested many millions of dollars in research regarding speech recognition over the years. Some of what they study in the R&D labs is years away from being a product, but there's a lot of new fancy speech recognition technology built right into Vista."

Telling your computer what to do -- Another post by David Pogue of the NYT

robch — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:24:00 GMT

Well ... I must say that I didn't expect David Pogue to love Windows Speech Recognition as much as he does. I remember going out to meet him last August while I was in New York for SpeechTEK 2006. I was a bit nervous, as David is one of the top technology writers in the industry and he's sometimes critical of features and products.

So ... I remember thinking to myself on the long car trip from New York to the PR firm, "What have I gotten myself into volunteering to come out and show David WSR for the first time?!". But, everything went swimmingly. I wasn't concerned about the product not doing a good job. It's great. But I wasn't so sure how he'd react to some of our innovative features.

I mean... Don't get me wrong, WSR is definitely great, and a huge improvement over what we've done before. But ... David really REALLY loves WSR. He's posted about it a lot lately. He's even got a big section about WSR in his latest book, Windows Vista: The Missing Manual.

In today's New York Times, he does it again, posting a pretty glowing review of Windows Speech Recognition.

Thanks David -- It's always nice to hear nice things from users and reviewers. Especially nice when it's coming from someone that knows so much about the PC industry.

Transfering profiles programatically

robch — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:28:00 GMT

Last week I wrote about how to transfer profiles using the Easy Transfer Wizard. That generated some email and some questions in the community about how to do this programmatically.

That's a good question. But unfortunately, the answer isn't that straight forward currently.

In the SAPI documentation you can read about how some of this works, but there's not a single overview of how all this works. So ... I'll try to summarize how it works here.

Here goes ...

In SAPI, recognition profiles are accessed by the engine (and by the application) using the Resource interfaces of SAPI. Specifically, the ISpObjectTokenCategory, IEnumSpObjectTokens, ISpObjectToken, and ISpDataKey interfaces.

To get a list of recognition profiles configured by the user you can use the SpEnumTokens helper function (defined in sphelper.h). You'll need to specify the category you want to enumerate. That's the SPCAT_RECOPROFILES category. This will give you an IEnumSpObjectTokens interface, which is a standard derivative of the IEnum* class of interfaces. Using this interface, you can iterate thru the individual "tokens" by calling IEnumSpObjectTokens::Next -- each of the ISpObjectTokens you get back will represent a single recognition profile.

Given a specific token you can QueryInterface for the ISpObjectToken interface, which derives from ISpDataKey. Then you can ask for the name of the reco profile, by calling ISpDataKey::GetStringValue(NULL, &pszCoTaskMemAllocedProfileName). Be sure and call CoTaskFree on the string returned when you're done with it.

To back up the profile, there are no special helpers, so you'll just have to do a few things the hard way.

First, you should make a backup of the ISpDataKey settings. The easiest way to do this is to use the token's ID to open up the registry location directly. You see, typically the object token is simply a wrapper on top of registry access functions. The token ID is typically actually just nothing more than a path into the registry. For example, for my reco profile that I'm using right now, the token id (retrieved by calling ISpObjectToken::GetID) is: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech\RecoProfiles\Tokens\{90E13428-A7A5-419B-8034-EA6453E31906}"

So, you'll have to write your own code to iterate thru the registry recursively and back up all the keys and values (with their names) that you find.

There are a few special things that you have to take into consideration when doing this:

1.) If the token id doesn't live directly under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech\RecoProfiles\Tokens\", you shouldn't assume that the procedure I'm describing here will actually work to back up the recognition profile. If you see a token ID outside of this area, you should abort the backup.

2.) While backing up the profile, you will encounter one or more key names called "Files". Under keys named "Files", the values represent "pointers" to files on disk. You'll have to also back up the files that these "file names" point to.

3.) These files may start with character sequences that look like "%1c%\". If they do, you can replace the values between the percent signs with the text as returned from SHGetFolderPath. For example, one of that data files in my registry under a "Files" key has a "filename" of "%1c%\Microsoft\Speech\Files\TrainingAudio\SP_E18DB2EFB76A432B97889A3DB7210406.wav". The "%1c%" corresponds to a "real" filename of "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Speech\Files\TrainingAudio\SP_E18DB2EFB76A432B97889A3DB7210406.wav". Again, you can use SHGetFolderPath with the hex value of 0x1c to get the path of "C:\Documents and Settings\Rob\Local Settings\Application Data" and you can put all this together.

4.) When you restore the profile, you should take special care to restore files with different new filenames. If you don't, there could be some collisions. You can get a new filename by calling the ISpObjectToken::GetStorageFileName method.

That's basically it.

Yeah, I know... It's not necessarily the easiest thing you'll ever do, but it is possible, and this is basically how you do it. Hopefully, we'll be able to release an actual example that shows how a real end to end backup and restore works for profiles in the future. But until then, hopefully this post will illuminate some of the magic behind profile management in SAPI.

CrunchGear compared Apple's OS X Speech Recognition to Windows Speech Recognition in Vista

robch — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:21:00 GMT

CrunchGear posted a comparison of Apple's OS X and Windows Vista yesterday, going over feature by feature discussing similarities and differences. For each feature CrunchGear declared a winner. It was neat to see that one of the areas they compared OS X and Vista was the speech recognition capabilities of each OS.

I was proud to see that CrunchGear declared Vista the winner in the Speech Recognition category:

"Speech Recognition – Hands down, Vista. Voice recognition in OS X is an afterthought at best and cripple-ware at worst . I’m not big on voice recognition, but I do know when someone has gotten it right."

And ... They also said that in general Vista is better than OS X:

"Verdict – In the context of this examination, we see that Vista is currently pouncing all over OS X Tiger in most scenarios. Microsoft has considerably improved its flagship product and should be applauded for taking so many modern operating system concepts and dragging them front and center. "

It's nice to see that CrunchGear likes what Microsoft has done.

"But didn't Apple have Speech Recognition features in the OS before Microsoft?"

Well ... many people have posted on the net about that, and they've talked about how Microsoft was just copying Apple's efforts. Well, if you've used both Apple's speech offering and Microsoft's Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) in Windows Vista, you'd see that that is just completely crazy.

In fact, David Pogue recently noticed that WSR wasn't an area where Microsoft copied Apple: "... not all of the new goodies fell from the Apple tree." Of course, David loves what we've done with WSR too... And David is a huge Apple fan. All the nicer...

Word 2007 + Windows Speech Recognition

robch — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:34:00 GMT

If you're using Windows Speech Recognition in Windows Vista, and you're also using Microsoft Word 2007, you might be wondering... How can I access things that are on different tabs in the new Microsoft Word UI with just one command, instead of two. This very question came up this week on the Yahoo! MS-Speech newsgroup.

Here's what I do:

For commands that I perform regularly that either might be on a different tab or are macros (which dont' really show up easily in the new Word 2007 UI -- IMO) I display the "Quick Access Toolbar". Then I customize it, and add my frequently used commands to that toolbar.

To display the Quick Access toolbar:
- Say, "Right click Home", then "1 OK"
- Say, "Show Quick Access"

To put things on the Quick Access toolbar:
- Say, "Right click [thing that's visible you want to add]"
- Say, "Add to Quick Access"

To put a macro on the Quick Access toolbar:
- Say, "Right Click Home", then "1 OK"
- Say, "Customize Quick Access"
- Say, "Choose commands"
- Say, "Macros"
- Say, "Click [name of macro]"
- Say, "Click Add"
- Say, "OK"

David Pogue says (on NPR) his favorite feature in Vista is Windows Speech Recognition

robch — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:06:00 GMT

I know David Pogue really likes Windows Speech Recognition, but today he actually called it out as his favorite feature in Windows Vista this morning on NPR. Here's exactly what he had to say:

Interviewer: "So, what's your favorite feature?"

David Pogue: "Wow, there's a lot of cool stuff. I have to say the speech feature, speech recognition. Basically, you wear a headset microphone. You can dictate text, exactly as I'm talking to you, comma, and everything gets written down, period. And can control everything too. You can even move the cursor and drag the mouse, all by voice."

Thanks David. You definitely put some smiles on my teammates' faces today...

Experiencing a "Wow" moment with Windows Speech Recognition

robch — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:26:00 GMT

Reading customer comments on Windows Vista's Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) is always fun. I love to hear the positive ... and the negative (after all we have to learn what our customers want).

This weekend, I saw a post by a new Vista user named Marc. He's a software developer that has used Dragon Naturally Speaking for a while, and as he puts it, he: "also happens to be afflicted with spinal muscular atrophy (a severe neuromuscular disorder)".

I was delighted to read that he really liked what he saw and experienced when he tried out WSR in Windows Vista.

Comparing Windows Speech Recognition to Dragon Naturally Speaking, he says:

"Of course, all of this has largely been available before in third-party applications, like Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS), but, in my opinion, never so elegantly and effectively with the entire user experience. Just try comparing Microsoft Speech Recognition and DNS when surfing the web in Internet Explorer or finding a file in Windows Explorer, and you'll quickly understand what I mean. "

And his final comments are my favorite:

"I, for one, am appreciative of all of Microsoft's effort put into speech recognition and am grateful it has become a mainstream feature in Windows. Indeed, I may have actually experienced a genuine "wow" moment because of it. "

Thanks Marc. We put a lot of effort into WSR and it's always nice to hear when users appreciate all that effort. I'm glad you could get a wow moment out of it. I know a lot customers will feel just like you did once they a chance to play with Windows Speech Recognition in Windows Vista.

Chicago Sun-Times says: Windows Speech Recognition is one of "Vista's true superstar features"

robch — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:36:00 GMT

Today, Andy Ihnatko published an article on Vista called "Vista brightens Windows" in the Chicago Sun-Times. In it, he goes over a lot of the features in Vista, and why they all combined make a compelling upgrade for users.

He says: "one of Vista's true superstar features is its speech recognition." and then he goes on to say:

"After 10 minutes of simple, tutorial-driven training (during which you learn how the features work, and Vista learns how you speak), your voice becomes as credible a way of controlling your PC as a mouse or a keyboard."

Thanks Andy. Glad you like it.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite Windows Vista Review of Windows Speech Recognition

robch — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:00:00 GMT

As I'm sure most of you probably already know, Paul Thurrott runs a really cool website, called Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows. It's a great place to go for information on Windows.

He's been working on a review of Windows Vista for quite some time now, and I've enjoyed reading what he thought about the Windows Vista features. Just a week ago, he posted his review of some of the "other" features in Windows Vista, and Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) was on that list.

Two quotes that I especially liked from his review:

"Windows Vista's speech recognition functionality is quite a bit better than anything that's ever been bundled with an operating system"
"I think it will surprise a lot of people."

He rated each of the Windows Vista features between 1 and 5. He gave WSR a 4 out of 5. Nice.

Thanks Paul. Glad you like it!

WSR's in David Pogue's Top 10 list

robch — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 21:36:00 GMT

David Pogue published his annual Top 10 list again this year in the NY Times. In it, Microsoft got 2 of the 10 nods.

The first nod was for the wireless song transfer features of the Zune (something the whole music industry has pointed out was an innovative, thought leading feature).

And ... the second nod for Microsoft was for ...

...

ready?

...

Wait for it ...

...

OK, here it is ...

...

The “Show Numbers” feature in Windows Speech Recognition!!

Here’s what he had to say in his article:

POINT WITHOUT POINTING The speech-recognition software in Windows Vista offers anyone who can’t type — or doesn’t like to — a slick, efficient alternative. Wearing a headset, you can dictate text into any program and “click” any button or tab by saying its name.

But what if you don’t know its name? What if it’s some cryptic little toolbar icon? You can’t exactly say, “Click the little thing that looks like a watermelon seed on two beach balls.”

What you can say, though, is “show numbers.” The program immediately overlays every clickable thing on the screen with colorful numbers. You can just say “21” (or whatever) to click the corresponding spot — a trick that works especially well for navigating Web pages.

Thanks David! Glad you liked it!

David Pogue says Windows Speech Recognition is "beautifully designed"

robch — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:27:00 GMT

David Pogue had something nice to say about Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) in this morning’s NY Times…

"And besides, not all of the new goodies fell from the Apple tree. [] Windows Speech Recognition isn’t as accurate as, say, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but it’s beautifully designed and much better than previous Microsoft attempts."

You gotta love “beautifully designed”… Thanks David!

It's also interesting that he didn't find it to be as accurate as Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS). This varies from person to person. There are many individuals that have used both products and for some, DNS is more accurate; for others WSR is more accurate. There have been some interesting debates about this on the Microsoft Speech Forum on Yahoo. If you like speech recognition, that's a forum you ought to check out from time to time.

Jupiter Research says, Windows Speech Recognition "is so darn good, it feels a little bit out of science fiction."

robch — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:14:00 GMT

I found this post last week from Todd Bishop, local Seattle PI writer and blogger that tracks all things Microsoft. He linked to Michael Gartenberg's blog entry on Windows Speech Recognition (WSR). There, Michael says:

I’ve been using the integrated speech recognition in Windows Vista for the last few days, for a variety of tasks and in a variety of applications. I’m pleased to say it works well, and greatly improves the usability of my computer for entering text. It’s so darn good, it feels a little bit out of science fiction. But then again, isn’t that the way technology is supposed to work?

Thanks Michael. Glad you like it!