Bits and bobs
Propagating some little clusters of speech-related blog links and going easy on the editorializing (having blown out on the team blog site today).
Transcription
Humans are still holding their own against the machine in CastingWords, as Richard and Jeremy Keith find out. And John, a real-live transcriber living in Boston, has a classic anecdote about real users' answers to speech recognition system prompts.
Free podcasting via phone
I've seen a couple of these sites now - a simple version of unified communications that let you deliver a monologue over the phone that then becomes available on the web or via RSS. See for example Buzzophone which is geared to ranters (via Vocalabs), and Odeo which is more about cheap podcasting (via James Lee).
Building the KatrinaSafe application
An inside look at KatrinaSafe, the speech-enabled application that helped so many victims of Hurricane Katrina last year. Scoble made a Channel 9 video interview with Jim and Dan of Microsoft, and Brandon Tyler of Intervoice has a podcast over on gotspeech.net.
Preventing drunk blogging - a USB breathalyzer application.
OK, a little off-topic, but look, Jackson West has a useful idea, and he clearly knows what he's talking about: "breathalyzer readings are notoriously innaccurate, and can be gamed to a certain extent by learning certain breathing patterns (or by having the toddler you're probably scarring for life breathe into it)..." Say no more.
