September 2005 - Posts

Where do new words come from?
Thierry Fontenelle, one of our PMs who is particularly good at lexical issues, forwarded this interesting article from Tuscon Citizen that discusses how Webster's New World College Dictionary puts new words into their dictionary. We use lexicons all over Read More...
Posted 28 September 05 04:57 by sprague | 2 Comments   
Interview with ComputerWorld Romania
Here I am in the headset microphone, giving a demo of Windows Vista for the Editor-in-Chief of Computerworld Romania That's Julia and Fil with me. The three of us answered some questions about the Speech & Natural Language group, our long-term plans, Read More...
Posted 24 September 05 03:18 by sprague | 2 Comments   
At the Romanian Parliament
Previously , I mentioned our visit to the Romanian Parliament last week and the Windows Vista demo for Varujan Pambuccian. Well I finally got around to uploading some photos from the visit, including this one showing all of us in one of the Parliament Read More...
Posted 24 September 05 02:06 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Audio Indexing in OneNote and beyond
Chris Pratley, one of the designers of OneNote, blogs about one of the coolest new features of the upcoming OneNote12: audio indexing. This is a feature developed by Frank Seide in Microsoft Research Asia and as Chris says: Audio/Video: Audio and Video Read More...
Posted 23 September 05 06:43 by sprague | 1 Comments   
TTS podcasts from Reuters
Robert Scoble points to a new feature from Reuters: download MP3 versions of their news reports. The synthesized voice is a dignified-sounding British woman, and it sounds pretty good. Wouldn't get much listener fatigue, especially on short snippets like Read More...
Posted 22 September 05 05:11 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Romanian Parliament
One of the people I met in Bucharest was Mr. Varujan Pambuccian , a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and president of the IT&C Commission in the Romanian Parliament. He is a big believer in Romanian software development, and he personally seems quite Read More...
Posted 18 September 05 09:57 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Interesting facts about Ireland
This was my first visit to the Emerald Isle. It’s always good to see a country first-hand, because you pick up information that you might not have learned otherwise. I found that I had mistakenly confused much of the country with the UK. The people Read More...
Posted 17 September 05 02:48 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Visiting Dublin
I had some network troubles on my last day or two in Romania so I wasn't able to post. Now I'm here in Dublin for my last day on this trip. Tomorrow I go home. Dublin is the home of the International Proofing Tools group, the part of Microsoft Office Read More...
Posted 15 September 05 08:47 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Speech at PDC
The Professional Developers Conference happens this week, and several people from the speech group are there. As always, look to Robert Brown’s blog for details, but now you can also hear straight from the developer’s mouth at http://blogs.msdn.com/speechlead Read More...
Posted 14 September 05 05:01 by sprague | 0 Comments   
We're in Romania
Let’s see, it’s Sunday, so this must be Romania. Fil and I are here with Julia MacLaughlan (another GM from our division) to meet with some people from the local subsidiary. Here’s Fil with Ovidiu Artopolescu, General Manager of Microsoft Read More...
Posted 11 September 05 01:59 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Out of Portugal
Fil and I spent Friday at the Microsoft Portugal offices, basically meeting people and debriefing on our week at Interspeech. The MS-Portugal people are extremely friendly and helpful—no doubt because it’s a pretty small organization and they pretty much Read More...
Posted 11 September 05 12:13 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Our presentation
Our presentation is over, and I’m very pleased with the warm reception we got. We had six full tables, each with ten people, so something like 60 attendees — way more than I would have expected. Isabel Trancoso is wonderful: she was the organizer Read More...
Posted 09 September 05 02:15 by sprague | 2 Comments   
Speech Server and Katrina
A group of Microsoft engineers have been working on KatrinaSafe , a site to help evacuees. This article from eWeek , quoting the chief architect Jim Caroll, summarizes the role Speech Server played: KatrinaSafe is based on four primary components, Carroll Read More...
Posted 08 September 05 09:43 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Portugal Day 2
Whew! I spent my entire second day helping out at the Microsoft booth and then working on my presentation. Ciprian Chelba is demoing some of his work on audio search, and I helped arrange for him to get a laptop and speakers from the Microsoft office Read More...
Posted 08 September 05 07:47 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Do you tip in Portugal?
I’m such a bad traveler. I’ve been so busy that I didn’t have time to take a quick look at one of those travel guides that tell you about the basics of a country. So I’m here and have a bunch of questions. First, I need to know Read More...
Posted 07 September 05 08:17 by sprague | 0 Comments   
First day in Lisbon
My plane was a little late getting into Lisbon, so I didn’t see much of Interspeech the first day. Like most of the Microsoft attendees, I’m staying at the Sheraton. The hotel is okay, at least what I saw on my quick check-in, but I was annoyed Read More...
Posted 07 September 05 02:17 by sprague | 0 Comments   
We're in Lisbon
Here I am with Fil Alleva, General Manager of the Speech & Natural Language group, outside the Interspeech conference center in Belem. Read More...
Posted 06 September 05 11:36 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Tracking employee morale
Freakonomics blogs about a website that tracks moods of the populace, now updated for Hurricane Katrina. They propose a similar idea for companies. What would happen if you did a pulse poll of employee morale every day? At Microsoft we do an employee Read More...
Posted 06 September 05 07:35 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Off to Lisbon
My plane leaves in a few hours, so let me give you an idea of where I'll be and when: Lisbon (Sheraton Hotel) from 9/6 - 9/10. Bucharest from 9/10 - 9/13. Dublin from 9/14-9/16. Anybody else going to be in those places? Let me know and maybe we can get Read More...
Posted 05 September 05 09:42 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Comments are back
There's been a big drop-off in comments on my blog for the past month or two, so I've been worried that maybe the only person who really reads this is my mother. Now I think I figured out the reason. Comments were enabled, but only from "authenticated Read More...
Posted 04 September 05 06:58 by sprague | 3 Comments   
Katrina updates wanted
I'm busy preparing for my trip, but still saddened by the situation faced by my brother in New Orleans. His house is in Kenner, not far from the Esplanade Mall. Anybody know how that part of town is doing? Read More...
Posted 02 September 05 08:16 by sprague | 3 Comments   
Off to Portugal
I'll be at Interspeech , in Lisbon next week, along with a whole bunch of MSR guys. I'm looking forward to meeting the people of Inesc while I'm there If you're Portuguese and you read my blog, let me know . We are having a special event for Portuguese Read More...
Posted 02 September 05 08:13 by sprague | 0 Comments   
What's with Cannon Beach?
I moved to the Seattle area last year, so there are a lot of nice places around here that I haven't seen yet. A few months ago my wife was looking around for places to take our family on vacation and she suggested Cannon Beach, Oregon, which is about Read More...
Posted 02 September 05 06:22 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Julian's presentation at SpeechTek
The WAVE Report, by John Latta, has a short blurb about SpeechTek earlier in August in NYC. Microsoft A Long Term Investment in Speech Technology Julian Odell, in Speech and Natural Language, Microsoft, provided an overview of speech engines at Microsoft. Read More...
Posted 01 September 05 06:50 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Stuck in IVR Hell?
Get out with Find-A-Human , a cool site that gives shortcuts for how to cut off popular SR call-in sites and talk to a live human. My favorite bad SR site is AT&T Wireless (now Cingular), which never seems to recognize my voice. I've tried everything Read More...
Posted 01 September 05 01:22 by sprague | 0 Comments   
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