January 2007 - Posts

See, we really are nice guys
The Wall Street Journal reports last week on a Harris Interactive study that shows Microsoft has the world's best corporate reputation. And we're up quite a bit from last year (80.74 vs. 78.11) Huh?!? This plus the fact that Fortune ranked us one of the Read More...
Posted 31 January 07 07:51 by sprague | 0 Comments   
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Vista speech info available on line
If you haven't seen it yet, go to http://www.microsoft.com/speech to get the links to additional information about Windows Speech Recognition in Vista. It's more background info including demos, tutorials, and some details about the features. Plus, you Read More...
Posted 31 January 07 05:58 by sprague | 0 Comments   
I'm off to Starbucks
Cool, if you are running Vista on your laptop, T-Mobile internet access is free for the next 90 days. That means I can use the Internet for free now at Starbucks! Read More...
Posted 29 January 07 05:52 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Verizon says no to iPhone
According to USA Today : Among other things, Apple wanted a percentage of the monthly cellphone fees, say over how and where iPhones could be sold and control of the relationship with iPhone customers, said Jim Gerace, a Verizon Wireless vice president. Read More...
Posted 29 January 07 07:01 by sprague | 1 Comments   
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Time to move to Tallinn?
I've lived in many places ( Wisconsin , Silicon Valley, Seattle , Tokyo/Yokohama) but none of them made the top list of Intelligent Communities as selected by the Intelligent Community Forum this week: Dundee, Scotland United Kingdom Gangnam District, Read More...
Posted 27 January 07 05:53 by sprague | 0 Comments   
More on why iPhone will fail
Bookmark this page and come back in December 2008 if Apple sells anywhere near the 10M phones they're targeting. Here are more reasons I am not impressed by their phone, and why I'm surprised so many otherwise intelligent people think this is a watershed Read More...
Posted 26 January 07 06:07 by sprague | 14 Comments   
Mobile phones and speech
Nuance did an interesting study of mobile phone users that has a few intriguing conclusions: Americans typically use 450 min / month; UK uses 200. Only about 20% of users think voice-dialing is "not very helpful" Half of mobile phone users talk while Read More...
Posted 24 January 07 05:56 by sprague | 2 Comments   
Steve Jobs says Java is history
In this quote with the New York Times Markoff: “And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?” Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.” I can't believe the hype being given to iPhone. Read More...
Posted 18 January 07 06:43 by sprague | 25 Comments   
Speech Reco on tour
The Windows team will be showing off Vista in many cities along the East Coast of the U.S., starting in Nashville this week and next. They've got a big Vista-logoed bus and will be stopping in Philadelphia (where I went to school), Washington D.C., and Read More...
Posted 16 January 07 03:27 by sprague | 2 Comments   
Speech on a Mac
I haven't tried it, but Larrycast.com says Vista speech works great on Parallels for the Macintosh. Read More...
Posted 16 January 07 09:10 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Speech and Home/Office of the Future
Over the past month or two I've taken a few guests on walking tours of the Microsoft Home and then the Office of the Future. You can see much the same thing for yourself on line , but now Patrick pointed me to this article from The Times UK that claims Read More...
Posted 15 January 07 05:33 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Snow everywhere
Sure enough, the storm has arrived . I won't be surprised if Microsoft campus shuts down again tomorrow. There are cars littered all over i-90, most of them parked quite orderly at the side of the road. Did they just run out of gas in the terrible, unmoving Read More...
Posted 10 January 07 10:20 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Voice Recognition in the Wall Street Journal
Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal columnist says in this morning's paper: Vista, the new version of Windows, has some fairly advanced voice-recognition software built into it, but Microsoft isn't making much of that in its marketing of the software, and Read More...
Posted 10 January 07 10:57 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Oh no! not again!
The weather service is talking about how another big storm is headed our way. Is Terry Gold sending all his weather our way? Read More...
Posted 09 January 07 04:49 by sprague | 3 Comments   
My new car
Microsoft and Ford just announced a deal to make the ultimate in-car system, but until I can buy one of those, I've settled on my new car and I'm very excited. After all the searching (and thanks by the way to the zillions of you who offered suggestions), Read More...
Posted 08 January 07 07:59 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Hidden Markov Models
Evan has thoughts about the HMM paper that has been sited over 4600 times. Hidden Markov Models are the key mathematical idea behind most modern SR software (including Microsoft's) but is also useful for many other things, including bioinformatics . Read More...
Posted 05 January 07 04:11 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Microsoft at CES
I won't be at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (the past times I've gone it's been an absolute zoo), but at least I'll be on top of the Microsoft events there using this site . They'll be streaming the Bill Gates keynote, offering a virtual view Read More...
Posted 05 January 07 01:44 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Walt Mossberg likes Contextual Spelling
In his review today of the new Office 2007 , Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal says: There are other nice additions. In Word, Outlook and PowerPoint, there is now contextual spell checking, which points to a wrong word, even if the spelling is Read More...
Posted 04 January 07 06:09 by sprague | 0 Comments   
TTS for Messenger
Here's a TTS front end for MSN Messenger . Uses SAPI to read messages for you. Read More...
Posted 04 January 07 04:10 by sprague | 1 Comments   
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Usenet feeds through RSS
Rob let me try out his new RSS-enabled newsgroup reader , so now I can finally start to track all those usenet newsgroups I've never had the time to read. Google Groups (Beta) has something similar, but it's only for the newgroups they've blessed (which Read More...
Posted 02 January 07 05:43 by sprague | 0 Comments   

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