April 2007 - Posts

Silverlight is here
Oh please, can somebody give me some extra time so I can play with this ? Thankfully we no longer have to call it by its codename, WPF/E, which I found impossible to remember. Ryan Stewart has a great rundown of what this means and what else was announced Read More...
Posted 30 April 07 08:57 by sprague | 3 Comments   
Microsoft and the competition
My long-time Microsoft TV friend and Silicon Valley colleague M3 has some good comments about Microsoft and its competitive situation relative to Apple, Google, and others. He acknowledges that these companies make good products and are good at marketing Read More...
Posted 29 April 07 07:17 by sprague | 0 Comments   
New Microsoft Director likes Speech
Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix is a new member of the Microsoft Board of Directors . Now in addition to his day job mailing movies to happy Netflix subscribers like me, he joins the ranks of the tiny pool of people who have "the guts to fire [Balmer] Read More...
Posted 27 April 07 02:31 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Vista Speech Reco feedback wanted
From Jonathan Garcia, a program manager in Windows: Please send us feedback on Vista speech recognition! A lot of you have already posted or sent us a lot of valuable feedback. We have collected it already in majority but you can still re-send it or point Read More...
Posted 26 April 07 05:47 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Keyword spotting
Lots of buzz about using SR technology to pick up keywords in an audio stream. See Robert Scoble's demo of Nexidia or this post by Eduardo Olvera. The basic idea has been around for years, especially if you believe the NSA has been listening in on phone Read More...
Posted 25 April 07 07:14 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Speech-using robots
Bernardo points to a link from Zeddy Iskandar , a developer evangelist in Indonesia who used system.speech to control a robot. Reminds me of the work of J. Norberto Pires, from the University of Coimbra in Portugal, who has a bunch of videos here: http://robotics.dem.uc.pt/norberto/nova/videos/ Read More...
Posted 24 April 07 01:52 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Voice Search in Seattle Times
Today's Seattle Times profiles several new speech projects including VoiceBox , a startup company near us in Bellevue, WA that makes products using SR as a natural interface. If you've been watching this market and all the activity by Tellme and Google, Read More...
Posted 23 April 07 07:47 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Voice Command
Larry, a reader of this blog, writes: Richard, Not sure where to go to resolve this question, but hoped you could help point me in the right direction. My doctor has a Verizon PDA/phone and needs to respond quickly when he gets paged. He has to dial the Read More...
Posted 19 April 07 01:29 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Comenity: the real future of home entertainment systems
When I posted about ResponsePoint the other day , I didn't look closely at the customer video showing a happy ResponsePoint user. Turns out it's Mark McCracken, an old buddy from Silicon Valley, who is now founder of a Bellevue, WA company called Comenity Read More...
Posted 15 April 07 05:14 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Teaching language fluency
I like the idea of using SR technology for purposes beyond simple recognition or synthesis, and I've already mentioned one of my favorites: foreign language instruction . Now I just heard about Teaching Machine , and their "SpeakIt Suite", which they Read More...
Posted 12 April 07 10:22 by sprague | 0 Comments   
A non-SR way to conserve keystrokes
Jon Udell, a long-time technology writer who I remember from Byte days, tried speech recognition a few years ago after suffering from RSI. He recovered, but the real lesson he learned from the experience was the importance of keystroke conservation : Read More...
Posted 10 April 07 09:11 by sprague | 1 Comments   
Extremetech tests Vista Speech Recognition
Extremetech is one of my favorite sites because the people there really get under the hood when reviewing new technologies, and they didn't disappoint me in their new article on Speech Recognition in Vista . Bottom line: they liked it, doing a fairly Read More...
Posted 10 April 07 08:26 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Ignite Seattle Tomorrow
I wish I wasn't booked on Thursday, April 5th. I really want to go to Ignite Seattle! It's a collection of geeks who get together to discuss really interesting things like: Bruce Leban ( Google National Puzzlers' League ) - What I Learned in Prison Yes, Read More...
Posted 04 April 07 12:25 by sprague | 0 Comments   
Speech Server Beta 2007 Public Beta
Whew, between my O'Reilly conference this week and various management tasks due at the end of March, I didn't have time to note that Speech Server 2007 now has a public beta. Other speech people like Stephen Potter , Casey Chesnut , Marshall Harrison Read More...
Posted 01 April 07 06:23 by sprague | 0 Comments   

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