Richard Sprague WebLog : Mobile

Recite on Windows Mobile

sprague — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:33:25 GMT

Sometimes the best speech apps don’t really use speech recognition at all. I mean, yeah, there’s an audio stream and yeah there’s some processing, but you don’t always need the computer to understand what was said in order for it to be useful.

My favorite new example is Microsoft Recite, a technology preview from another sister team (like the cool Tag app that I mentioned previously).

I downloaded it over the air (it’s free) and had it running on my AT&T Tilt phone within a few minutes. After that, I just select “remember” and speak something that I want to remember later.

Once it’s been recorded, you select ‘search’ to find the note and play it back.

For example, I don’t have a pen handy right now but I wanted to remember a few things to pick up the next time I’m shopping at Target. Later, when I get to the store, I’ll just select ‘search’ and say “target” – the Recite software will pull up the note that I previously recorded.

It’s a simple trick for SR: rather than have the software analyze everything and provide perfect recognition, the system does a simple pattern matching – a process that’s much more robust.

As a bonus, it works in any language and with any speaker. Look at this short 90-sec demo to get the idea:

Tag it

sprague — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:13:21 GMT

Here's a cool new app from a sister team of mine: http://www.microsoft.com/tag/

First, download the free app to your Windows Mobile phone (takes just a couple seconds).

When you run the app on your phone, it starts the camera automatically. Just aim the camera roughly at the tag you see on this web page. That's right, just point it at the computer screen. Tag will recognize the object and take you to the URL I have buried inside!

The cool part is that it's easy for you to create your own tags. I did one in about 5 minutes.

Upgrading my Tilt to WM6.1

sprague — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:59:32 GMT

Sometimes you upgrade a device because you have to in order to get a bug fix. Sometimes you upgrade because you want to, in order to get some cool new feature. But sometimes, as in the case of my WM6.1 upgrade this weekend, you do it because it just feels good to be running the latest-latest software.

I had been waiting for the Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade to be available for the AT&T Tilt, but M3's post was the first time I saw that it was actually available. He said it was easy, so I figured on Labor Day Weekend I may as well go for it. He was right. The whole process for me took less than an hour, including reconfiguring my device the way I like it (email accounts, ringtones, bluetooth, etc.).

Now I have a fancy new WM6.1 interface...and what else? Well, it's nice to run the latest software although it doesn't feel like a critical upgrade. I think calling it a dot-one release is the right call. M3 says he gets better battery life, but I'm not sure I notice anything. One thing that's very nice is the new zoom feature on Internet Explorer. There are other intriguing features, like the Remote Desktop Monitor that I can't wait to try. But all-in-all it just feels good to be running the latest software, and it was a very painless upgrade, so I'm happy.