Comments on: Report: Speech Recognition and the Mobile Interface

By: Arthur Bartlett

Arthur Bartlett — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:06:33 +0000

Wow, just like THEAPPLEBLOG you sold out. I feared this would happen when GIGAOM bought your site. It is becoming harder and harder to visit your site given GIGAOM’s control but old habits die hard. However, that may soon change. Advertising acceptable, subscription not! Please, no more teasers.

By: Joe Stafura

Joe Stafura — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:53:39 +0000

I’ve been involved with speech technology since 2000, helping to start a text to speech company (TTS) and consulting with a Speech Recognition company (ASR).

The most significant lesson learned was how hard it is to make advancements in the performance of the core technology, as mentioned in an earlier post. The advancements are driven by adapting the context in a way that improves performance.

In typing programs this is learning process of your voice qualities first and then your grammar, the words and phrases that you use a lot. For medical or legal transcriptions limiting the domain improves performance in both TTS and ASR.

It appears that there is a chance that the current approaches can get no closer to the holy grail of a recognizer that can understand almost anyone saying almost anything while being almost anywhere.

For now speech has an important role in hands free applications like phones and cars, and the savings in medical transcription is projected to be large.

By: Chad

Chad — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:42:19 +0000

I have loved the idea of voice recognition, however it has not advanced much since the apple scripts I use to write on my apple OS 6 or 7 (I forget which) the accuracy was pretty good. The current systems with years of development have only marginally improved over the built in system on older apple systems…

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:29:18 +0000

Personally I really do not want speach recognition as an interface in most situations. Maybe at home or when I am in a private office, etc.; otherwise I just want a simple touch type keyboard. I think the UMPC and portable marketplace has lost touch with how most people really want to use technology. That is probably why UMPC’s have had such weak sales as they for the most part have no real keyboard and only some are small enough to be more portable than any typical laptop, etc.

By: Sumocat

Sumocat — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:56:58 +0000

I would think talking to a phone would be the least embarrassing way to use voice command. Someone talking *to* their phone looks the same as someone talking *on* their phone. The key would be to make the commands sound more natural. For example, instead of “Call Julie,” the command should be “Please call Julie.” Adding “please” makes it sound like you’re asking someone to do something, which is a completely normal thing to do over the phone. Throw a “hey” in front of that, and it’s a conversation you might hear in an elevator.