More Speech-Enabled Applications With The Open Handset Alliance
Let’s Hear It For The Open Handset Alliance
It was good news to hear that Google is making available Open-Source software for cell phones and bringing together the Open Handset Alliance. For those who believe that speech technology will be a powerful driver of the Mobile Web, it is also good to hear that Nuance will be part of this Alliance. They publicly stated that they feel that this will set the stage for Robust Speech-Enabled Mobile Applications.
Some question whether sound really brings advantages. Perhaps with tongue in cheek, Sarah Houghton-Jan, known online as the Librarian In Black, questioned whether sound technologies produce less polished works, as compared with the slightly slower pace that is enforced by writing. However it seems quite clear that the immediacy possible with sound and the reduced effort required make speech-enabled applications winners.
Perhaps an almost trivial application illustrates the advantages. The Grocery List Organizer uses voice recognition software and a list of 2,500 grocery items that are pre-programmed. Just reel off your unsorted grocery items into this voice-recognition device and it sorts them by category and prints out your grocery list on thermal paper (No need for ink).
More and more applications are available to convert your spoken words into text. The quality of this process is improving all the time. For example, the SimulScribe Voicemail-to-Text Solution got an ‘A’ from InformationWeek for Transcription Quality and Audio Playback.
Given the speed at which improvements in speech technology are being made, it could well be that when Google Open Source phones become available in 2008, your voice will direct where you travel on the Mobile Web.
Related: Sound Will Drive Mobile Web Growth
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BPWrap
November 11th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[...] While much of the blogging about Google’s initiatives?is fairly positive, Carlo Longino at MobHappy describes Google’s announcement of the OHA and Android as ?a PR and media manipulation masterstroke. Obviously since they?ve created the ‘Open Handset Alliance’, other handsets that don?t come out of it must be closed, right? It?s a story the press is running with, anyway?. So the big question is, how open is Google?s ?open?, really??As side stories to the Google announcement, Barry Welford from?StayGoLinks argues that there will be?More Speech-Enabled Applications With The Open Handset Alliance?while Enrique Ortiz at …About Mobility talks about local applications as the next big thing in mobile, in part because developments such as the iPhone, the OHA, and Android may remove barriers to success for local apps. [...]
November 20th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
[...] Related: Surprise! Microsoft And Yahoo! Cool To Google Mobile Effort More Speech-Enabled Applications With The Open Handset Alliance Mobile Learning for Africa [...]
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 pm
[...] Barry Welford presents More Speech-Enabled Applications With The Open Handset Alliance posted at StayGoLinks, saying, “Nuance is joining the Open Handset Alliance, which will boost the support for speech-enabled applications. This includes the use of speech-technology to help surfers explore the Mobile Web.” [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 7:20 am
So does the Google phone do this now it has been released?
October 9th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I’m guessing we’ll be seeing such applications in the not too distant future. Today we can search for sounds on YouTube so things are moving fast.