Tag Archives: speech technology

A Microsoft Future Vision

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In February of this year, you could see the following video of Microsoft’s vision of how the world might appear in 2019.

<a href=”http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo” target=”_new” title=”Future Vision Montage”>Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

Now as reported by Gregory T. Huang, Craig Mundie gave some more insights on the Future Vision in helping to kick off Microsoft Research’s 10th annual faculty summit. These were the top five takeaways from his talk:

1. It’s all about the natural user interface.
Today’s devices are able to understand voice, handwriting, and touch commands better than ever before, but nobody has really put it all together yet. Advances in computing algorithms will lead to software that is “better at anticipating what you might want.”
2. It’s time for the digital assistant—but fear not, real assistants.
In a demo, Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz talked to a “robotic receptionist” (on a screen) to schedule a meeting. The software used machine vision to track Horvitz’s movements, gaze, and orientation to the screen, speech recognition to understand what he was saying, and speech synthesis to communicate back to him—all in real time.
3. It’s not all about the cloud.
As we move to continuous, contextual awareness, the idea that we can time-share these things is not practical. Processing, communication, and integration with any other software needs to be done locally, not by a remote server in the Internet cloud. – clearly countering the Google approach to the cloud.
4. It’s four devices, not three.
Mundie outlined four types of devices in his broader view of computing: phones, laptops, desktops, and something he called “specialty computers.” These are handhelds specialized to do certains kinds of computationally intensive tasks, like environmental forecasting, medical imaging analysis, or even delivering prenatal care in rural regions of a developing country.
5. The room is the successor to the desktop.
In the office of the future, there will be high-definition displays on walls, a keyboard projected onto a desk surface, gesture recognition software that lets you move things around on a digital whiteboard, a digital assistant on the screen, a video conference with a colleague with interactive graphics within the video screen, and so forth.

This Microsoft vision is certainly an impressive display of what may well be available.

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Do You Hear How Google Will Search?

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Virginia Nussey had an interesting interview with Matt Cutts on The Future of Search. Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam Team and an all-around authority on Google guidelines and practices.

He had a deal to say about spam but the most intriguing section was on Mobile Search.

2009 will be a big year for mobile.

Yes, another big year for mobile — but for real this time! It’s not that the last several big years for mobile were hoaxes, but rather that we’ve been building to this point for a while now, and the time is finally upon us. The Pew Internet Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center, released The Future of the Internet III report this week and the verdict is in.

By 2020 (and maybe even before that), mobile devices will be the primary connection tool to the Internet. This is a prediction that has rightly scared a few people who realize that this could blur the line between work time and personal time even further. Matt’s concerns lie elsewhere though, focusing on how to make search useful on a small screen and on things like the progress of speech to text, machine translation and face recognition technologies.

Speech technology is the natural way to interact with a small cell phone.  For many, the use of keyboards with incredibly small keys is at the least awkward and in some cases impossible.  There are many challenges in using the rich signals that come from a voice but it must be the eventual winner.  Matt Cutts alluded to this, and I am certain this will prove to be the eventual solution.

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Nuance Grows Even Stronger As It Rides The Sound Wave

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Dave Mock of the Motley Fool suggests that Nuance Bucks the Trend.

Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN) doesn’t top any lists as a recession-resistant stock, but the company is at least showing some solid strength in a tough economic climate.
…
The company says its flagship
Dragon NaturallySpeaking has gotten an enthusiastic welcome since its release. And the mobile sector continues to be strong, as device makers such as Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), and Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) make speech-based interaction a standard feature in new devices.

What had got everyone’s interest was the news that Nuance Buys Philips’ Speech Recognition Unit For $96 Million.

The Philips unit, officially called Philips Speech Recognition Systems (PSRS), is based in Vienna, Austria, and provides a wide variety of speech-recognition solutions in 25 languages to meet medical documentation requirements for hospitals, physician practices, and other health care organizations.

Nuance noted that speech recognition is becoming ubiquitous in European health care markets. Adding that it plans to integrate PSRS’s solutions with many of its existing speech-recognition products, including its Dragon Medical SDK, Nuance said that it plans to fully support all PSRS customers and partners in the future.

Such good results may well be a confirmation of the strength of speech technology, given the growth in the mobile web. Undoubtedly the activities of Google with Android can only help to stir up interest.

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Searching With Your Google Phone

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If it is Google, it must be search

If it carries the Google label, then undoubtedly search will be involved. Marc Vanlerberghe, Google’s Product Marketing Director, has been explaining how Google is integrating search into Android and the T-mobile G1 phone and it’s already impressive. There is also a Google video that goes into more details. (Tip of the hat to SearchEngineWatch)

What becomes more exciting is when you mate up search fully with speech technology, which cannot be far down the road.

For a glimpse of what is coming, see the Google video where human language technology experts at Google, Franz Josef Och and Mike Cohen discuss their exciting research in machine translation and speech technology with Alfred Spector, Google VP of Research and Special Initiatives. GOOG-411 was just the tip of the iceberg. (Tip of the hat – Google Operating System)

Related: G1, Gphone, Tphone – what will you call your Google phone?

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Talent Management Losses At Yahoo

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You’ll be hearing more from Yahoo’s talent.

Some talented management have been leaving Yahoo! this week. Yesterday it was learnt that Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Network division and leader of many of the company’s core products, is leaving the company. Yesterday also veteran developer Jeremy Zawodny, who helped spearhead important projects like the Yahoo Developer Network, announced on his blog that he would be leaving. Today according to the Washington Post, NYT Bits is reporting the departure of Usama Fayyad, chief data officer and EVP of research and strategic data solutions, which is expected to be officially announced later today.

The most intriguing news for those interested in speech technology was an announcement earlier in the week by Nuance Communications that two other ex-Yahoo’s were joining them. Gary Clayton joins Nuance from his role as vice president, Speech Strategy, at Yahoo! where he oversaw speech implementation for the Yahoo! platform and mobile products, including oneSearch with Voice. Prior to Yahoo!, he spent seven years at Tellme Networks, now part of Microsoft.

Victor Chen is also joining Nuance as senior director, Creative Strategy. Prior to joining Nuance, Mr. Chen served as the director of business management at Yahoo! where he was responsible for developing the company?s speech strategy and introducing oneSearch. Prior to Yahoo!, he was director of strategic initiatives with Tellme, guiding the strategy and design of mobile search applications. Mr. Chen will report to Gary Clayton.

Speech technology is playing an increasingly important role in the development of the mobile web and clearly Nuance is strengthening its position as one of the major players. Microsoft has also been acquiring talent to ensure its stake. Only Google has been somewhat quiet in recent months but by the end of 2008 that undoubtedly will change.

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Talk To Your Bank For Added Security

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If it works for your blog, why not your bank?

This blog is created by using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software from Nuance. Just dictate away and typo-free text appears on the screen. It works very effectively and rarely makes a mistake. It really is very impressive. It is one of the reasons why I believe that speech technology is the killer app for the mobile web.

There are countless recent news items to support that belief. Perhaps one of the most dramatic is that banks in the UK will be using voice IDs. The main British banks plan to introduce voice recognition over the next year as a way of deterring card fraudsters, according to speech software specialist Nuance as reported in Personal Computer World.

Ian Turner, general manager for Nuance’s operations in northern Europe, said: “By the end of next year, about 20 million people in the UK will be registered with some kind of system.”

He said voice recognition can be 97 per cent accurate, but it is always used with some other form of identification, such as a password. He added that even good mimics cannot fool the system.

Nuance provides one of the major voice-biometric systems on the market. A recent survey commissioned by Nuance indicated that most people are in favour of multi-factor identification systems, including voice biometrics.

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Forget Typos, Watch Your Speakos

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Your computer will not spot its own speakos.

Move over, small world, it’s a sound world after all. You might be surprised to see (or perhaps to hear) how much speech technology is impacting your own personal world, as compared with say 12 months ago. Clearly, this is not a silent revolution, but you could be forgiven if you had not spotted the changes. Sound is really the killer app. .. and that’s before we hear the impact of the major initiatives that Microsoft and Google have in hand.

Some things are almost imperceptible. Six months ago, you would call your telecom supplier and were frustrated by the experience. You wanted to press zero just to cut through the electronic thicket and get someone who could understand you. If you had an accent, it was even tougher. Call today and in many cases your virtual assistant will do as well as a skilled and well-trained agent could ever have done.

Of course voice to voice is not too difficult. Human beings sometimes have difficulty talking to each other, so we are somewhat forgiving. The much greater challenge is voice to text. Indeed, many readers are sticklers about fine points of grammar and typos. Luckily, most document software has spell checkers. That means that the worst mistakes (typos) can be caught.

This post is being written using
Dragon NaturallySpeaking. By now I have trained it reasonably well so it requires few corrections, even with only a modest microphone. This is a growing trend, as you can see by checking on other blog posts. The one that triggered my writing this post read as follows:
If you have cash higher personalities and market leaders for brand association and exposure.
Clearly the author meant to say:
If you have cash, hire personalities and market leaders for brand association and exposure.

Then this morning, a much more visible example showed up on that excellent blog by Andy Nulman. The title read as follows, Changing The World Once Cellphone at a Time. That clearly is an example of a speako.

Some like Eric Bakovic or Adam Albright question whether that is the best term. Would talko or mistalk be better? Well my vote is for speako. The problem is that, since the computer made the speako and it is not mis-spelled, a spell checker does not spot any mistake.

It’s a fascinating subject. There is a discussion at Cre8asite Forums on this if you’re interested. That even branches into the subject of your blog talking back to you. Check out A.L.I.C.E or PandoraBots if you’d like to see where this is all heading.

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Keep Your Snoopy Eyes On The Road Ahead

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You don’t need maps for driving now.

Given the safety concerns of using a cell phone while driving, the words of that old Paul Evans song from the 60s (Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat) may strike a chord or perhaps a ringtone is now more fitting.

Nuance Mobile and TeleNav have just made it a whole lot easier. They’re encouraging you to throw your maps away. They do this by delivering speech-enabled GPS navigation to mobile phones. Here is part of their description of what they offer:

Using the Nuance Mobile Speech Platform on select devices, TeleNav now provides the ability to enter destinations for driving directions and business category searches by voice, so that subscribers no longer need to use a telephone keypad. Users can simply state the destination address, or select from a database of more than 10 million points of interest by stating a category, such as ?pharmacy,? or by stating a specific business name, such as ?Walgreens.?

Mobile users can conveniently access TeleNav GPS Navigator on a device they already carry with them and receive information in real-time based on their current location. Voice destination entry, which makes navigation services easier to use on mobile phones, has the ability to significantly enhance an already fast-growing market for mobile navigation. Industry analyst firm, In-Stat predicts that the total number of mapping and navigation mobile phone subscribers could exceed 70 million worldwide by 2012.

It certainly seems to be the right time for such voice technology.

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Voice Search On Mobile Phones For A Better User Experience

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Fingers do not walk well on cell phones.

Bill Meisel, president of TMA Associate and the non-profit Applied Voice Input Output Society arranged the Voice Search Conference held in San Diego, California, March 10-12. One question posed there, according to Usability News, was Will Voice Search be THE Usability Breakthrough for Mobile Phones?

The dilemma according to Meisel is:

It’s not unusual for user interfaces to get “stuck” on one model. The layout of keyboards hasn’t changed for decades, for example, despite some efforts to make it easier to use (by putting oft-used letters under the strongest fingers). The telephone’s 12-button keypad is similarly persistent. Persistence of the user interface is a major barrier to increased use of mobile devices beyond communication.

He believes that “voice search” will come to dominate mobile phones. He has some powerful companies who share his view: just think Google, Microsoft and Nuance to name but three. This is an idea whose time has come.

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Voice Recognition Technology To Stop Hospital Cross-Infections

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Hospitals like our homes are becoming increasingly filled with computers. There are clearly many benefits but the computers bring with them certain risks. As a recent article by Steven Reinberg pointed out, Stomach Flu Is Spread By Contaminated Computer Keyboards. As a U.S. health officials report stated, the highly contagious norovirus, often called the stomach flu, can be passed from one person to another through contact with commonly shared items such as computer keyboards and computer mice.

Steven Davidson and Gregg Malkary even go so far as to call mobile computers Dangerous Devices. They advise that:

Hospitals should explore opportunities to invest in mobile computing devices that can be more easily cleaned and sanitized at point of care with standard commercial cleansers. These devices ideally would be water resistant and hermetically sealed to prevent the entry of microorganisms.

Developing such devices represents some real challenges. Mobile computers in hospitals are in some cases called COWs: that stands for computers on wheels. Perhaps there’s more in the acronym that meets the eye.

 
Let your voice do the walking.

Another medical announcement this week may suggest another complementary approach. The Pembroke Regional Hospital Board recently approved the purchase of a new voice recognition dictation system for its diagnostic imaging department. Catherine Junop, vice-president of human resources and organizational services at the hospital, said such systems are becoming the standard in hospital used by radiologists to file their reports. The chief advantage of course is that the System speeds medical information sharing. It also incidentally means that less fingers need to touch keyboards. Perhaps a small side benefit of voice recognition technology in hospitals will be less opportunity for the transfer of infectious diseases.

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