Blog Recognition
Well it looks like the guys at Nuance not only have speech recognition but also blog recognition. I am also practicing this myself and recognizing a comment I got from them about their mobile dictation project that could be the next big thing.
“Hi guys, glad to see the interest. We at Nuance love showing off the technology for customers. I wrote a little bit about this in my (Nuance-sponsored) blog under this Can’t ignore the iPhone. It was specifically a reaction to the iPhone release but there’s a few links and words about Nuance Mobile Dictation in general. Not trying to be a shill or a salesman here, just providing some more information. Conversations is a customer conference with limited attendance so I’m not expecting any end users reading this to be looking to attend. - Best, Jeff”
If you’d like to hear what I think about Nuance read further.
First off, I want to say I love the work these guys have done with speech recognition. I attended a New York user’s computer group where the guest speaker was David Pogue (Technology columnist for the New York Times). He was there to plug his “Missing Manual” series about Windows Vista. Well, you about half way through you’d think he was there to plug Dragon Naturally Speaking which he said is better than the speech recognition bundled with Vista. He was concerned that people may not realize that. He swears by it and even uses it to write his books. If you are concerned about using it for your documents you can rest assured that David uses it to write entire books. The only reason I sound like a Nuance fanatic is because I am.
So imagine my surprise when a Nuance blogger sends a comment about their upcoming product for mobile devices. If they can do such a great job with speech recognition on the desktop and their videos pan out we could be in for something historic. Just like with high speed cable you may never want to back to texting in its traditional form again.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Hey Fox,
Another Nuancer and die hard Palm fan here!
Nuance publishes a nifty mobile application called Voice Control (www.nuance.com/voicecontrol/), which lets you use your voice to dictate SMS and Emails, browse and search the web, find businesses (411), and quite a bit more on your Palm (and other devices too).
You can download a trial by pointing your Treo’s browser to http://www.nuancevoicecontrol.com. The app works on pretty much any Treo, and comes pre-loaded on Sprint’s Palm 755.
Some instructions on how to use the app are also found on http://www.nuancevoicecontrol.com (from your PC browser).
Enjoy!
August 7th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Mobile dictation is a great thing to show at a party. While it’s not perfect, I demo it and people try it themselves and are blown away. Even with a few errors. But, who cares, when you use T9 or other predictive technologies you’ll get mistakes too (e.g. how many times have you meant to type “me” and predictive text thinks you want to say “of”? Mobile dictation is hands down faster than any other input method - even after making corrections. The only catch is that it really works better for native speakers (i.e. the application has to support your native language to deliver the best results. The other thing to keep in mind too is…when used with applications like SMS, who cares if you make a mistake. It’s like instant messaging - just a quick way to communicate with a friend or colleague to solicit an answer such “U coming over?” or “how’s the hangover?”
I’m personally convinced that dictation will become one of the standard ways that you interface with your cell phone, or your navigation system, or your TV, or your (whatever) appliance.