Are You Talking to Your PC Yet? 333
An anonymous reader writes "If you have ever asked "Do those speech-to-text apps like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM ViaVoice really work?" Pocket PC Addict has posted a detailed review of Dragon Naturally Speaking for Pocket PC and Desktop machines. It is written from the perspective of someone who has been burned by speech to text software in the past and had vowed to never try one of these apps again. It is encouraging for slow typists who would like to use their voice to write. Plus it details some valuable tips for using it with Pocket PCs."
Clippy (Score:5, Funny)
I treid with my Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
other than that I thought it was cool to say "computer give me brad's number" and it would display my buddy brad's phone number on the screen
Re:I treid with my Mac (Score:2)
Re:I treid with my Mac (Score:2, Informative)
Said in another way: when you issue a voice command to OS X, it has to choose between 40-100 alternatives (this is guesswork). (True) speech recognizers work with +60K vocabula
Re:I tried with my Mac (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I tried with my Mac (Score:2)
Re:I tried with my Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
Then she tried to use it. Even the training procedure was difficult for her. She grew up in the midwest and had no discernable accent, so that wasn't the problem. Near as I could determine, she didn't always have the same inflection when saying many words. Without the consistency of pronunciation, the softwa
OpenSource Voice recognition projects? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OpenSource Voice recognition projects? (Score:4, Interesting)
Summary of the article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Summary of the article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Summary of the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I see the master plan. Rather than improving speech-to-text technologies, the focus is on destroying basic literacy [slashdot.org]. Apart from the word 'grape', I parsed that sentence without even having to mentally translate it.
Based on current experience, I'd say speech-to-text is going to be a growing market :-(
Dohh! (Score:2)
It screws up with my accent (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It screws up with my accent (Score:2)
My problem (Score:5, Funny)
MOD PAIR RENT UP (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My problem (Score:2)
It interpreted "Open Explorer" to "Moment is poor".
Open Explorer? Moment is poor. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My problem (Score:2)
Spoken programming languages (Score:4, Interesting)
If not, why not?
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, maybe you could base it on perl!
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:5, Funny)
"code that %&#@% interface by tomorrow you @#$%@ piece of *&^$&!!!"
Boss, is that you?
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Ashok?! Get back to work!
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Actually, I thought that sample looked more like a mix of APL and COBOL...
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Wow. Never thought of that. (f)lex for spoken language.
Scary.
Soon we will have yalc. Where l = language and c = compiler, so we will have "yet another language compiler" like we have yacc.
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Re:Spoken programming languages (Score:2)
Discrete, not "natural" speech (Score:2)
Yes, in fact I am (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been working recently on a language I call 'verbal'. My goal initially was a language I could use in the car, while driving. (I love to code.)
I realized that such a language would be useful for blind people and anyone who couldn't type.
The target is a language that will mimic a subset of English, so that a program might be:
I've written a compiler that translates that kind of thing int
Voice recognition is great (Score:4, Funny)
Voice Recognition (Score:2)
Re:Voice Recognition (Score:2)
Are You Talking to Your PC Yet? (Score:5, Funny)
You god damned son of a bitch! F'n Piece of shit!
Re:Are You Talking to Your PC Yet? (Score:2)
Are you bragging?
Re:Are You Talking to Your PC Yet? (Score:2)
How 'bout you? Has your humour always been so bad even the Amish think your company sucks?
Fun with Macros (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fun with Macros (Score:2)
Re:Fun with Macros (Score:2)
though it was funny watching what programs it would have to run through when I started cursing in frustration
Years ago Apple implemented voice recognition built into OS9. The peak for me was when I managed to get it to connect the internet, download my e-mail, and read the messages to me, without having to get out of bed. Unfortunately, the system suffered from just the problem you are mentioning. If it did not understand what you said it would assume you meant "open netscape." Do you know how long it
Re:Fun with Macros (Score:2)
Re:Fun with Macros (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fun with Macros (Score:2)
Seems to me that would eliminate a lot of the trouble.
Note to self (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Note to self (Score:2)
Re:Note to self (Score:3, Funny)
Via Voice is excellent (Score:2)
all the time (Score:2)
That looks promising (Score:2, Funny)
Huh? What? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? What? (Score:2)
Heh- (Score:2)
I tried it out, and surprise! it didn't work very well.
I see nothing has changed.
I WAS getting excited... (Score:2)
No wireless. Less space then a Nomad. Lame.
Tried that (Score:2)
Re:Tried that (Score:2)
Am I talking to my PC yet? (Score:2)
It was her fault though...crapping out on me like that when I was just past Level 5 in digdug.exe.
And just when I was going to get her a shiny new Windows 3.11 for Christmas too. It sure is a pity. It'll be a while before I'm ready for another relationship.
Why I've never liked speech to text (Score:5, Interesting)
2. It is very tedious to go back and edit or make corrections. If I make an error while typing, I'm cognizant of the error very soon after it happens. With voice recognition, techincally "someone else" is typing and it takes more time to see where the mistakes were made.
3. I deal with lots of boilerplate text with original content intermingled. A lot of times working on such a text becomes an editing process where using the keyboard & mouse is more efficient.
4. My voice doesn't last for much longer than 30 minutes for non-stop speaking...and that's with short breaks for water.
Conclusion: Just hire a hot secretary that can type.
Re:Why I've never liked speech to text (Score:2)
Only type?
Re:Why I've never liked speech to text (Score:2)
I would imagine that there are some people out there who can talk for hours on end, but can't type.
I've been swearing at it for years... (Score:4, Funny)
great if you have carpel tunnel. (Score:2)
Though i've never used this personally. I had a co-worker who was strickened by carpel tunnel. We both worked in tech support at the time. In order to accomadate her she was allowed to use DNS. To be honest after training it ( which is the most tedious part) it worked quite well. To an auther or someone who types for aliving this is a great tool. The only other concern I've heard is it does require a reasonable amount of computing power.
I tried Dragon Dictate... (Score:5, Interesting)
"http://www.goat.cx/ Take that you bukkake loving lunixtards."
Your co-workers would think you were a nutjob if they saw half of what you posted as AC to Slashdot.
Re:I tried Dragon Dictate... (Score:2)
As AC? Shit man, most people would think I was nuts if they saw half of what I posted _with_ my username.
Re:I tried Dragon Dictate... (Score:2)
Your coworkers probably already consider you a nutjob.
Re:I tried Dragon Dictate... (Score:2)
Have you tried using your touch-tone pad when prompted to say your SSN and PIN? Your bank may very well be different, but every automated phone system I've used has allowed me to do either.
Granted, someone with a tap on your line would still be able to determine your numbers by analyzing the touch tones just as easily as from hearing you say them...
Re:I tried Dragon Dictate... (Score:2)
If you listen long/often enough, you'll have all the numbers together, but still not in the right order. Safe enough for most applications.
Kind of offtopic though.
Bye egghat.
1st experience (Score:2)
Looking backward, depending on my mood my voice should be like mmm remember those distorted graphics where people can say what text is in there but not OCR used for confirmations in web sites? well, the same :)
Let's Say it's Perfect...it's Still Dumb. (Score:2)
Even if this were perfect, it would still be stupid. Have you ever listened to yourself talk? Do you really want that recorded?
More to the point: have you ever learned a foreign language? Remember how obscenely different the written language is than the spoken one? The same is true of English, we just don't notice it as much. There are more stringent requirements for written speech -- that's why giving dictation is so hard. Complete sentences, no body language or appreciable emphases, paragraph stru
The Unfinished Revolution (Score:2)
An important read on this topic is The Unfinished Revolution [readinggroupguides.com] by the late Michael Dertouzos. In the book he describes the core technologies and approaches of human-centric computing, and speech interface is included as an essential ingredient. It's not just for "slow typists who would like to use their voice to write", it's for the future of computing.
If by talking you mean.... (Score:2)
Speech built into Mac OS X 10.3 (Score:2)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is excellent (Score:3, Informative)
Mac OS X PlainTalk "Speakable Items" (Score:4, Interesting)
I use the text-to-speech on several crontab entries. Chip (yes, that's the computer's name) will announce basic daily schedule items, such as the date in the morning, kid's bedtime, and a final signoff at 11pm. I added some checks so it wouldn't talk whenever iDVD or iTunes was running. I used to have it monitor news headlines too, but it would talk too often and we would tune it out.
I also tried some "Speakable Items" for basic tasks. Essentially, there is a special folder with a number of AppleScript files. The filenames are their voice triggers. If the computer hears you say one of those filenames, it runs the AppleScript. There are nested directories with items for specific applications, so you can speak the global commands or the active app's specific commands. Well thought-out.
Some Speakable Items could come in handy, but the eMac microphone is too limited to be able to command the machine from across the room. You also cannot have a set of Speakable Items somewhere which are still active when nobody's logged in. Thus, I need to have a user logged in (and then turned away with user switch). Lastly, for most of the automation tasks I'd like to run, Perl or Bash is a better choice than AppleScript, but Speakable Items must be special text-command files or AppleScript, and I can't imagine making a bunch of AppleScript stubs for each Unix-style script I would write. These each limit the usefulness of the voice-commandable appliance I was hoping for.
On the utility side, speech command would be great for specific queries, "Chip, what day is it?" and generic countdowns: "Chip, give me ten!" and he'll tell you when ten minutes have elapsed.
Our programmers loved that (Score:2)
I just always imagine a room full... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I just always imagine a room full... (Score:2)
Might make for a good sitcom scene...
Problem with speech to text (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone designs a good open source speech to phoneme architecture, I'm sure people would start working on phoneme to text AI algorithms.
They say: "Open source? Death!!! Where will our revenues for research go?"
But... what use is patenting/selling something that doesn't work in the first place?
Again, this is only my personal opinion. (I couldn't RTFA because... *slashdotted*
I talk to mine all the time (Score:2)
Which is weird, since it doesn't have a mic or speakers.
Right now it's telling me that it's time to go home and clean the guns.
Re:I talk to mine all the time (Score:2)
WireDog;
Please let us know when your computer tells you to bring those guns to work for "show and tell".
Unfortunately, whatever day that will be is the day I have an off-site meeting. :-(
But let me know the day before, just in case.
Voice Software (Score:2)
Sometime in the post Pentium revolution, algorithms got a shot in the arm and dictation software started getting significantly better even before training.
The biggest problem I've had is that reading a predetermined text to a computer doesn't sound anything like my causal style speech I'm going to use for voice input. Anything I read over turned out re
my (limited) experience (Score:3)
The good news is, you can play "Telephone" all by yourself! Remember that game where you sat in a circle, and one person says a sentence to the person next to him, and he tells the next person, and so on all around the circle, and then you hear the final version? Just talk to your computer, then when your words are shown (incorrectly) on the screen, read those words back, and so on. Easier and more fun than going from german to french to english to spanish to french to german to english in babelfish.
I used to talk... (Score:2)
Using DNS/Natlink/Vocola (Score:2, Informative)
Very Convincing Video Demo (Score:2)
I wish I could figure out how to embed a url without printing out the entire url.
Problem with text-to-speech (Score:2)
Also, how would you say: Keyboard for me....
I believe it has to be said... (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Voice recognition, apple and applescript (Score:2)
I must say this stuff is very forgiving and for the kinds of actions like open, c
slow typist? (Score:2)
I always assumed that speech recognition was for cases where typing was not possible (e.g. in a car, if you are handicapped, etc).
I get more throughput typing my own letters than dictating to a stenographer, for example.
Nat Friedman's experience (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Forget talking to PC's (Score:2)
(and yes, I know that this is not pure aluminum - it is aluminum oxide)
Re:Forget talking to PC's (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Forget talking to PC's (Score:2)
Re:Article text (Score:2)
Re:Article text (Score:2)
Re:Can't RTFA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:is it perfect yet? (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory (Score:2)