MS Mobiles reports that Microsoft Voice Command, for the Pocket PC will let you use your voice to look up contacts, place phone calls, get calendar information, play music, and launch applications. It is expected to be available in early November for $39.
The Voice Command application is said to be speaker independent, requiring no voice training.
Voice Command was created for people on the move such as in the car, walking down the street, or holding packages. Hands-free, voice-controlled interaction is available. It works with Windows Mobile 2003 software for Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone.
If you need to call a number that is not in your contact list, just say the phone number or play your music collection like your own personal DJ.
Fonix VoiceDial for Pocket PC and Fonix iSpeak for Pocket PC might be placed in a “talking head” - VoiceDial listens while iSpeak “talks” - select your language.
Two Microsoft Xbox games are using Fonix voice-command technology. Both Rainbow Six 3, published by Ubisoft and SWAT: Global Strike Team, published by Sierra Entertainment, feature voice-command features based upon Fonix technology available in Microsoft’s Xbox developer’s kit (XDK).
Fonix speech recognition is available to developers in the Microsoft XDK in multiple languages, including English and U.K. English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.
ExtremeTech writes about the Connected Car, “a concept that’s as alluring as it is frightening” and NPR reported on the Win CE-equipped BMWi - which has a few bugs. A Thai finance minister, for example, on his way to a meeting became trapped in his car when the onboard computer of his BMW malfunctioned, shutting down the engine, locking all the doors and windows, and sealing him and his driver inside. Smart Mobs has more on The Connected Car.
The W3 “Voice Browser” Working Group is developing “speech” standards while SpeechTEK EXPO, held earlier this month, featured many new products. It’s the world’s premier event dedicated exclusively to speech products, applications and solutions. A few of the new products to be showcased at last year’s SpeechTEK included:
- ScanSoft Naturally Speaking
- IBM Via Voice
- ScanSoft: RealSpeak
- Microsoft Speech SDK for .Net
- The DDLinux page
- Aculab TTS V3.0, is the latest version of its host based text to speech software. Their Speaker Verification Software is designed for use in telephony applications and forms a component part of Aculab’s new connected word recognition (CWR) 3.0 package.
- SandCherry, will showcase SoftServer 2.3 which allows for affordable mass deployment of next-generation services, such as voice dialing, voice-enabling customer service applications and multimodality.
- SVOX Mobile, the Swiss specialist for text-to-speech technology, introduces SVOX Mobile, an embedded product line for mobile phones and the world’s smallest diphone synthesis, Their concatenative text-to-speech runs on the Symbian OS.
- Babel Technologies, a world leader in speech processing technologies, will be demonstrating new and existing products including BrightSpeech, its new Text-to-Speech engine and Infovox Desktop, the lastest version of its popular Text-to-Speech multi-lingual software. Check out their text to speech demos (.wav files) in American English, British English, Arabic, Czech, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese and Turkish.
- Kirusa, the leading developer and licensor of multimodal wireless platforms, will showcase real-world examples of voice and visual integration enhancing the benefits of wireless applications. It allows wireless phone and PDA users to access and enter content by speaking commands or information, or by using visual signals such as typing or gesturing to their handset. Check out their sports demo.
- SpeechStudio Suite is a complete set of tools, utilities, and controls for rapidly constructing, integrating, or prototyping speech and telephony applications. Portland-based, SpeechStudio is the first vendor to field an integrated voice interface development tool suite and has received positive reviews.
- May We Help provides companies with real-world voice and internet customer communications solutions including: VoiceXML.
Daily Wireless has more on Lip Reading Computers, Talking Books and Natural Language Input.
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