CNN Reports a Speech Renaissance

If only it were true. Alot of the really good speech technology is mired in poor voice user interface design. The few applications that are well designed - are to the companies and users that employ them - sine qua non.

Here's the article from CNN that posted today. My hope is that adaptive speech will be the inflection point that will vault Speech Technology into the true renaissance - really usable speech technology just cannot be beaten. Speech is a good technology to open interfaces - that were previously closed. For example, autocomplete tends to annoyingly finish off my text input into my bluray - however speech would allow me to sound out a letter by letter much faster than an awkward input session from an LCDTV Remote / and it would do it in a very streamlined way - we would be able to use our cellphones, for example - to input into netflix queue - or youtube search terms - and do away with some of the strange tricks one has to employ in trying to type with an LCD TV Remote.

A good goal would be untethering the tethered appliances from the net. All that need be made available from the appliance is an API call and a way to traverse the network to make the API function call. With a portable cellphone, it would be a great way to add an interface to something that may not have had it before. And not have to haul around a laptop or a PC in order to use the new interface.