OK, where's our talking apps??

[Amedee Van Gasse]

On Tue, July 24, 2012 04:03, Ric Moore wrote:
> This is getting old. Even a stinking cell phone has Siri or iRis. I
> think my USB headset is older than most cell phones and I'd like for it
> to have a purpose. So, why are we getting short shrift on having a
> conversation with our computers? Inquiring minds would like to know if
> anything is in the pipeline? I would have thought that Unity would be
> the launch pad to voice command of your computer.
>
> If someone says it'll be in 12.10, but not 12.04, I'll go postal. :) Ric

Ahhh yes, good old L&H Speech Products that went bankrupt in 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernout_%26_Hauspie

A small history lesson:
The technology of L&H was bought by Scansoft.
Some time later, Scansoft merged with Nuance and became Nuance
Communications. Nuance was a spin-off of the Stanford Research Institute,
which is an offshoot of a DARPA project.
Siri was made by Siri Inc, which is also an SRI offshoot.
Siri Inc and Nuance Communications worked together to integrate Siri in
the iPhone for Apple.

I'm sorry Ric, but speech technology is actually *very* hard and what you
now know as Siri is the result of over 20 years of research in artificial
intelligence, originally intended as a military project for a smart
soldier's assistant. And most of the technology is really not open source
and heavy encumbered by patents.


But did you have a technical support question or did you just want to
rant? ;-)

-- 
Amedee