RSSVista to Include Speech Recognition
By Nate Mook | Published August 8, 2006, 3:54 PM
Microsoft announced Tuesday that it would ship Windows Speech Recognition in eight languages as part of Windows Vista, the first time its flagship operating system would include the technology. Vista users will be able to issue commands and dictate text in applications.
The Redmond company also plans to integrate Speech Server 2007 into Office Communications Server 2007, canceling the individual product. However, Microsoft says it will continue to support current Speech Server 2004 customers until 2014.
Microsoft detailed the roadmap changes at the SpeechTEK 2006 conference in New York, where it demonstrated the new technologies, which the company says are vastly improved over previous generations. The idea is to reduce mouse and keyboard usage to boost productivity.
Windows Vista will guide users through a training process, in which the operating system optimizes speech recognition for their voice. The technology will support U.S. English, U.K. English, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Japanese, German, French and Spanish languages upon release.
Office Communications Server 2007, which will serve as Microsoft's new unified communications hub when it ships next year, will provide speech APIs for developers who can create applications and build additional revenue streams using the functionality.
"The integration of this proven, reliable technology into Office Communications Server further demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to providing our customers and partners with a truly unified communications solution and platform," remarked Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft.
At this point, having grown tired of trying to find something Vista that makes me want to push my company to upgrade to it (no, I haven't found a solid reason yet), they'd need to include thought-recognition and drop the price to under $100/seat to make it appealing. I'm not impressed. I've been using it since alpha 2 and am on the latest build. Still hoping they do something really impressive. So far, it's all dressing and not much substance. Some of that is failure on their marketing to tout the meat first, then the potatoes. Voice recognition is candy. NOBODY NEEDS IT.
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|they'd need to include thought-recognition and drop the price to under $100/seat to make it appealing
That's a bit harsh. A computer with a neural interface of some sort is a computer I would actually pay more than $2000 for.
NOBODY NEEDS IT.
I am sure some double amputees would disagree; but they probably already have 3rd party solutions anyway.
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|Can anyone say the emperor's new clothes? I used to have a Star Trek sample from Voyager that everytime XP couldn't do domething it said 'unable to comply' instead of that annoyingly deep sound you get like an electronic car bump.
Vista is not that much more than XP with window dressing. Yes there are some new features (yes I do know that!!) but to call it a new OS instead of XP v2 is ludicrously laughable.
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|Amazing. Can't wait to hear it say "what a great big con for your pocket".
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|Maybe i'm the only oddball when it comes to voicerec features, but I hate the whole idea. Tried it for months and grew very tired of it. Who wants to talk out loud anyway. In an office setting, most of us would prefer the person in the next cube to just shut the hell up.
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|wow! just what will ms think of next? This is certainly a new and innovative feature, finally they are doing something noone has ever done before!
wait... didn't IBM incorporate Voice Type, Dictation and navigation into OS/2 Warp 4 back in the mid 1990's?
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|OS/2 has already been dug up from its grave and re-buried early in this topic.
That poor poor horse.
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|*sigh* :(
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|Will the system be {individual} voice specific or directly usable for any body's voice without prior training to PC? Can this new system accept multiple voices at a time?eg group discussion. Can it also directly convert telephonic voice in to written speech?
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|Want it to butter your toast in the morning too?
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|Last month the Pathologist at the hospital that I work at started dictating cases directly into the laboratory information system (LIS) using a Windows XP, Windows 2000 and a third party application that uses Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance Communications (NUAN). I only needed to make minimum changes to the LIS. I was so impressed by the software that I have since purchased stock in Nuance.
Go to: www.nuance.com to learn more about speech recognition.
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|I hope you didn't buy it near it's top around $13. From the chart, the only place it's going to go is south.
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|Wow...this is OLD OLD OLD News...I heard about this like 2 years ago....
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|Congrats to you. Want a cookie?
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|Heello Compuuuter.....
Just what I need, something else to talk to that probably won't listen to me.
db.
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|too late
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|...
Bill Gates said recently that he is "80% sure"
WinVista will be released on time.
If he's ~only~ 80% sure WinVista will be
released on time, ought they at this late
date be adding a major new feature-set ?
Personally, the PC Rodent views including
speech recognition as risky for Microsoft:
It's likely not to function very well, and Vista
shall probably have sufficient defects without
adding a new problem-prone feature.
Mouse gestures in Opera works ~really~ well.
Would have liked to seen THAT added at the
system level in WinVista.
It's more simple and more reliable than voice
recognition. But, Microsoft always has to make
the big play. Simple-and-reliable isn't grand
enough for Microsoft !
...
The Computer Rodent
...
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|They aren't adding a new feature. Vista Beta 2 has speech recognition. I use it and it works well.
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|OT:
"Mouse gestures in Opera works ~really~ well.
Would have liked to seen THAT added at the
system level in WinVista."
To do that would be considered anti-trust and monopolistic as there are 3rd party companies (at least Logitech, that I know of) that offer that kind of functionality at the OS level.
Let's not forget, we don't want MSFT bundling everything on the planet INTO the OS. Makes it really hard for us 3rd party developers. As it is, Vista is bundling too much already.
~dnc
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|As long as it doesn't talk back! :P
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|maybe we could rename it hal9000 sort of like your name, and then it can sing a song...
Daaaiiissseeyyyssss....
sorry....
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|It didn't *want* to be a computer...
It wanted to be a lumberjack, swinging from tree to tree....
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|woo hoo! Only 12 years after OS/2 shipped a far better version that ran on 100mhz computers. :D
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|There have been third party Windows speech recognition applications available that have been far superior to anything in OS/2 for many years. I've used Dragon Naturally Speaking 3.0 software on an old Packard Bell computer with a Pentium (P5) 100 MHz processor and 32MB of RAM running Windows 98 and acheived 100% accuracy even at very fast rates of speach.
With the exception of speech recognition, for every feature in OS/2, Windows has always had a superior equivalent.
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|Excuse me?
You *do* know OS/2 was a 32-bit OS, don't you?
...that it was out *well* before Windows 95? (which was *barely* a 32-bit OS)
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|but he is saying now that windows is better now then os/2 was in 95.....
so there, see ive proved it, windows is above all
(that was a joke by the way:-))
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|Windows has always had a superior equivalent.
Ya see, back in 300BC, Windows had a superior equivalent. ;)
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|Windows NT 3.1 was better than OS/2 was, but then just about any operating system was better than the mess IBM called OS/2.
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|Woo! Only 12 years after OS/2 included a version that worked far better. :D
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|If you want to see Speech Recognition in action, here you are:
http://www.istartedsomet...-recognition-screencast/
Integration with web browser is very powerfull.
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|Speech recognition available with the next version of Windows--I've heard that before. Frankly, this is one area even I can't give an optimistic comment about. Speech recognition needs a great deal of work before it works well enough IMO. Maybe MS will surprise me, but based on current "speech recognition" in Microsoft Office and such, I'm guessing it will not work well if your voice has any changes in tone due to weather, if you have a cold, etc. :\
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|it will work as well as ocr for scanners worked:-)
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|It had better be a lot more accurate than the speech recognition currently available in the Tablet PC edition of XP, because that speech recognition is horrible. I tried training it for hours and still got no better than about 65% accuracy. The third party software I use gets at least 90-95% of what I say right.
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|Not bad at all.
I can see it now: Tomorrow, Microsoft will announce a new, "Technologically-advanced" PC microphone that is "optimized" for Windows Speech Recognition. =p
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|It's always fun to watch MS demostrates their product. I remembered years ago when they try to demostrate either Win95 or 98, and as soon as BG pop something in the computer, it gave him BSOD.
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|OMEG LOLS.
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|This only happened on Windows 98 when Bill Gates tried to demonstrate the new USB support that first appeared in Windows 98 (this was the first retail product with USB support).
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|LOL......thanks for the video PC Tool. That is funny.
I love the "double the killer delete select all". :D
Hahahahahaha!
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|Who says I can't bash MS with the best of 'em. ;)
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|Welcome to OS/2 Warp 4.
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|I was never able to get that to work as anything more than an amusement.
DragonNaturallySpeaking, however, works flawlessly for me.
I can only hope the issues they had with the Vista Beta improve upon release...that was Bad™.
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|Agreed. Dragon is excellent!
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|Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.
...
..
Sorry, was testing Vista speech recognition. ;)
http://video.google.com/...id=-1123221217782777472 [Vista Speech Recognition Demo goes awry]
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|Nice...
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|Sadly, this was widely reported on the 29th....
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|lol, that was funny.
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|Reminds me of that live Windows 98 BSOD error :)
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|I love the whole "Welcome to our world" touch the girl gives at the end. =p
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