Comments on: Why The Tellme Acquisition By Microsoft Matters http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/20/why-the-tellme-acquisition-by-microsoft-matters/ Simon Brocklehurst's Technology Blog Sun, 12 Oct 2008 02:24:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: simon http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/20/why-the-tellme-acquisition-by-microsoft-matters/#comment-26000 simon Wed, 21 Mar 2007 19:39:14 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/20/why-the-tellme-acquisition-by-microsoft-matters/#comment-26000 A few coments on your comment: Re: The UI. I haven't tried the TellMe beta. However, there's no reason for this to multiple clicks. It can be "push to talk" and that's it. So, you push and hold the button, say your query, e.g. "pizza, San Francisco"; then release the button. That's it. Then you get your results. It could be pretty slick - the typical voice sample for this is 2KB-4KB in size i.e. fast to upload. Re: the state of speech recognition. I don't know how well TellMe's systems work. Yes, there are problems with speech recognition if people don't talk clearly; but if they do, the systems can handle different accents pretty well. As I say, I don't know how well TellMe's systems work - but they have built their main business sucessfully around speech recognition. So, it must be at least "good enough". And, you could believe that by centrally processing millions of voice samples, they could have done something innovative here in terms of dealing with different voices. They might not have done - but it is *possible* they have... A few coments on your comment:

Re: The UI. I haven’t tried the TellMe beta. However, there’s no reason for this to multiple clicks. It can be “push to talk” and that’s it. So, you push and hold the button, say your query, e.g. “pizza, San Francisco”; then release the button. That’s it. Then you get your results.

It could be pretty slick - the typical voice sample for this is 2KB-4KB in size i.e. fast to upload.

Re: the state of speech recognition. I don’t know how well TellMe’s systems work. Yes, there are problems with speech recognition if people don’t talk clearly; but if they do, the systems can handle different accents pretty well. As I say, I don’t know how well TellMe’s systems work - but they have built their main business sucessfully around speech recognition. So, it must be at least “good enough”. And, you could believe that by centrally processing millions of voice samples, they could have done something innovative here in terms of dealing with different voices. They might not have done - but it is *possible* they have…

]]> By: Asam Bashir http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/20/why-the-tellme-acquisition-by-microsoft-matters/#comment-25991 Asam Bashir Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:16:23 +0000 http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/20/why-the-tellme-acquisition-by-microsoft-matters/#comment-25991 If you need to press buttons, then record a voice, then press a button to send to servers, it's not going to work. It has to be quicker then being able to key in a query, for that you still need some voice activation on the phone side. Which is still possible, but it's going to need an increadibly slick GUI and system to deal with that. Also, even on the server side, how is any voice recognition going to deal with variabilty in language and reginal accents? This has always been the problem with voice recognition, if you're a US English speaker you're ok, but have you tried those recognition programs with even an English accent? You end up having to talk with a silly American accent, so it becomes a little embarrising to use if you're in the presence of other people. Until you have recognition in different languages, non-English speakers will have major problems. Imagine a French speaker, using the recognition in English, don't see any software recognition technology being able to handle that. If you need to press buttons, then record a voice, then press a button to send to servers, it’s not going to work. It has to be quicker then being able to key in a query, for that you still need some voice activation on the phone side. Which is still possible, but it’s going to need an increadibly slick GUI and system to deal with that.

Also, even on the server side, how is any voice recognition going to deal with variabilty in language and reginal accents? This has always been the problem with voice recognition, if you’re a US English speaker you’re ok, but have you tried those recognition programs with even an English accent? You end up having to talk with a silly American accent, so it becomes a little embarrising to use if you’re in the presence of other people. Until you have recognition in different languages, non-English speakers will have major problems. Imagine a French speaker, using the recognition in English, don’t see any software recognition technology being able to handle that.

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