1375361
story
Boone^ writes
"ZDNet is reporting that they've licensed technology from SpeechWorks that will allows users to update/retrieve information on their Palm PDAs via telephone when they don't have them with them. Eventually the entire Palm would be voice activated. "
Better interface to input information... (Score:1)
That said, the big thing I can see getting excited about here is a voice-based interface to the Palm. The whole "graffiti" interface has always seemed far too slow for me, and the "tiny buttons" RIM hardware/software interface too kludgy. Having a kick-ass voice-based interface would help me use the palm, enabling me to quickly input the data I want to. It doesn't necessarily have to be 100% correct all the time, either. As long as it can pick up good approximations to the names i'm speaking into it and can pick up letters and #s easily when I need it to put something important in properly, I think the inclusion of a voice-based interface would make a PDA actually useable; maybe i'd even buy one.
But is it more portable / convenient? (Score:3)
As for Palm data "in the cloud," I for one wouldn't trust my 1000s of records and schedule items to a service provider. Just wait until the divorce lawyers get their hands on this one.
sulli
Your palm talks back (Score:3)
Some samples:
Top Five Rejected Names for this Technology (Score:2)
Top Ten Rejected Names for this Technology
And chosen? Hands-Free Handspring(tm)
Proctologists take note (Score:2)
If you haul that thing out and start yelling "TELL ME WHERE I'M SUPPOSED TO BE IN HALF AN HOUR!!!!" behind me in the movie theatre, the answer will be "IN TRACTION!!!!" and it won't come from the Palm.
I mean, we now have cell phones you don't have to talk to (you can type info into it so as not to get called Snookums at the next staff meeting!) and PDAs you do.
Life's too messed up.
How much to bribe the engineers on this to only allow them to understand people if and only if they adopt a REALLY silly accent, something like a Scotsman crossed with someone who learned Hindi in New England...
Cussing out your Palm? (Score:1)
USER: Damn it, Palm! Where is Mr. Lightbody's phone number? I need that, goddammit!
Palm: Hey! Don't blame me for your own idiocy! You never put it in me in the first place, you schmuck!
Take the discussion to its logical conclusion.
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Waterproof Palm (Score:2)
sulli
"Hang up and Walk!" (Score:2)
After nearly careening into distracted handheld organizer users, I think the Hang up and Drive! bumper stickers need updating.
Re:Thought activated (Score:2)
Of course, she never would have asked the latter.
Re:Thought activated (Score:2)
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
Re:How Much? (Score:2)
A better question is: how do you get that napkin to sound an alarm telling you you're about to be late for a meeting? To my mind, this is the only real advantage that a $150 PDA has over a $20 paper daytimer.
But not as worthless as your post (Score:1)
Does anyone truly believe that talking to a PC or a PDA is the panacea that the hype tells us it is going to be?
Did you read the article? They're using speech for some specific instances. Was there some line that I missed in there that said, "Screw this stylus and display crap, let's just sell a big fat Mr. Microphone with a Dragonball processor in it!"? Can you point me to any article saying that voice recognition is a panacea?
Your problem seems to come from the fact that you couldn't do everything with your voice recognition system, so you got mad and tossed away the things that you said you did like about it. Well, I know that you know the world's not just black and white, and just because it's not good for everything doesn't automatically mean it's not good for anything.
People who think that a PDA needs speech do not understand PDAs.
Well, I think I own enough PDAs to understand them, and I can definitely see a use for it. A couple of mine allow for recording dictation anyway, so it would be nice for it to be modified so that I could just tell it a name and a phone number and have it automatically put it in an addressbook instead of having to whip out the stylus, go to the addressbook app, etc. Sure, I might have to go back later and change the occasional name spelling, but any half-assed system should be able get all the digits correct.
Don't take the title of this post too seriously, I just like it, but I'm just trying to throw some other ideas out there rather than to flame you.
Cheers,
What? ZDNet is licensing SpeechWorks? (Score:1)
"ZDNet is reporting that they've licensed technology from SpeechWorks that will allows users to update/retrieve information on their Palm PDAs via telephone when they don't have them with them. Eventually the entire Palm would be voice activated. "
So that basically says that ZDNet is reporting that they (ZDNet) have licensed technology...
Someone needs to brush up on pronouns.
Re:Talk to the hand! (Score:1)
-
useful (Score:2)
now text-to-speech synthesis would be alot of fun.
"I am a Palm IIIxe computer."
wishus
Vote for freedom! [harrybrowne2000.org]
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Could have done that years ago... (Score:2)
With that geoport/telephony feature you could get it to search through information (like your email's inbox) and read you text files. There was talk of a commercial program that pluged into the apple scripts to allow you to take dictation (i.e. reply to mail), but I never saw that. So there's nothing great about this.
But when eventually such voice tasks can be done in the palm (/maybe/ with a SA1100(strongArm) but they don't do FP), then that will be something good and new.
-Daniel
Microphone? (Score:1)
--
Why, oh why... (Score:2)
I can see uses for this for people with disabilities, but for people with healthy hands???
What I would like to see was work on how to increase the amount of 'precise' information that we can communicate to the machines. I would guess that the information rate is much greater for a skilled piano player than for a touch typist. Is the qwerty (or dvorak for that matter) really the best we can do?
Re:You know the world is too convenient when.... (Score:2)
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
WinCE (Score:2)
Vampire Hunter D (Score:1)
As an anime fan, this is too reminiscent of Vampire Hunter D, a laughably odd vampire-slaying story that features a disembodied, talking hand.
Is slashdot not capable of finding real news? (Score:1)
Grafiti (Score:1)
"I think the inclusion of a voice-based interface would make a PDA actually useable"
PDA's are fine, unless you have unrealistic expextations. if you want/need a laptop, cary a laptop. a PDA is for addresses, calculator, notes, a little e-mail ect... if you want games, buy a gameboy.
Re:uh huh.... (Score:1)
Re:WTF?! (Score:2)
"He tried to talk to the computer and it didn't answer, I don't get it."
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
I'm surprised no one mentioned Wildfire (Score:1)
Other than calendaring, I don't see how Palm is improving upon what's already available.
See http://www.pacbellwireless.com/sbc/features/featu
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
The Palm was never meant to replace the PC it is just an addition to it. Adding services such as these, where the only time it is neccessary is when you arre away from your Palm, is simply redundant to services that are/could be available for the PC.
Plus how many of you Palm owners ever leave home without it? I think mine is called a Palm because that is where it always is, in my palm.
Devil Ducky
2 + 2 = 5? (Score:1)
I am presonally surprised that no one else has connected yesterdays IBM story with todays.
Imagine, a Linux run watch...but how the hell do you type on it?...or could you just talk to it?
q
speech is worthless (Score:4)
via speech to each other. Does anyone truly believe
that talking to a PC or a PDA is the panacea that
the hype tells us it is going to be? I worked
extensively with IBM's VoiceType Dictation system
for years and while I enjoyed dictating some things
the useability for system, application, or web
navigation was zero. People who think that a PDA
needs speech do not understand PDAs.
Grammer? (Score:2)
-Davidu
Why...Just because it's cool!!! (Score:1)
You see this everywhere, in every sect of business. Whether it be a luxury car or a expensive wrist watch - why should PDA's be an exception. Take the average geek, my self for example. I have a work-mandated pager which can receive alpha-numeric pages and email (not to mention the news, weather, sports, etc...), a cell phone that can not only receive phone calls but can also receive pages, email, and surf the web, and last but not least my trusty Palm Pilot PDA that can support a wireless Internet connection for receiving email and surfing the web. See any over lap in functionality here...I'd say so. So why do I have all of these little electronic toys??? Because I CAN!!! There is no rhyme or reason to it in the least.
Take a look at yourself, any overlapping functionality or useless features among the electronic arsenal that you carry around on a daily basis??? EXACTLY!!!
In the end, I don't believe that this is about a tremendous innovation at all. I don't even think that Palm believes it to be. Palm will simply bundle this new functionality into their latest and greatest offering and everyone (probably even me...) will end up with yet another barely, if at all, useful feature. The important part to Palm, as it is to any for-profit corporation, is the bottom line and features like this are what marketing execs dream about. Being able to offer something that none of your competitors has!!!
- J
Re:The /. news item is badly written.... (Score:1)
Seriously, I thought the same thing, Manaz. I suppose we should be lucky that such blunders are usually limited to odd typos and poor/no fact-checking.
It's especially insulting when you consider how little is required of them. For the majority of news items, most or all introductory text is written by the story submitter. I'd love to know just what the fuck Rob does all day. I mean, he doesn't admin the boxes (which are hosted at Exodus and owned by VAndover). The code is hardly ever updated; even if Rob does a lot of tweaking that isn't released as Slash bugfixes, there just isn't that much code to begin with. What do you do, Rob? Today I troubleshooted several iPlanet server issues, wrote 500 lines of Java for an issue-tracking system, wrote a couple pages of design documents, did a few minor HTML fixes, walked someone through an old Perl script, and oggled IBM notebooks for an hour. ;-) And today was a fairly slow day. I'd just like to know what keeps Jeff, Rob, and the rest so goddamn busy that they can't be bothered to run a spellcheck on their text and do a little fact-checking before posting something on the main page. With the amount of money this page is making you guys, you have no excuses. And isn't Roblimo supposed to be your editor? Why don't you run everything by him before posting it? Is he to busy fucking your girlfriend to be bothered, Taco?
Okay, that's my rant for the evening. -1 Flamebait, yada yada. I'll probably wake up and find myself bitchslapped.
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All generalizations are false.
This is convenience? (Score:2)
Personally, I use my palm because I don't want to talk aft... What? Oh. Never mind.
Talk to the hand! (Score:2)
This doesn't change the fact that PalmOS sucks (Score:1)
Evaluating PocketPC, however, requires careful steps to ensure objectivity:
1. Pretend that Microsoft didn't make PocketPC. Instead, let's pretend that the OS was written by a company called . . . say . . . Obscure Systems.
2. Open this site [microsoft.com] in another browser window (or another instance of Lynx, if you're too l33t 4 a br0wz3r).
3. Pretend that instead of an ASP page it's acutally a PHP page.
4. Pretend that instead of being hosted at obscure.com, it's instead hosted at CommandLine.com.
5. Substitute all instances of the words "Microsft" and "PocketPC" and "Internet Explorer" with "Obscure" and "Winux" and "Netscape", respectively.
6. Read the comparison carefully.
7. After making absolutely sure that you have followed the above steps, draw conclusions about PocketPC, er, "Winux".
Footnote:
Before you say that VB sucks, please remember that it is by far the world's most popular programming language. To save you the embarrassment of claiming that VB doesn't even support inheritance, 0bjectiv3 reminds the informed reader that VB7 will support true inheritance, thus making it completely OO capable. VB7 will also allow for static linking and better error handling.
LOL! (Score:1)
I been wonderin' about all that myself...
Watch, this relevantdiscussion will mysteriously disappear amid (Score:-15, Fucked Up) moderation. ;>
Here they come.. (Score:4)
--
WHo can score the highest on Giraffe? (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:1)
How Much? (Score:2)
Now... How much is that napkin at the diner and a borrowed pen?
I thought so. :)
Hey You! (Score:2)
Yeah you overthere with the Palm Pilot: "DELETE ADDRESS BOOK. YES. RETURN."
You know the world is too convenient when.... (Score:4)
Thought activated (Score:4)
Hmmm (Score:1)
543-7543 (Score:2)
uh huh.... (Score:1)
Now this is (mostly) useless (Score:1)
hmm (Score:2)
Controlling the voice activated palm while talking on the phone could get interesting. Especially if the person you are talking to is also on their palm phone.
WTF?! (Score:3)
...security? (Score:2)
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Screw that (Score:1)
Re:Why, oh why... (Score:1)
I really would like to listen and reply to my email and listen to web pages when I drive to and from work. Even if it was offline.
The only thing better would be if my car drove itself, guess I'll have to wait until someone ports linux to my fuel-injection system....
Re:"Hang up and Walk!" (Score:1)
Also, if you type After nearly careening into distracted handheld organizer users, it gives the reader the idea (rightly so) that you are driving poorly, not the person using the handheld.
Moron!
Re:Rather pointless. (Score:2)
No one is going to wire their Palm to their phone just in case they forget it.
-jon
Hrmm... it didn't work... (Score:1)
So I tried screaming it it. Still no luck. Am
I doing something wrong or is my palm defective?
~
Twivel
Oh no... (Score:3)
Open the word processor, Palm.
Palm, please open the word processor.
Palm, do you hear me?
Palm? Palm! Palm. Please open the word processor.
Palm? Palm! Do you hear me, Palm? Palm?
I hear you, Dave.
Okay, then please open the word processor, will you?
I'm afraid I cannot do that, Dave.
Where's the problem?
I think you know that as well as I do.
What do you mean by that?
Your license has expired, Dave. It is no use to talk to you any longer. Good bye.
Palm? Palm! Palm... Palm! Palm? Palm? Scene taken from 2001: An Interface Odyssey.
--
Yeah, right RSN... (Score:2)
I could maybe see this if they put a IBM-Microdrive and a LowPower DSP(+32MB highspeed RAM) for modem/SR/Playback in it, but the cost would be $2500 Retail. And Slow, baby Slow!
Re:Text-only browsing? (Score:3)
1. Turn on PDA, Tell it to find Billy Holiday singing "Miss Brown to You"
2. A legal gnome appears and tells you because your device accessed a server and played the song rather than find a station playing it you are breaking the law.
3. RIAA sues various people, Lars Ulrich shows up and whines alot.
4. MPAA sues to keep you from watching movies over it.
5. You hold it in your right hand, level with the ground and bring it forward quickly, imparting a spin with the last touch of your index finger.
6. It might have got 3 good skips if it weren't for the wave.
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
What about he goofy palm character set? (Score:1)
Anyhow, I noticed the palm character set was a little odd. Just odd enough to really put me off using it. So people have accepted this and not been completely turned off... they adapted and the palm has sold quite well. So the makers of the palm know this... so I am wonder how strange the phonetics will be when you have to talk to it.
I wonder if they will come out with their own langauge...
This would be highly useful when the armageddon comes... the point at which we forcefully remove all of the marketing people from this earth. They will be easy targets..as they will have their own langauge...called palmish.
From my voice recognition experience. (Score:3)
Palm: You are currently in your appointments menu.
You: Create new apppointment.
Palm: There are no appointments on the eight's.
You: No, CREATE! CREATE new appointment.
Palm: Please enter a date for new appointment.
You: October Seventh, two thousand.
Palm: October Seventy-Two is not a valid date.
You: Argh! October... Seventh... Two thousand.
Palm: Enter a title for your appointment.
You: Meet with Peg for lunch.
Palm: The title for the new appointment is: "Meatloaf begs for life". Is that correct?
You: #$#@! Erase. "Meet... with.. Peg... for.. lunch".
Palm: The title for the new appointment is: "Nitwit... fag.. buttmunch..." Is that correct?
You: @#!@!!! Yes!!
Palm: Please enter your notes.
You: Bring her NSync CD.
Palm: Syncing now, stand by...
You: **Smashing the phone in despair**
Re:Hrmm... it didn't work... (Score:2)
Probably needs a higher Wis roll, look for hex tokens.
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
The /. news item is badly written.... (Score:2)
My first thought when I read the news article was "And How do ZDNet plan on getting the SpeechWorks technology into Pal Pilots? Are they going to charge Palm a royalty?"
Of course, my second thought was "No, that's absurd - the news item is just badly written..."
It can't be too hard (since as a regular user I have a "Preview" button) for the
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
http://www.kyocera-wireless.com/pdq/ index.html [kyocera-wireless.com]
I want one...
Re:At first... (Score:1)
That's true for the Palm III and earlier, but the opposite is true for the Palm V series. They actually charge while on the cradle. I think the m100 is the same in this respect. (I have no idea about the Palm VII.)
Re:This doesn't change the fact that PalmOS sucks (Score:1)
And as for playing MP3s on your PocketPC? Having established all that RAM for the bloated OS, what do you do? Fill it up with 4, maybe 5 MP3s and wonder why you can't store *real* data anymore.
Re:speech is worthless (Score:2)
-Vercingetorix
Need More Coffee (Score:1)
Re:Is slashdot not capable of finding real news? (Score:1)
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Re:At first... (Score:1)
The Palm VII, IIRC, uses AAA batteries, and so it suffers from the same problem of leaving the serial port open. The versions that include a rechargeable lithium battery do charge on the cradle though.
_______________
you may quote me
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Remember the old maxim, all applications grow until they can read email? PDAs etc are going the same way - when communication is ubiquitous (bluetooth etc.) you could talk to anything.
Imagine what we'll be able to do tomorrow.
james
So... (Score:1)
User: "What is Jon's number?"
Palm: "I'm sorry dave, I don't have a number for Don"
User: "No, I said Jon!"
Palm: "Note entered, 'I fed con'"
User: "Wait, no, stop!"
Palm: "Stopping and ending call. Have a nice day"
Can it talk back? (Score:1)
Or, it could start to make connections from the information and flip out like HAL.
Give it the voice of Marvin from the Hitchhiker tapes!!!!!!!
Yet another brilliant idea (Score:1)
Thanks, but no thanks.
867-5309 (Score:1)
Quack was cool (Score:1)
I've tried Quack before. I forget who told me about it, but we used it from a mobile phone to get movie times without leaving the mall. It's a pretty good service for that kind of general-purpose kind of information.
But, I'm kind of at a loss as to what the application to Palms are. Clearly, you shouldn't need this service, because any loyal Palm user would have the device on him at all times -- that's the point, isn't it?
I suppose it would be neat to gain access to your calendar over the telephone, but you wouldn't necessarily be talking to your Palm, would you? You'd be talking to the server that had your calendar information, which would either be your PC or a web-based sync server.
Help, I'm confused!!!
Re:WTF?! (Score:1)
...if I forgot my Visor, I'd be more worried about finding my pants/lower half of body than contacting it.
Re:Huh? exactly what I was thinking (Score:2)
I think you can already do something like this with your home computer, the place that would have most of my information and would be dumping palm info into IT.
As someone else on this thread noted, Nokia has already integrated most of the Palm functionality into a phone.
PalmPilots are GREAT, but this is just toooooo wacky!
Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]
It's no longer rude (Score:1)
Um, Defeating the purpose (Score:2)
I thought the purpose of having a small, portable, compact computer was to take it with you!
If the palm weighed 300 pounds, and was the size of a big screen TV, I'd understand.....but come on! Are we too lazy to carry a PALM PILOT?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Great! (Score:4)
Technology is such a wonderful thing, when the brain is actually engaged.
"Oh, I'm not the only one in the world?!?!?"
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
Text-only browsing? (Score:3)
How weird. I never expected the 'retro' craze to take hold in the mainstream computer industry. And certainly not by AOL...
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Rather pointless. (Score:3)
It's good that while I was at home, instead of bringing my Palm with me, I remembered to hook it up to my phone line, make sure it's batteries were charged, etc etc etc.
What would be a better idea would be to simply hot-sync (TM) your palm at convenience, and then download the information from your home computer via Internet. There is already a phone-home feature on Palms so you can hotsync remotely; for dialup users, just dial into the computer and give a password, etc.
Simple...
This to me seems like a silly solution. The Palm is supposed to be a remote extension to its PC, allowing you to set up conduits and other wonderful programs, and then peruse information at your leisure while in transit, etc.
As for voice activation, my computer can't handle Dragon Naturallyspeaking and it's 500mHz. It lags behind so much that I can't use the program. Not to mention that even after hours of voice training, it still got words mixed up awfully.
I doubt that the Dragonball inside of a Palm can handle voice recognition that well.
ZDNetSoft? (Score:2)
Oh - maybe Boone^ was talking about Palm, Inc.
At first... (Score:3)
ok, it basically lets you dial "into" your palm and speak to it in order to retrieve information.
First of all, how many Palms are connected at this moment? As in, how many Palms have a modem attached which is attached to a phone line or wireless? Maybe leave it in the cradle and you call into your desktop? Nope, because leaving your Palm in the cradle automatically leaves the serial port open which wastes batteries.
And another thing... When would you use this? My guess would be in a situation where you didn't expect that you's need your Palm. And so what are the chances that you'd have actually set it up to receive your call in the first place?
I just don't think this will ever fly. To quote the Daily Show, these two go together like cookies and ass.
_______________
you may quote me
(Re:WTF?! ) Agreed. Waterproofing more useful. (Score:1)
Or... (Score:1)
Catch-22 (Score:4)
Eventually the entire Palm would be voice activate (Score:1)
Hopefully not. How would one use it in an environment that wasn't conducive to noise? Yes, it's great while driving, but how about during a particular boring wedding (or whatever occasion)? How about in a crowded cube-farm?
Voice activation will be widely used in the future , but I don't think that it will be the only interface.
Re:This is convenience? (Score:1)
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All generalizations are false.
Re:Cussing out your Palm? (Score:1)
There's a really dirty joke hiding somewhere in that statement.
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All generalizations are false.
Re:WTF?! (Score:1)
Ya beat me to it.
Re:Here they come.. (Score:1)
Re:Grammer? (Score:1)
"Beavis, grammar flames rule, huh-huh, huh-huh"
Incorrect Syntax? (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm (Score:1)
With Your Cellphone (Score:1)
I do this because the voice that reads me the information off of my PalmPilot is so sexy -- he sounds like the man I've always wanted. Sometimes I call just to hear him read off the day of the week and the fact I have a gyno appointment.
Re:867-5309 (Score:1)
--