[bookshare-discuss] Fwd: Fw: Google Looks to Voice-Activated Search
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:17:29 -0700 (PDT)
I thought you all might be interested in this article
that Louise sent to me.
Cindy
--- Louise <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: "Louise" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Louise Gourdoux" <bookscanner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Fw: Google Looks to Voice-Activated Search
> Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 07:39:07 -0500
>
>
>
> Sci-Tech Today
> Thursday, April 13, 2006
>
> Google Looks to Voice-Activated Search
>
> By Elizabeth Millard
>
> Speech-to-text tools are not new, having arrived a
> few decades ago in the
> form of transcription applications. But products for
> the Web, especially
> those that allow the visually impaired to surf the
> Internet, have been slow
> in coming.
>
> In a sign that Internet search might soon be
> unshackled from traditional
> PCs, Google has been granted a patent for technology
> that would enable users
> to enter search queries by talking rather than
> typing.
>
> With the new technology, a Google search could be
> initiated through a
> computer's microphone or even by phone.
>
> The patent, granted on April 11, covers a "voice
> interface for a search
> engine" and is described as a system that provides
> search results from a
> voice-based query.
>
> In addition to being a boon for the visually
> impaired, a voice-activated
> tool would be ideal for mobile services.
>
> Keyboard Begone
>
> Although Google is not commenting on the potential
> applications of the
> patent, two Google employees named on the patent
> presented an academic paper
> in 2002 that discussed the topic.
>
> "Spoken queries are a natural medium for searching
> the Web in settings where
> typing on a keyboard is not practical," wrote
> Alexander Franz and Brian
> Milch in the article.
>
> The pair noted that Web search has several
> properties that make it a
> "particularly difficult speech-recognition problem."
>
> Issues include translating the spoken search queries
> and creating a large
> enough vocabulary database to accommodate most
> requests. Also a concern is
> being able to do voice recognition in real time.
>
> Forward March
>
> Speech-to-text tools are not new, having arrived a
> few decades ago in the
> form of transcription applications. But products for
> the Web, especially
> those that allow the visually impaired to surf the
> Internet, have been slow
> in coming.
>
> "The difficulty has been that human speech has
> layers of meaning, plus, in
> some ways, the computer has to be dumb enough to
> understand anybody, to cut
> down on programming it for just one person's voice,"
> said Mike Calvo, chief
> executive of Serotek, a company that develops
> products for the visually
> disabled.
>
> Calvo, who is blind, is familiar with how the
> speech-recognition field has
> changed since its inception. "Computers are getting
> smarter, and fortunately
> people are getting geekier," he said.
>
> What might give Google an edge is that human
> conversation is complex, but
> identifying individual words is quite easy for
> computers at this point,
> Calvo noted. "Recognizing words is a piece of cake,"
> he said. "It's
> conversation flow that's tough."
>
>
>
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Google-Looks-to-Voice-Activated-Search/st
> ory.xhtml?story_id=0310038EFQS7
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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> Release Date: 4/12/2006
>
>
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