Talk to the Hand
From: Technology Review - November 2001 - page 20

Clicking through the multiple layers of menus and scrolling through tiny
pages isn't the most efficient way to work with electronic information - just
ask someone squinting at the screen of a personal digital assistant. Liam
Comerford and his colleagues at IBM's Watson Research Center in Yorktown
Heights, NY have developed an alternative that allows interaction through
conversational voice commands. Called the Personal Speech Assistant, this
handheld goes above and beyond the voice-activated menu commands available
with other devices. It understands natural-language queries such as "Show me
my address book," or "When's my next appointment?" The assistant extracts the
pertinent information from its database and answers with synthetic speech. It
also tailors its responses based on the user's needs; if someone forwards
through the detailed instructions, for example, the device automatically
starts to deliver shorter prompts. As an added bonus, the prototype
translates English phrases into any of five languages. The prototype is a
stationary unit that cradles a Palm III, but within a year, the software
should be available for handheld-device manufacturers in incorporate into
their products. "It's mostly a matter of the right party stepping up and
saying, "Gimmee,'" Says Comerford.

http://www.hursley.ibm.com/htf/demos/one.html
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2449321,00.html
http://www.pc.ibm.com/europe/pcnews/ibms_new_speech-enabled_device.html
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/comerford01ibm.html