Conversations Control Computers
From: Technology Research News - 01/19/2005
By: Eric Smalley

Workplaces are typically filled with short conversations about scheduling and
assignments that require employees to take notes and mark their calendars,
and it is possible to converse and operate a handheld computer using a series
of vocalizations provided by speech recognition software that captures
appropriate conversational excerpts. This capability is provided by a trio of
prototype handheld computer applications developed by Georgia Institute of
Technology researchers, who detailed their work at the User Interface
Software and Technology 2004 conference last October. The user activates the
applications by holding down a button on the handheld, telling the system to
record and transcribe the user's words. The Calendar Navigator Agent
application monitors the user's conversation for scheduling-related keywords
such as dates and times, and employs them to navigate and mark a graphical
scheduling program. DialogTab captures conversational segments that can be
used as short-term memory aids, displaying them onscreen as a vertical stack
of tabs whose contents are mouse-accessible. Speech Courier accumulates
keywords so as to relay important conversational segments to an absent third
party via email. The researchers developed the applications with funding from
the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education's
National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Georgia Tech
researcher Kent Lyons says the system only monitors and records speech from
the user's side of the conversation in order to uphold privacy, and says the
next phase of the project is to identify other situations where the technique
is applicable, and to gauge the method's practicality. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/011205/Conversations_control_computers_011205.html

Links:
http://www.acm.org/uist/
http://wearables.cc.gatech.edu/publications/dp-uist-abstract.html