Talking Computers Just around the Corner
From: Sci-Tech Today - 03/14/2006
By: Elizabeth Millard

The supplanting of the keyboard with speech-recognition technology as the
primary human-computer interface may be very close to realization thanks to
recent innovations. "Computers are getting smarter, and that's good for
speech recognition, but the better news is that society is getting trained,"
says Serotek CEO Mike Calvo. The marketability of early speech-recognition
products was limited because the technology required users to modify their
speech patterns, but since then companies have adopted a model in which they
tailor products for specific sectors and develop applications that fulfill
particular requirements. Experts predict the increased rollout of
speech-recognition-equipped mobile devices, given the business potential of
the handset crowd, which already use the devices for cell-phone calls or
dictation and desire more features that will lessen their reliance on small
keyboards. Speech technology that can identify emotions will attract
considerable attention, while much of the industry is pursuing interactive
voice response systems that are smart enough to use natural-language
processing to handle customer calls and vastly improve their accuracy and
sensitivity. Spanlink Communications' Tim Kraskey says such systems would be
able to not only comprehend the meaning behind customers' statements, but use
that meaning to direct the caller or agent to pertinent information.
Mainstream adoption of speech-recognition products faces daunting challenges,
including hesitation among consumers, scalability and throughput issues, the
effort that goes into customization, and the tendency for accents to trip up
the technology. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Talking-Computers-Around-the-Corner/story.xhtml?story_id=033003ON4PO9

Links:
Serotek - Home of FreedomBox
http://www.freedombox.info/

Mike Calvo
http://www.freedombox.info/mike.html

Spanlink Communications
http://www.spanlink.com/

Tim Kraskey - Spanlink Communications VP of Marketing & Business Development
http://www.spanlink.com/about/about_team.html