speech
Gadgets
Amazon Caves to Snippy Authors: Kindle’s Text-to-Voice Feature Now Optional
10:00AM Gizmodo US Edition | We reported the Author’s Guild’s litigious anger about the Kindle 2’s text-to-voice feature, claiming it violates audio book copyrights. It’s an arguable position, but Amazon has gone ahead and caved to the literate man. More »
Screens
Toshiba’s TLP-X200U Projector Is the First To Talk, For Some Reason
8:05PM Kit Eaton | This may not be as small as yesterday’s picoprojector, but Toshiba’s TLP-X200U projector is still portable, and touted as being the world’s first with talking guidance. Apparently it’s designed to make the thing easier to use, and it also talks you through maintenance procedures, with the aim of making it all work better for you, and thus saving you money in the long run. Elsewise it’s got 3LCD tech, 1024 x 768-pixels resolution, 3000 ANSI lumen brightness and a 600:1 contrast ratio, and it’s wired and wireless LAN capable. It may indeed be “slim, light and compact” and have that voice function, but for an MSRP of $US1,740 I’d expect it to have an LCARS touchpanel and Majel Barrett’s dulcet digital tones. [I4U] More »
Networks
AT&T Bringing (a Tiny, Frustrating Bit Of) Speech Recognition to the iPhone, Others
6:10AM Gizmodo US Edition | AT&T’s Speech Mashups is a web-based service that will bring voice-activated search to the iPhone, as well as other Edge and 3G handsets. Instead of managing speech recognition on the actual handset, Speech Mashups sends the audio sample to the server, processes it and sends back a text transcription or command to your phone. Unfortunately for iPhone owners, this does not mean voice dialing or speech-to-text app support. Not at all. More »
Toys
Talking Twittering Teddy Bear is Nearly A Freaky Mod Too Far
9:27PM Gizmodo US Edition | Having a cyborg teddy reading out your Twitter alerts… *shiver* the idea gives me the creeps a little. But not the guys who came up with the idea over at HyHome2.0. They’ve even got an instructional video so you can build your own artificial-voice bear, which uses Bluetooth to get data from your PC so you can plop the toy anywhere and still keep in touch. I’m not going to be building one: I’ve got a vision of teddy getting bored with endless inane Twitter updates, slapping in some steel fangs in its cyber-jaw and chewing its way out of the house. [Project page via Hackaday] More »
Science
50 Years of DARPA: 5 Good Inventions, 5 Lousy Ones
11:45PM Wilson Rothman | To commemorate the golden jubilee of America’s Defence Advance Research Projects Agency—formed these 50 years ago in response to a little traveller called Sputnik—New Scientist has come up with a short list of 10 DARPA inventions: five that changed the world, and five that fell flat: More »
Software
PhoneTag “Hacked” For GrandCentral, Converts Voicemail to E-Mail
12:00AM Benny Goldman | PhoneTag, the gang who turns voicemail into text, has “hacked” Google’s GrandCentral. The service that consolidates all of your phone numbers into one is useful for people on the go, but its voicemail system is clunky, especially for those needing fast access to messages. That’s what makes this hack so clever. More »
Vehicles
Scientist Studies Cars That Speak and Listen Like KITT
9:02PM Gizmodo US Edition | I used to want a car just like KITT when I was a kid, though perhaps without that slightly annoying nasal voice. And now a Stanford scientist is looking at whether nattering to your vehicle may be good for you, the car, other road users and even (darnit) your insurers or advertising execs. More »
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Zihotch Watch Tells Time (Literally)
10:20PM Mark Wilson | In the days when intense UV radiation is of a constant threat to our eyes, looking has become a chore. That’s why the $48 rotary Zihotch Watch is so promising. You simply dial…err…pull “117″ and the watch will read you the time, just like the old days when you had to call people to look at their sundials for you. We’re digging the retro interface but wish there were a few more secret codes we could enter for functions other than mundanely adjusting the time or alarm. Making phone calls, for instance, would be a start—though we’d gladly settle for a direct line to just one or two 900 numbers. [product via scifitech] More »
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