Control your computer using your voice to input text, browse the web, simulate keyboard and mouse input, open and control programs and documents

Automatic speech recognition is the process by which a computer maps an acoustic speech signal to text. Automatic speech understanding is the process by which a computer maps an acoustic speech signal to some form of abstract meaning of the speech. Speech synthesis is the task of transforming written input to spoken output. The input can either be provided in a graphemic/orthographic or a phonemic script, depending on its source. As a consequence of its reliance on phonology, linguistics, signal processing, statistics, computer science, acoustics, connectionist networks, psychology and other fields, there are many technologies involved in speech technology.

Speech recognition programs are either "speaker dependent" or "speaker independent." The speaker-dependent programs adjust to the way you speak, which requires a "training" process. The speaker-independent programs attempt to recognize anyone's speech, without benefit of training.

Speaker-dependent programs tend to be smaller, faster, and more accurate than speaker-independent programs. However, they also require more time to learn because you have to train the program to recognize your voice patterns. Voice LookUp, reviewed below, is a speaker-dependent program. Speaker-independent programs are easier to learn and use, but they tend to be larger and require more power. PDsay, reviewed below, is speaker independent.

Speech recognition programs also differ in purpose. Both of the Pocket PC programs I review in this article recognize spoken commands. Both are capable of looking up contacts by name and launching programs. Additionally, one of them has text-to-speech capability ­ it will "speak out" the information you request. However, neither of these programs will translate your speech into text. Current speech-to-text programs are too large and require too much CPU power to be practical for the Pocket PC. They are available for desktop PCs, but even then they use speaker-dependent recognition to improve accuracy and increase speed.

There are a few things about speech recognition on the Pocket PC that you should know:

Speech recognition software requires a great deal of space—Both of these programs occupy over 4 Mb of storage and may require another 4 to 5 Mb of RAM to run.

The quality of the built-in microphones ranges from acceptable to bad—The microphones included in Pocket PCs aren't designed for high-fidelity recording. As a result, the programs have to work hard to recognize your speech. Speak clearly and keep your lips within an inch or so of the microphone.

Support for Pocket PC 2002 isn't fully ironed out—Because Microsoft hasn't officially released the software development kit (SDK) for Pocket PC 2002, there were some definite rough edges when I tested this software on a Pocket PC 2002. Both vendors have committed to addressing Pocket PC 2002 issues as soon as Microsoft releases the SDK.

Let's take a look at two speech recognition programs for the Pocket PC.

Voice LookUp from HandHeld Speech

Voice LookUp, from HandHeld Speech (www.handheldspeech.com), lets you look up contacts and switch applications using voice commands. Its author freely admits that he doesn't invest heavily into developing Voice LookUp's user interface. His efforts are aimed squarely at improving the recognition engine, and this strategy seems to have paid off. Voice LookUp is faster and more accurate than PDsay.

The installation file is a self-extracting archive file. Click on the archive file to extract the necessary program files. Then click on "Install.exe" to put the program on your Pocket PC. The program itself is large, but the majority of it can be installed on a storage card, making the storage requirements for the program a little more palatable. After the installation is complete you must train the program to recognize your voice patterns. This takes less than five minutes and involves speaking a few sentences into your Pocket PC.

Can Skype replace my local phone company service?

The answer now that SkypeIn is here is YES Skype In gives you the ability of having a real phone number so anyone can call you, actually your computer from any regular landline telephone. I also have and use my cell phone for long distance calls as it is free after 7pm, but I have had a cell phone for many years and so the saving my cell phone may provide does not impact the example below.

Here is a breakdown of my typical phone bill BEFORE Skype:

* Local Phone service through SBC $38.00 per month US
Long Distance phone service through various providers $26.00 per month US
TOTALS Before Skype $64.00 per month US

Here is a breakdown of my typical phone bill AFTER Skype:

Local Phone service through Vonage and Skype In $16.00+$3.41 per month US
Long Distance phone service through Vonage and SkypeOut $5.00 per month US
TOTALS Before Skype and Vonage $24.41 per month US

What Skype can do

What is a local phone service anyway ? Well for starters it is a phone number you give out to everyone you know. It allows you to make local calls and long distance calls. It has a call waiting option , caller I D and three way calling and voicemail option as well. Skype Out handles your long distance phone service needs.

Skype with Skype In and Skype Out gives you everything I just mentioned your local and long distance phone company provides you but FAR cheaper. Skype also gives you computer to computer capability so many of your friends and family may not need to use the telephone - they just call you on the computer for free using Skype.

But I don't want to use my computer every time I make or receive a phone call

With Skype In and Skype Out and using a USB to RJ11 Gateway device you can easily get rid of your local telephone service to make and receive phone calls anywhere in your home you do now.

What Skype can NOT do

The three things you cannot do with Skype is dial 411 or information or use the 911 emergency service. You also can not send faxes via Skype or Skype Out, it just doesn't work. This is why I have Vonage for 911 service If I need 411 service, I use my cell phone, Yellow Pages or just surf the Internet Yellow Page sites if I need it, which is not often.

Conclusion - Join the Skype revolution

With the addition of Skype In and Skype Out, Skype can replace your local and long distance phone service at a fraction of the cost of your current local and long distance services. In my example it is 2 / 3 less than I use to pay and It even provides you voice mail if you want to use it or you can do what I do and set your Skype voice mail answering for 90 seconds or more so your home answering machine picks up instead of your Skype Voice mail.

Send and Receive Fax on Skype using PLUS FAX
PLUS FAX lets you send and receive fax with your Skype account. You can fax paper documents to any skype user using plus fax. The process of faxing a paper document to skype users is similar to faxing paper document to an e-mail address which i described in my previous post on plus fax. The only difference is that you enter the skype id instead of an e-mail address. Faxing digital document to any skype user involves downloading a virtual printer from plus fax. Once this virtual printer has been downloaded and installed you can then send fax directly from any MS Windows Application with Printing capability. Visit plus fax web site for more information and trial.

What's  New

• text-to-speech software
• Natural-sounding voice output
• Natural Voices
• Speech Recognition
• Speech Synthesis
• Telephony Components

• Voip

Speech recognition is a gift to human being by nature. We all speak, and understand what other says. Even other animals do speak, in their own ways. When we speak, our ear receives the sound waves and converts them into signals that can be interpreted by the brain. You may wonder, why I am speaking about Medical Sciences when I am speaking about Windows Vista.

There is no natural intelligence for the computers. So, therefore a voice database is created for each user and will be compared with the incoming voice from the microphone and appropriate word will be produced as a result.

The problem of misinterpretation of text, commands through speech is solved to a great extent in Windows Vista. Thus, one can enjoy the speech recognition in a much better way in Windows Vista. Speech recognition will help the user to get very large documents typed, with less use of key board and mouse. Speech recognition has been improved in Vista, will be improving in the years to come.

LIVE DEMO SITES FOR SPEECH RECOGNITION AND SYNTHESIS EVALUATION 

Online speech to text www.wavetotext.com
Create TTS Voices www.ttsbuilder.com
100% .Net soft phones  www.h323phone.com
Voice Verification Online www.windentify.com  

Microsoft's .NET Speech group is focused on supporting new speech technologies, including the new Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) standard. They started the SALT forum (www.saltforum.org) with five other companies in hopes of defining a standard that will help speech-enable the entire Internet. In other words, their goal is to let you talk to your computer to interact with the Internet. This is an ambitious goal given the relatively low penetration of speech recognition technology today. Until the user interface on our devices is Web-centric, SALT probably won't help us much in our quest to access our personal information with our voice, but it gives us something to look forward to.

Speech recognition technology has improved to the point that we now have reasonable (though less-than-perfect) command recognition programs available for the Pocket PC. One of these programs will even read information to us. Which one of the current offerings do you pick? The decision is based on whether you favor the recognition accuracy of Voice LookUp or PDsay's ability to read your information to you.

We're not quite ready for speech-to-text yet—no dictation on the Pocket PC. But that can't be too far in the future, and when it comes, the utility of the Pocket PC and similar devices will increase dramatically.