Re: [NTLK] Pen computing is dead... long live the iNewt

From: Ken Whitcomb <ken_at_imageguild.com>
Date: Sun Aug 16 2009 - 19:34:57 EDT

More than 10 years ago, I heard a speaker relate an experience that he
had when speaking at a conference. After his speech at that earlier
conference, he was followed up by a man who began his talk by having
his assistants pass out photocopies of the talk just concluded. The
first speaker thought this claim incredible as he had only spoken from
an outline, and even he didn't have a copy of his speech. The
gentleman went on to explain how his staff had used speech-to-text
technology to prepare these handouts, and that no one in the room
would be able to afford it at that time, but that before long, no
company could afford to not use it.
I always took that illustration at face value, but upon reflection
given the state of speech-to-text software on the market even today in
2009, wonder if there was any truth to that story.

Has anyone else ever heard that tale or able to confirm or refute it?
I wish I could recall the speaker or the meeting I was at when I heard
the tale, but alas, too much time has passed since the mid '90s.

Ken

On Aug 16, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Lord Groundhog wrote:

> ~~~ On 2009/08/16 08:45, RAParker at quadzillanet@sbcglobal.net
> wrote ~~~
>
>> On Aug 16, 2009, at 12:25 AM, Jon Glass <jonglass@usa.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, but isn't this just a bank of
>>> college students typing your
>>> transcript to text? I don't think it's
>>> machine recognition at all...
>>
>> I don't think so. I checked out the facts online it seems like that
>> it's
>> pretty legit, interesting reviews and actually quite fascinating. I
>> imagine I
>> would be able to improve the accuracy quite a bit with a little
>> practice...
>> Learning how to talk more natural instead of anticipating the fact
>> that I
>> actually recording myself for transcribing.
>>
>
>
> Errr, hang on a minute. Spinvox? Are we talking about this:
> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/spinvox_mechanical_turk/>
>
> i.e., <http://tinyurl.com/nfmto4> if that link is broken in transit.
>
> There's not still any question, about whether or not their using
> human call
> centres to take up the slack for their "magic machine", is there?
>
>
> Shalom.
> Christian

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Received on Sun Aug 16 19:35:10 2009

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