snowdeal.org > ex machina

ex machina

i've always considered voice interfaces for applications to be clunky hacks not worth the learning curve, but john udell highlights some midly interesting scenarios in "speakable web services":

"Consider another Brent Simmons application, the popular RSS newsreader NetNewsWire Lite. It's already more usefully speakable then most OS X apps I've tried. Along with menu navigation, you can speak the crucial commands "Next Unread," "Mark All as Unread," and "Open in Browser." These are more mnemonic than their keyboard equivalents (Command-G, Command-Shift-K, and Command-B), and especially in the case of Command-Shift-K, more accessible, too. An interesting refinement would be to voice-enable random access to feeds, just as MSIE allows spoken random access to items on the Go and Favorites menus. I've got 128 subscriptions, for example. It would be cool to say "Sam Ruby" and jump straight to Sam's blog. Or to say "Jeremy," and jump to a completion list showing "Allaire" and "Zawodny," and speak one of those surnames to finalize the selection."

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11/09/2002 12:36:00 PM 0 comments

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