Sounding Off with Soundcards
as dramatic as you might hear in a cinema - but it sure works! (I'm not so sure about the volume either - I can play things on my PC that literally makes the room shake!)
Voice Recognition
This is an area that is going to be big in the not too distant future. Already a PC can "learn" how you talk making it possible to dictate letters straight into your PC without having to use a keyboard. Partially sighted people can have text files "read" to them making it easier for them to use a PC.
One of the hardest tasks for voice recognition is actually recognise your speech. This is done by breaking your words up into the basic phonetics that we all use when we speak - regardless of what our accent may be.
The phonetics actually make up words and can often be seen when teaching a baby to talk. The parents will often use exaggerated phonetic sounds that help the baby learn. "Daaaaa Daaaaa." "MMMM aaaaahhh MMMM aaaaahhhh" are all examples.
Your computer can recognise these speech parts (without you talking in baby language!) so that it can recognise words and phrases - and this is the hard part - very few of us speak "correctly." Due to our local upbringing, we will shorten words (how many parents have correctly youngsters when "Nuffing is wrong?"
This all required processing power in vast amounts and PC's are starting to become fast enough for us to speak normally and be recognised.
I can't wait for the day when I can have a "proper" conversation with my computer (as you see in films such as 2001)
Who knows WHO we will be talking to in 10 years time!
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