It seems that 2008 has been the Year Of The Creepy Talking Robot.  Who could forget this or this or even this.

And as such, it seems only fitting to bid farewell to 2008 and ring in 2009 with yet another Creepy Talking Robot.

This one comes to us courtesy of Japan’s Gifu University’s Graduate School of Medicine and Mizuno Technical Institute which have jointly developed a new Sick Robot specifically geared towards medical students.

Named Keiko—which means ”practice” in Japanese—the interactive humanoid robot is able to answer questions and interact with doctors in an effort to help medical students practice conversations with patients.

For example:

Medical Student:  How are you doing?
Keiko: I get tired easily lately.

If this conversation were to continue to its natural conclusion, it would doubtlessly go something like this:

Medical Student: I see…Have you been sleeping well?
Keiko: No, I am a robot.
Medical Student: I see…
Keiko: As you can see, we’ve had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson.
Medical Student: What?
Keiko: Mr. Anderson. You disappoint me.
Medical Student: Who?
Keiko: Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call if you’re unable to speak….

Additionally:  Medical students can practice giving examinations to Keiko before advancing to performing them on humans.  Keiko is specifically designed as a training tool for diagnosing neurological disorders, allowing medical students to learn the way brain and nervous system illnesses can be identified.

Well,  Speech-Heads: That just about does it for 2008.  The Speech Tech HQ will be shutting down until the first week in January.  But when we return, I will continue to deliver all your Creepy Talking Robot News and my Brother Eric B. will be bringing you the “very latest” in Speech Tech History.

See you all in 2009!  Here’s wishing you a Happy and Healthy New Year.

After years of misguided and wasted technological advancement, someone has finally done what America has been openly yearning for since 1946: given us two-way radio wristwatches.

Sleuthed out from its Korean site, LG Group inadvertently announced the forthcoming release of its GD910 wristwatch/phone to the English speaking world before its expected debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The watch is reported to support 3G; have a front-facing camera for video phone calls; HSDPA; some kind of music player; and, best of all Speech Heads, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice dialing with speech recognition!

The phone fulfills that far-off dream that Chester Gould first imagined for us in his daily Dick Tracy strip, long, long ago. Now we, like Tracy, may video chat with the chief from anywhere the case might take us—even well out of our jurisdiction. Jumpin’ extra-legal authority!

“But wait,” you say. 1946 was real far back, fashions have changed and well…you don’t want to look like some chump having to Tracy your watch up to your face. Fear not, Gentle Readers. LG has thought of everything. The whole thing is Bluetooth enabled, allowing you to instead clip a head set to your ear and look like that cyborg guy from The Empire Strikes Back.

The watch seems to be the final version of the concept phone that LG trumpeted at the Mobile World Congress in 2008, but claimed would not be released—being just a demonstration of how small mobile technology could get in LG’s industrious little hands. Nevertheless, the GD-910 is soon to be ours.

And who better to bring us this watch than LG? My extensive research indicates that LG or Lucky Goldstar actually came into being when Goldstar (the first S. Korean radio manufacturer) and Lucky (a major power in the S. Korean toothpaste and soap industry) merged together. Given that, it doesn’t seem like there’s a better company out there to marry all sorts disparate of functionalities together.

O’ Dear Readers, even in this recession things are getting sweeter.

Well, well. I figured with Christmas upon us it would be kind of a slow week for the blog, but I have figured wrong.

There’s been an outpouring of response to my post about the GirlTech Password Journal (GTPJ). So far, the post has seen more comments than any in Speech Tech Blog history. A number of disgruntled Speech Heads have been writing in to say that they’re dissatisfied with the biometric speech solution. I can’t say for sure, but it seems like many of you out there have been coming to us, having maybe received one of these bad boys (well…girls, really) for Christmas feeling like you got the short end of the stick and looking for answers.

The chief complaint out there seems to be that the GTPJ not only keeps offending parties from reading the journal’s most private thoughts contained inside, but also the authorized user.

One reader put it best when he or she wrote, “MY 6 YEAR OLD SIXTER HAVE ONE BUT IT RUBISH.”

I have to admit, I’m kinda glad that we’ve tapped into a raw nerve here. Not only has it gotten a lot more people looking at the blog (always good), but it seems to be highlighting, in its own roundabout way, a perennial problem in speech: if you don’t spend a lot of money, there is a lot of short end of the stick to go around.

Because of high development costs and the increased centralization and consolidation of major sectors of the speech industry through mergers and acquisitions, this speech stuff has stayed relatively expensive for a long time. For large enterprises that can absorb the big expenses, quality hasn’t been an issue. They can spend the capital to get speech solutions that work with a high degree of accuracy and precision. However, when you’re making toys and are looking to keep costs low and maximize profits, that’s another story altogether.

I remember my sister’s Furby, for instance. That thing recognized what we were saying only maybe 30 percent of the time—and that’s probably being pretty generous. To keep toymaking costs low, the hardware and software on many speech-enabled kid’s products has been less than thrilling. This is particularly egregious when manufacturers make all sorts of promises to kids that the products just don’t deliver. The stuff never seems work like it does in the commercials, and many a child is left bawling mercilessly as his parents tear their hairs from the roots in wild frustration.

This isn’t true all over speech. We’re starting to see some positive movement in price, especially with speech-enabled smart phone apps–a lot of which are really good and free to boot. But speech, like history, doesn’t move in a straight line. So watch out.

I’ve said this all before when I warned “Caveat emptor” at the end of my original post about the GTPJ, but maybe I ought to translate this time around so there can be no question: Let the buyer beware. Yes, buyer beware, dear Speech Heads.

A Christmas Eve present for everyone!

While scouring the web for news in the latest speech technology happenings, I stumbled on one of the oldest speech technology happenings. In a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the Dictaphone and Ediphone, I’ve found an advertisement film for the Ediphone on YouTube. The film is just about 100 years old, and gives us a lot of great views of the oldest on-premise speech solution in action.

The film begins in a woe-betided office inundated with reams of shorthand dictation, all of which must be transcribed by a young secretary. As the day wears on and frustration mounts, she suffers from a nervous breakdown. She must work well beyond five o’clock. There is just so much dictation! Surely there must be a better way!

Enter the Edison salesman. The Edison man shows off the Ediphone, which instantly increases productivity. So much so that our young secretary thankfully and lovingly strokes her machine.

The coolest thing about the advertisement is you get to see all the early speech tech in action. The entire Ediphone solution came with three machines: the Ediphone, which recorded and played back dictation; the shaver, which shaved down used cylinders so that they could be reused (each one could be shaved and reused 100 times); and a duplicator which could duplicate cylinders.

Only the Ediphone and shaver are shown in this short, but you get to see them operating in real time, giving you a feel for how they were actually used.

Bon appetite!

Volume 1: Burning On All the Cylinders

Speech heads, you may have noticed my news posting yesterday about the centennial of Dictaphone, one of the world’s first mass-produced personal recording devices. Well, the copious research that I did for that article got me to thinking about the industry. Boy we’ve come far we’ve come since Dictaphone first scratched out huffy voices onto their patented celluloid cylinders. Today’s IVVR car-shopping avatars and user-slapping Japanese robots seem to be a far cry from gramophones and 78s of yesteryear.

Still, without those first toddling steps, we’d never even have our modern talking urinal cakes and automated call centers. So here, I’d like to inaugurate a new recurring blog feature that takes look back over the last 100 years of speech, and traces some of those early, toddling babysteps, dear readers.

Today’s installment takes a look back at the very first widely used on-premise speech solutions: the Dictaphone and Ediphone.

Dictaphone & Ediphone

The Dictaphone and Ediphone were dictation machines that cut sound into hard celluloid cylinders. Popularized in the early twentieth century, they allowed recordings to be made and played back for later transcription and archival purposes.

By the time the D & E had come into existence, the world was getting pretty familiar with recording technology. Talking machines like the gramophone and phonograph had been commercially available since the 1890s, and commercial recordings were beginning to be made in increasing numbers. Not just music, either.

Laterals or cylinder recordings of every kind were being made. A popular one from 1906, “The Destruction of San Francisco,” featured a dramatic reenactment of the earthquake in San Francisco. The two minute recording begins with a flush of music and an announcer crying, “It’s an earthquake! Run for your lives! To the park! To the park!”

Terror’ed wails and sounds of panicked men and women follow, until the announcer calls for the good people of San Fran to bring out their dead and the horrible scene gives way to second thrush of music that closes out the drama.

Music, of course, was popular too, with the many of the illustrious opera stars of the early 20th, like Enrico Caruso, committing their vibratos to wax for posterity. You can catch some of these laterals for yourself in Archive.org’s wonderful playground of sound. I’m particularly fond of “Red Hot Henry Brown,” a humorous ditty about one man’s predicaments with fire. As you’ll find wandering around the archive, most early commercially available recordings were of music. No different that today, really.

Now that’s all fine and well for amusement and diversion, but you’re an Industry Speech Head. What do you care for a bunch of entertainment ballyhoo? Consider this though, the rise of the recorded cylinder set in place the apparatus that would allow the dictation machine to take hold, and it was the dictation machine in turn that brought recorded sound into the workplace and ushered in the era of the speech solution.

In this early arena, Dictaphone was the more mind shared solution. It had such wide recognition that all dictation machines, including the Ediphone, were called “dictaphones” by the thankless and unwashed masses who bought them. O’ that rankled old T.A. Edison!

Still, the Ediphone did a pretty good turn of business and more or less split the dictation market for much of the 1910s and 20s. The Ediphone was certainly the more stylish of the two machines with its 4-minute playing bright cobalt blue Amberol wax cylinders. The look of the Amberol remains one of the defining features of Edison laternals.

Wax technology improved on as the years rolled by with longer playing cylinders reaching ten-minute lengths. The dictation industry breathed life into the dying wax cylinder medium. In the ‘teens the cylinder being overtaken in commercial sales by the cheaply produced, easily shipped, and easily stored record discs. Dictation, however, kept the cylinders it spinning.

In fact, the cylinder was so durable as a dictation medium that into the 1950s it was not uncommon to find a Dictophone still cutting spools in offices across America. Actually, as an analog medium, the cylinder is even more durable than any of its successors. A single cylinder is capable of sustaining hundreds of playbacks with only minimal loss of quality.

More important than their technological legacy however, the Dictaphone and the Ediphone pioneered the business speech solution we all enjoy so well today. From out of these early beginnings evolved the tech and market for voice recognition, voice capture, and just about every other speech function you can think of. Without the dictaphones, enterprises might have blithely and ignorantly gone along their way without a single speech solution deployment. What a savage world that might have been.

So, to Dictophone and Ediphone of the early 20th Century, Speech Tech Blog salutes you!

Here at the Speech Tech HQ, we’ve been getting a lot of people calling us up on The Horn lately and saying things like:

• “I need the 2009 Ed Cal.”
• “Where is the 2009 Ed Cal?”
• “Give me the 2009 Ed Cal!” and
• “Oh, God, I have to have the 2009 Ed Cal or my Soul is going to perish One Thousand Deaths!!!!”

Well, Addicts, Fanatics, and Speech-Heads, here it is: The 2009 Speech Technology Editorial Calendar.

And, if that’s not enough for you, check out our 2009 Media Kit.

If you read yesterday’s News Feature about Voice Commerce Group’s launch of VoicePay TV, then you need to check out the service in action!

And, once again, Speech Tech Blog Delivers The Goods:

Let’s Go To The Video Tape

Dear Readers,

We at Speech Technology are just putting the finishing touches on our next Print Issue–working hard to bring you the very latest in speech-related news, information and celebrity gossip.

However for every positive, there is a negative:  This week, due to our Herculean Print Efforts, we may not be able provide you with the number of posts to which you have grown reliant.

But fear not, gentle reader: We will be back next week and at full steam.  In the mean time, get to work on those Frozen Pole Holiday Greeting Cards and check out the Greatest Use of Speech Technology Ever: The Darth Vader Voice Changer Helmet.

That is all.

Best,

Speech Tech Blog

Last night, while sitting alone in the dark, eating stale cake, and contemplating the cruel nature of the Universe,  I came across this news report by CNN’s Jeanne Moos.

Basically, the story is about some guy who has built a speech-enabled, ultra-realistic robot–named Aiko–that he dresses in his mother’s used clothing.

The robot, which to date has cost some $25,000, was originally intended to help the elderly, but can also read the newspaper, do math problems, identify different food and drinks, and a whole lot more.

As reported by Moos, Aiko’s best speech-enabled dialogue includes the following:

“Please stop touching my breast, you pervert.”

“No, I will not lick your foot.  I am not your personal slave.”

“Ouch!  That really hurt.  Stop it.”

And to check out Aiko-In-Action, Let’s Go To The Video:

Ah, the Holiday Season.  Truly, a time unlike any other here at Speech Tech Blog.

Just yesterday, my editor broke out his vast collection of Speech-Enabled Holiday Decorations.  And of course, we all got into the spirit: eating Candy Canes, drinking Hot Toddies, Mulled Wine and Rubbing Alcohol, kissing inappropriately under the Mistletoe and, of course, decorating Speech Tech HQ.

The scene here is now one of high jocundity and elfin delight.  Picture our office: a sprawling maze of tinsel covered cubicles, replete with drifts of fake snow and strings of kaleidoscopic colored lights, culminating in a glittering display cabinet showcasing our many Talking Holiday Decorations.

Do an of them really make use of Speech Technology?

Probably not.

But, here at Speech Tech Blog, that has never stopped us before.  And it certainly won’t influence our decision making after five cups of my editor’s VoIP Holiday Magic Eggnog.

Among the Holiday Decorations for your consideration, Gentle Reader, are:

The Talking Gingerbread Man

The Thomas Kinkade Talking Nativity

The Talking Menorah Plush Toy

The Large Holy Folks Talking Mary With Baby Jesus

The Jesus Christ Talking Action Figure

The Talking Snowman Toy

The Talking Dreidel

The Large Holy Folks Talking Jesus With Staff

The Oh Deer Mega Talking Reindeer Pooper

And, of course, don’t forget about the crown jewels of our office decorations: Our Talking Christmas Trees.  So kickback with a Cup of Holiday Cheer and check out The Video: