It’s time for another edition of the Speech Tech blog’s regular feature, “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we highlight companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: Speech Tech Pro Translates The Four Questions
Why We’re Loving It: Murray Spiegel and Rickey Stein, friends who met at New Jersey’s Kol Dodi community choir, have translated the four questions of Passover into 300 languages. [That's 1200 questions...but I'm bad at math.] The story of how the two met and formulated the idea is even more endearing:

“[The two] might never have discovered how much they had in common if Stein had not overheard Spiegel talking about translating the Four Questions into Klingon during a rehearsal break.”

Spiegel, who works in the speech technology field, co-authored the book 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions with Stein. And with Passover coming up (11 days, people!), the book should make a nice addition to anyone’s seder. The book sells for $39.95, and comes with a CD and DVD. And this passage from the previously linked article further indicates why Stein and Spiegel are so awesome:

…[T]he emphasis is on the link between culture and language. For example: How do you translate “leavening” into Gujarati (India) when the language has no word for “yeast,” or into Polish, which has five synonyms for “leavening”?

Hex: Mobile Phones…on Airplanes. Seriously? Why?
Why We’re Hating: Have you ever flown from New York to Florida? Minneapolis to Los Angeles? Anywhere? Great. The actual experience of flying is painful enough [delays, non-edible food, flat soda, movies like I Am Legend], and airlines are about to make it a lot less tolerable. In Europe, officials are beginning a testing phase that would let fliers talk on their mobile phones during flights. Great. Just great. Not only do I have to hang out with screaming babies, but now I get to hear the businessman next to me yelling at some poor secretary, and the 15-year-old boy talking to his girlfriend for three hours (”Baby, I love you…and my retainer…”) And who would I be? That 23-year-old that makes everyone listen to my L’il Mama “Lip Gloss” ring tone every time I get a call. AND, can you imagine if these phones were speech-enabled?! That opens up a whole other can of worms — “I SAID I WANT TO GO TO YAHOO.COM!!!!!” But, if you’re in the U.S., don’t fret. So far France is one of the only countries offering the service.

[Photos from DylanGreene & CartoonStock]

Crush: Developers Answering the Call from iPhone
Why We’re Loving It: We hope that of the 100,000 developers who downloaded the iPhone’s SDK will do something speech-related for the product. Though Google’s Android has been met with interest from companies like Nuance Communications, the iPhone’s fate with speech apps remains unclear. We didn’t get any TTS or STT last time, but maybe a group of speech-happy developers will change all that in coming years. Of course, the overwhelming response to the SDK release (those 100,000 downloads took place within just four days of the release) also brought up fears that some of the downloads came from hackers. For more on that, check out this article from eFluxMedia.

Hex: Directory Assistance - Paid, Ad-Based, or Free - You’ve Gotta Step It Up!
Why We’re Hating: After a conversation with a vendor about directory assistance, I was thinking a lot about how often I have been frustrated beyond belief with DA speech recognition errors. Though I prefer free services (I’m 23. I’m poor.), the inefficient, broad search capabilities irritate me beyond belief. But the real problem? Poor speech recognition, and an insane amount of sensitivity to background noise. When do people typically call DA? When they’re outside. Outside conditions in New York are not what you’d call “serene,” to say the least. In addition, people in bigger cities like NYC or LA seem more likely to tap DA: we have more streets, more stores, and five freaking boroughs. As far as ad-based search goes, I haven’t found that quality improves, even with developers’ increased spending capabilities from the ad support ($$$$$). Paid services? No way. It just reminds me of my grandmother dialing information and being connected on a switchboard operated by Lily Tomlin. Developers: people love DA; people need DA; people want DA. Don’t ruin a good thing.

It’s time for another edition of the Speech Tech blog’s regular feature, “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we highlight companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: MTA’s Long Island Railroad
Why We’re Loving It: I had to call the LIRR help number today to figure out how to pick up a roundtrip ticket I bought online. First, the IVR only gives you about four options, all of which are very simple (schedules, fares, tickets, etc), and makes it super-easy to transfer to an operator. I only had to wait a few minutes to talk to someone, and they immediately answered my question. No pranks today, unfortunately. I’m not letting the LIRR off the hook without a big diss, though. They’re losing MAJOR points for making their contact information insanely difficult for their customers to find (I had to Google “lirr + phone + customer service” to find the page). I’m willing to look over this fact, however, if it means I get the answer to my question in just one-and-a-half minutes. Grade: B-

Hex: Zipcar
Why We’re Hating It: In a few days, I’m moving five blocks away from my current pad, and bought a Zipcar membership to help me transfer the goods. All I wanted to do was figure out why I couldn’t reserve a car on the Web site - that’s it! First, I called their NYC office’s number. Immediately, I was told that if I was a member, I had to call a different number. Then, I called the 800-number, only to be bombarded with one of the lamest personas ever. Let’s just say that “press” sounded like “prezzzzzzzzzz.” There were only three options in the first menu, none of which related at all to what I was trying to do. I touched “3″ to “learn more about Zipcar,” but instead got bombarded with a super-long message about how to make sure my credit card payments wouldn’t be rejected. I finally heard a “press zero for an operator” and clicked away. While the operator was helpful, Zipcar MUST do something about their phone service - I had to turn my volume up full-blast to hear half of what the operator said. Grade: D

It’s time for another edition of the Speech Tech blog’s regular feature, “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we highlight companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: Voice Search - The Cool Kid on the Block
Why We Love It: According to everyone, voice search is the coolest, prettiest, funniest, most awesome new kid on the block. He will change the way we search on mobile phones, interact with multimedia content, and he’s so all-encompassing that he has his own conference! This March, we’re sending our own Ryan Joe to check out the Voice Search conference in San Diego. OK, it used to be SpeechTEK West, but we’re willing to overlook the name change. Make sure to look for Ryan at the conference, or contact him (rjoe@infotoday.com) if you’re interested in speaking with him during the show.

Hex: Bill Gates
Why We’re Hating: Last month, Bill Gates was heralding speech as part of the Digital Decade (a little bit late, eh?), and this week, he’s causing all kinds of eye-rolling among human rights activists. Why? Because B.G., during a speech at Stanford University yesterday, was quoted as saying:

“I don’t see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet. You cannot control the Internet.”

Oh, really? If that’s so, one blogger wondered, why was Microsoft complicit with the Chinese when the country enforced Internet censorship? Bill, we’re waiting for an answer…

James Dean image [eb.com] & Bill Gates image [tla.ch]

Welcome to the Speech Tech blog’s first installment of a regular feature — “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we’ll be highlighting companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: The GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
Why We Love It: In addition to Monday’s Android-related announcement, today we got our first look at an actual prototype! No big surprises here: it looks exactly like the typical smartphone (Qwerty keyboard, small screen), and was manufactured with a core processor by the company ARM. The big news? Two big-deal mobile makers, LG and Samsung, announced they would start producing Android phones either later this year, or in early 2009. Here’s a picture of the phone that makes our heart swell [Image courtesy TheAge.com]

Hex: The Geek Squad
Why We’re Hating: Oops, Best Buy lost your laptop! That’s what happened to Raelyn Campbell, a Washington, D.C. resident whose laptop was broken, and later lost, by the electronics store’s repair service, Geek Squad. Originally, Campbell’s on/off switch broke, but thanks to a three-year warranty she purchased, she brought it to the store for repair. That’s when the problems started. Told she would have to wait “two to six weeks” for the computer to be fixed, Campbell freaked (understandably so — she’s a frequent business traveler). The worst part? The Geek Squad then proceeded to LOSE her laptop, which contained a bevy of personal documents. The punishment? Campbell is suing Best Buy for $54 million! Worst customer care EVER. [Image courtesy Javatyger.com]

Related Stories:
- Woman Sues Best Buy For $54M Over Lost Laptop [DailyTech]
- Android Prototype Unveiled; More to Come Next Year [Dealerscope]