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From Hand to Voice

Coming soon, however, is a snap-on speech recognition base for Palm devices. A prototype contains a speaker, earphone jack, microphone, and--most importantly--a coprocessor that provides the necessary computing power to support voice technologies such as speech recognition and text-to-speech.

Using IBM's Personal Speech Assistant application, you can navigate through a to-do list, execute several hundred commands, and access your address book. For example, you can say, "Find Bill Smith," and the contact record for Bill Smith opens on-screen.

The integrated microphone offers a limited degree of noise cancellation; however, IBM's software is designed to compensate. Dictating a memo is as simple as holding down the record button and speaking into the unit's microphone. The prototype stores audio files in the base's 4MB of flash memory; IBM's compression scheme can contain 30 minutes of audio. The base can also be designed to accommodate removable media such as Compact Flash cards or even a 340MB IBM Microdrive.

When you sync the handheld with your desktop PC, IBM's ViaVoice engine on your desktop automatically transcribes the audio clip and uploads the transcript to the handheld. Though not unwieldy, a prototype base adds slightly to the weight and length of an IBM WorkPad unit (running the Palm OS), as demonstrated.

Great Expectations

As speech technology is refined in real-life labs like IBM's, the challenge lies in meeting the high expectations of popular culture.

"Science fiction movies have created the expectation," Osborne says. "We're not there yet, but we've made great steps."

In the meantime, IBM will test another gee-whiz prototype at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. It's a smart, speech-enabled soda machine that will dispense the drink you ask for, or tell you the current temperature of the machine. But the potential goes beyond the novelty of a talking soda machine. By adding an Internet connection, such a device could become a vertical application that alerts route masters when the soda machine is malfunctioning or needs restocking.