speak

With gesture control the next big thing in the interface race, sneeze and you might just reboot the entire server system. That scenario may not be too far off, since Oblong Industries, the guys behind the technological whizbang "Minority Report," is behind this. Company co-founder John Underkoffler has unveiled what's been coined G-Speak.

It all sounds rather similar to MIT's Sixth Sense device, though G-Speak takes on a more spatial operating environment (SOE) that lets users manipulate the space around to move 3D objects or zoom in and out. Think Tom Cruise's character using the interactive wall in the sci-fi flick.

To crunch down the technobabble, the gesture technology tracks hand movements using special displays and surfaces that can work with videos and images. Like Cruise in "MR," you'll need to don a pair of special gloves to act as "conductors" to do your thang.

With augmented reality, multitouch, and motion control already in the picture, it won't be too long before gesture-based interfaces take us to a whole new mouse-less realm. If Underkoffler is to be believed, G-Speak should be ready for consumer use in the next five years. Check in on the two following videos for a glimpse at the future. … Read more

AlfaClock2 is a basic program that adds a bit of extra functionality to the standard Windows System Tray clock. Although some of the program's features were quite nice, others were confusing and difficult to access.

Many of the program's functions are accessed by right-clicking on the clock, which is simple enough. From there, a menu appears and users can view a multi-month calendar or a desktop clock, copy the current date to the clipboard, or have the program speak the date and time aloud (we were especially impressed with the realistic and pleasant voice used for this feature). … Read more

Jimmie Johnson's victory at the Autism Speaks 400 wasn't the only big news coming from the racing world two weekends ago. The FIA Formula One World Championship held its annual Hungarian Grand Prix that same weekend, and while Lewis Hamilton picked up his first win of the 2009 season at this race, perhaps the biggest news concerned the horrific accident that befell Brazilian F1 driver Felipe Massa on July 25 while attempting to qualify for this championship race.

I was only able to locate one web video of the accident, and while it isn't of the highest … Read more

So far this week we've seen highlights from the so-far successful 2009 season for NASCAR superstar Tony Stewart, specifically his first and third wins. Today we fill in the missing link - namely his second win of the season during the Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway on May 31,2009 (a race that also helps raise funds for Autism research...a very worthy car.

This clip begins after Johnson suffers a setback that sends him to pit row and causes him to lose his solid leading spot in the race. But soon Johnson maneuvers himself from the … Read more

Speaking Clock Deluxe is a customizable clock that can alert users to the time in a variety of ways. The clock's various features and simple interface make it an appealing choice.

The program's interface is fairly intuitive, although some features that seemed like they would be accessible in the Settings menu could actually only be accessed by right-clicking on the program in the system tray. No matter; that's about as complicated as the program got. Although there were some aspects of the text-to-speech features that weren't intuitive, the built-in Help file explained everything clearly. The interface … Read more

Multilingual Speaking Clock offers users an opportunity to hear the time in practically any language. This simple-to-operate program will not disappoint users looking for a basic timepiece in their native tongue.

This freeware download could not be more straightforward. It is seen as a simple digital clock with black numbers on a gray background that winds up every second of the day. Users find five buttons at the bottom of the clock for Alarm, Settings, Options, Help, and Spoken Time. The clock comes with four options of voices: American English spoken by a male, American English spoken by a female, … Read more

Tired of fumbling around the iPhone's onscreen keyboard to send a text message? Soon you can skip that altogether, as long as you can speak English properly.

This is thanks to a new iPhone application that Promptu, a talk-and-type mobile phone application developer, introduced Monday called ShoutOUT. The application is going to be the first voice-to-SMS application for iPhone users in the United States.

The application lets you dictate text messages instead of typing on the iPhone's touch-screen keypad. It also allows for checking the transcribed messages for errors and make corrections if necessary before sending them out … Read more

For Senior Editors Bonnie Cha and Kent German, Future Apps' new language program for the iPhone and iPod Touch may be just the thing to get them around Barcelona next week as they attend the GSMA Mobile World Congress in that famed Spanish city.

iSpeak is a set of translation apps that can convert words and sentences from English to another language, or vice versa. You type your phrase into the app, which quickly translates your text. If you're not sure how to pronounce the phrase, pressing a button triggers the app to speak the words aloud. iSpeak got … Read more

Here's a concept I don't quite get. BlindSpeak, which launched on Tuesday, lets you type in a message to send to someone else as a voice message. Whatever you've written gets synthesized by Microsoft Sam's text-to-speech reader then read back as an audio message.

The synthesized messages arrive in your recipient's e-mail in-box as both an MP3 file and a link to the Flash player. Missing completely is the actual text you wrote. Assuming you're sending this to someone with visual impairments they probably have their own system for dealing with text e-mails that … Read more