speech recognition

AT&T has been involved in the speech recognition space for years. And now, the company wants to share with others what it's achieved.

The company announced today that it will make several AT&T Watson Speech application programming interfaces (APIs) available to developers in June. With the help of those APIs, developers will be able to create new apps and services that rely upon AT&T's Watson speech recognition technology.

The first set of APIs that AT&T plans to release will focus on Web search, question-and-answer, SMS, and dictation, among other areas, … Read more

Microsoft is enhancing some of the accessibility features in Windows 8 to make the new OS easier for people with disabilities.

Certain "assistive technologies" have long been a part of Windows. The built-in Narrator can read text aloud to people who are blind. The Magnifier can zoom in to display content for people who have trouble seeing. Speech recognition allows people who are unable to type to navigate via voice.

But as described in the latest Building Windows 8 blog by Jennifer Norberg, a senior program manager on Microsoft's Human Interaction Platform team, Windows 8 is taking those features a few steps further.… Read more

When Siri for the iPhone 4S was announced, downloads for Vlingo, a voice command app for Android, shot up 50%. Why? Because voice command, especially with artificial intelligence, can complete tasks more efficiently than our own fingers.

The act of talking to our gadgets is still in the awkward stage, but pretty soon we'll all be voice-commanding our phones, forgetting that we ever lived without artificial intelligence.

Voice command (and speech recognition) isn't just available for phones. Check out our guides on getting these services on any of your gadgets:

Android

Has Siri gotten you accustomed to barking commands at electronics devices? Or has the absence of Siri in your life left you pining for a machine to command?

If you nodded in agreement to either of the above questions, and you own a Mac, did you know it has a built-in speech recognition tool? One that will speak back to you? Even tell you a terrible knock-knock joke?

If you'd like to begin conversing with your Mac, it is a simple process to enable speech recognition. Here's how:… Read more

Voice commands and speech recognition aren't just for smartphone users; they're for PC users, too.

Speech recognition can help you avoid repetitive stress injuries, increase efficiency, and even be fun. You can launch programs, dictate text, scroll Web pages, and more, all by voice. Here's how:

Step 1: Go to Start > Control Panel > Ease of Access > Speech Recognition, and click on "Start Speech Recognition."

Step 2: Run through the Speech Recognition Wizard by selecting the type of microphone you'll be using and by reading a sample line aloud.

Step 3: Once … Read more

Are you feeling ignored because your iPhone 4S-toting friends are spending more time conversing with Siri than with you? If you have an older iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, you can run the newly released iOS 5, but it doesn't come with Apple's vaguely British virtual assistant. What's a lonely, old iPhone owner to do?

One idea is to give Dragon Dictation a try. From Nuance, the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking software (and who may have had a hand in developing Siri), Dictation is a free iPhone voice app that lets you engage in one-way conversations with your iPhone. It won't answer your queries like Siri does, but it does an impressive job of translating your spoken words into text. So, while you can't ask Dragon Dictation where you can find the best burrito in your vicinity (I'm pretty sure Siri would tell me to leave the state of New Hampshire for such an item), you can dictate text messages and e-mails as well as Facebook and Twitter updates. … Read more

Nuance has beefed up its Dragon Go iPhone app to let you search for information across a wider array of Web sites and services.

Available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch since July, this free search-by-voice app is unique compared with the Google and Bing iOS apps. Dragon Go can find results and run commands across dozens of different Web sites, including Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Craiglist, Amazon, eBay, CNN, Reuters, and even CNET.

The latest update adds even more sites to the mix, notably Netflix, Spotify, Wolfram Alpha, Ask.com, and Google+. And when you tap the app's … Read more

Google is shutting down GOOG-411, its first attempt to create a search-by-voice application.

The company announced in a blog post today that the service will end on November 12. First launched back in 2007, GOOG-411 allowed users to say the name of a business and have the service text you back a listing for that business with address and phone number.

Google has been doing a lot of work on speech recognition since then, and has separately begun to focus almost all of its mobile efforts on modern smartphones: GOOG-411 is kind of irrelevant if you have the Internet in … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's Mike Cohen won't be satisfied until anyone who wants to talk to their computer can do so without laughing at the hideous translation or sighing in frustration.

Cohen, a leading figure in speech technology circles, heads up Google's efforts to advance the science of speech technology while applying it to as many products as possible. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information, and it turns out a lot of the world's information is spoken," Cohen said, in a recent interview with CNET about the search giant's … Read more