Speech Rec Harnesses The Internet

While perusing the Blackberry Reseller channel on TMCnet I came across this really interesting article about Vlingo’s new, free web-based service which allows Blackberry users to utilize speech recognition instead of a keyboard when communicating. While speech rec is not new, what is interesting about the Vlingo approach is they use the power of the Internet to build a dictionary of terms which are translated from speech to text.

Basically the power of a wiki,sociaal networking, web 2.0, etc has come to speech recognition and if one person puts in a word that is not currently in the dictionary, others can take advantage of the addition.

Aside from showing how the power of many can make any application better, it is really great to see technology become more useful. In addition, when you get comfortable with Vlingo, you can eventually skip the keyboard and communicate via SMS and email while driving. This is especially great for those people who already type while driving and are looking for a way to reduce their odds of crashing.

One of the reasons I get excited about the Communications Developer event each year (September 16-18, 2008 in Los Angeles this year) is because I get to see new applications like this in the real world. Nothing is more exciting to me than watching new solutions which are truly helpful to humanity sprout and grow.

Speaking of new applications, this reminds me that today there was an announcement about a Digium-sponsored open source software awards contest you may be interested in.

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