Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Viral Fossil Brought Back to Life. hey hey hey writes "In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome. Published online by Genome Research this week, the study may shed new light on the history of these genomic intruders, as well as their role in tumors. Although this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one, some argue that resuscitating any ancient virus is inherently risky and that the study should have undergone stricter reviews." [Slashdot] 10:13:59 PM      Google It!.

Mobile speech recognition. On Monday I visited Nuance for an update on the company's speech recognition products and initiatives. Two years ago, my screencast on Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 demonstrated what was then the state of the art in automatic dictation. Dragon has for years been asymptotically approaching the point at which dictation becomes routine and general-purpose. For most of us, it hasn't yet reached that point. I didn't upgrade to the latest version 9 because, despite improvements, I didn't think it would yet cross my threshold for routine use. Nuance's demo of Dragon 9 confirmed that hunch. ... [Jon's Radio] 10:52:01 AM      Google It!.