28 March 2002

VoiceXML: not just an obscure markup language, sez IBM IBM delivers the smack-down to attendees of the VoiceXML Planet forum: "Above all, Beck urged attendees to pick up the pace of their work. 'A standard on paper with no code behind it is neither a prudent standard nor a useful one [...] Rein in the stragglers' ". Also, IBM and Opera propose to XHTML-modularise VoiceXML for multi-modal applications. Rodcorp has no idea whether this glues into SALT or not. 6:21:48 PM     comments

Distributed Speech Recognition (DSR) to revolutionise the market? Speech recognition vendors are working with handset manufacturers and infrastructurecos to take speechrec out of the server and put (some of) it into mobile handsets. Which only seems to be in the network operators' interests, if (a) bandwidth costs are indeed massively reduced (as Aurora, a forum for developing a European standard for DSR, claims), and more importantly (b) operators can keep control of the services that use speechrec. Network operators will definitely want your e-mail or calendar application to sit on their server rather than in your Nokia. The article confusingly suggests that DSR is inherently good because it is [will be] standards-based, and server-based speechrec is inherently bad because it is proprietary. "Some mobile operators are not waiting for the standard but are implementing speech recognition services in their networks, using proprietary technology which keeps the processing in the server." Whilst Rodcorp is as much of a supporter of standards as anyone (and there are now many nascent standards in the world of voice applications to choose from), we note that here and now companies are getting on with it and already building stuff that actually works for users, viz Virgin Mobile's 4321 service in the UK (Disclaimer: Rodcorp helped develop it) and AT&T Wireless' #121 service (Rodcorp didn't). 5:56:30 PM     comments

Two excellent, gigantic lists of maps Angelo State University (Texas) and Matthew White's Links to historical maps. Rodcorp particularly liked MW's Imaginary maps section. 8:23:05 AM     comments

The case for messy desks: Gladwell's The Social life of Paper Computer technology didn't replace paper because whilst it's good for filing, paper isn't: it's good for creative thought. "If its usefulness lies in the promotion of ongoing creative thinking, then, once that thinking is finished, the paper becomes superfluous. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Why bother filing at all? Everything we know about the workplace suggests that few if any knowledge workers ever refer to documents again once they have filed them away, which should come as no surprise, since paper is a lousy way to archive information. [...] Had the computer come first - and paper second - no one would raise an eyebrow at the flight strips cluttering our air-traffic-control centers." See also his Tipping Point. Related: John Seely Brown on email, paper and pens (and see also JSB's Social Life of Information) 8:18:03 AM     comments

Thumbs take over for text generation When people (ie mostly kids) use mobiles and games consoles for long enough, their thumbs and hands change. "The changing habits have become so noticeable that in Japan, young people have been nicknamed the "thumb tribe" or "thumb generation". 8:07:37 AM     comments