Comments on: Create a meeting tomorrow at teen anal

By: Danilo Albergaria

Danilo Albergaria — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:14:00 +0000

I can see the point you´re trying to make and I agree that people can show “stronger” or “weaker” accents. But I think you´re wrong. Sure, you can “neutralize” most of your accent. But by doing that, all you and the NYC people are doing is to speak in just another accent: the one you *think* is neutral or non-existent. It remains an accent nonetheless.

By: Steve Shipman

Steve Shipman — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:16:00 +0000

I too have been reading coverage of Siri and this is the first time I’ve seen it demonstrated. Wow. The feeling of “My god, talking to your phone is so inefficient and annoying” just hit home a little bit harder.

By: Mladen Kalinic

Mladen Kalinic — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:02:00 +0000

+1 on Zune software, I had people asking me what it is and wanting to install it

By: erik umenhofer

erik umenhofer — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 06:23:00 +0000

First off he’s using commands that WP7 doesn’t understand but Siri does. That’s not really fair. Secondly, no one ever said TellMe does everything Siri does, or does it exactly the same. Again, unfair comparison. I don’t see why he’s complaining, I’ve never had problems using voice to search things or create text messages. For me the voice commands work pretty well with little word confusion. Maybe my accent is west coast enough for it. Also you could point out MS built TellMe mostly on their own, while Apple just bought a company to do Siri.

By: Terrin Bell

Terrin Bell — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:04:00 +0000

That is the point. Siri doesn’t rely on Voice Commands. It understands context. A user doesn’t have to remember voice commands. Windows, however, is like Apple’s old voice command technology whereas you have to remember commands. You can have a whole conversation with Siri.

The whole video is testing a recent Microsoft executive claim that Tell Me does essentially the same thing as Siri, which it doesn’t for the above stated reason.

By: Terrin Bell

Terrin Bell — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:00:00 +0000

The video is not misleading. The other day some Microsoft big wig said he doesn’t see what all the hoopla is over Siri because Microsoft’s TellMe feature has been doing the same thing for years. The video is a response to that. The point is Tell Me requires, as you say, exact voice commands that you have to remember, whereas Siri does not. That, however, isn’t what the Microsoft big shot suggested.

By: civvie

civvie — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 11:39:00 +0000

There is truly no such thing as neutral english accent. In my experience educated Americans are probably the most widely understandable speakers. On the contrary Americans seem to have a harder time understanding and discerning other English accents. I am Australian and when I’m in the states people think I’m Brittish. I live in London and I can tell you no-one would ever mistake me for Brittish here. Just my experience. Someone ought to invent a ‘guess the accent’ test. Would be pretty fun.

By: summertimecowboy

summertimecowboy — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:16:00 +0000

same results in German
http://youtu.be/tJikWg5wvBk

By: Patrick Elliott-Brennan

Patrick Elliott-Brennan — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:47:00 +0000

Impenetrable? The Australian accent!

LOL

I’ve seen US movies and tv shows that needed subtitles!

By: jody radzik

jody radzik — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:14:00 +0000

This works perfectly as a metaphor for the history and differences between these two companies.

By: Allen

Allen — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:45:00 +0000

Shoulda told Siri to open a program. That’s something WP can do but iPhone can’t. Siri has a much better ear though.

By: joshduck

joshduck — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:16:00 +0000

He’s definately exaggerating (and he knows it). The weasel words are a give away: “you could argue”. Though, in his defense you could use the 80-20 rule to argue that TellMe implements 20% of Siri’s functionality but provides 80% of it’s functionality (calling, dictating, searching).
My experience: I have a WP7 phone and an iPhone 4. Both are good phones. However, despite my iPhone being a year newer I can’t use Siri but I can use TellMe. My wife has an iPhone 4S. She’s used Siri maybe a half a dozen times. The primary use case people trot out for these demos is the reminder functionality. It seems to be the most polished feature but I don’t find myself organising my personal life in that way.

By: gratefulvideo

gratefulvideo — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 22:37:00 +0000

“*The film “Kes” is the only movie ostensibly in English I have found largely unintelligible.”

Watch “Snatch” (2000). If you can understand that english you can understand anything.

By: jerwin

jerwin — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 16:58:00 +0000

Commands like “Text Name” or “Call Name” are boring. They’ve been done before.
Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, however tried to claim that

“you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced”.

That’s a stretch. No matter how similar the technology, no matter how similar the capability, windows phone 7 can’t compete if the usability and the end results aren’t also similar.

If TellMe is riddled with bugs and misunderstandings, it’s just a novelty act.

By: dbavaria

dbavaria — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 16:46:00 +0000

The voice commands are different across the two platforms, I suggest you check out this link and try again:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/basics/use-speech-on-my-phone.aspx

By: Itsumishi

Itsumishi — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:19:00 +0000

The reminder feature is very cool! Didn’t know it could do that (I don’t have a capable iPhone but my partner does).

By: Petzl

Petzl — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:29:00 +0000

PWNED.
Or, in tellme-ese: JXQWL.

By: Michael Gates

Michael Gates — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:11:00 +0000

MS has billions of dollars. They don’t need your pity. Feel free to laugh alllllll you want.

By: silus

silus — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:52:00 +0000

How is “it doesn’t support accents” an acceptable excuse for voice recognition software failing?

By: koko szanel

koko szanel — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:04:00 +0000

Dear aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all
its only been 3 years, give Microsoft 10 more to work out the kinks in this fabulous technology.

By: joshduck

joshduck — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 08:07:00 +0000

Obviously Siri is much more advanced. He’s comparing a Apple’s latest and greatest feature built on a sophisticated natural language engine to Windows Phone’s keyword based commands.

This demo is pretty misleading because he (deliberately?) used phrases that WP7 can’t understand. Commands like “Text Name” or “Call Name” work fine. His thick accent doesn’t help either; though WP7 can understand my Australian accent without issues.

By: matthew sanders

matthew sanders — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 07:21:00 +0000

The vast majority of people don’t sound like you, no matter who you are or what language you speak. I just trying the same stuff on the Google voice search, and the recognition works like a champ, so I think it is fair to say that the big Software company did a second rate job at their voice recognition, and didn’t buy the right startup fast enough.

By: Richard Dagenais

Richard Dagenais — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 06:23:00 +0000

Siri has finally made it possible to understand what Australians are saying.

By: Guest

Guest — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:54:00 +0000

“Bad lip reading” indeed.

By: invictus

invictus — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:22:00 +0000

The take-home message for me is, Skrillex is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw

By: A. .

A. . — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:07:00 +0000

i came for the meeting

By: แอ็ะปปี้

แอ็ะปปี้ — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 04:15:00 +0000

I would really like to know of the Windows phone’s speech recognition technology supports Australian. If not, then our snark should really be limited to “Windows didn’t properly adapt their phone to the Australian market.”

I would like to see the same demo done using an American accent, just as a baseline.

(Phonologically, there are some pretty huge differences between dialects of English; speech recognition software would be baffled by the different vowels, rhoticity, use of glottal stops, etc. Just because our brains can “adapt” to understand while watching Trainspotting* doesn’t mean a computer can.)

*The film “Kes” is the only movie ostensibly in English I have found largely unintelligible.

By: Culturedropout

Culturedropout — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:38:00 +0000

I came here looking for teen anal, and all I got was this silly voice recognition demo. What a ripoff! XD

By: flosofl

flosofl — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:56:00 +0000

It really is impressive. When I first got the phone, I played with Siri and then thought, “nice toy”. But the thing is, I keep using it more and more for everyday stuff. I use it to set appointments, make phone calls when driving over the in car BT, and set reminders. By far the most impressive one is “Remind me to do blah when I get to work” (having already defined where work is in the phone), and sure enough when I pull into the parking lot, the reminder pops up.

By: Halloween_Jack

Halloween_Jack — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Kind of not seeing the problem there, Rob.