Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Audio blogging including speech to text!!

I've just been impressed again. I heard about ipadio this morning and installed to my phone. Just checked it out at http://www.ipadio.com found someones phlog (phone log) http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/MarkSmith3/2009/09/01/Fish and saw the transcript of their aduio blog. Couldn't believe it just had the text right there.

I'm definitely excited to try this. Apparently the speech to text part is delivered by spinvox (https://www.spinvox.com/signup_step_1.html?pt=6).

really excited because I've been waiting for this kind of functionality for years. if it's now consumer grade then I can't wait to see what other stuff is coming along soon.

If the quality is good enough then not only have we just moved to touch screens but we might quickly make them obsolete with just out voice!!!
edit 20090911
Ok, I've now tried the service, at a basic level, and I'm truly impressed. I recorded a 25 second message on my phone. Uploaded it to ipadio and about 20 minutes later I had the phlog and transcript all available. In truth every was there almost instantly, it just took a while for spinvox to process the transcript. I'm happy with that since it's free, I assume the paid up members get priority, and I expect there's a lot of demand at the mo.
I didn't check the exact wording of the transcript to ensure it matched what I said perfectly. I'm just happy that it's 95% correct cos that's 95% of my text I don't have to type. It was much easier to read through a first draft that came direct from the horses mouth.
What has really impressed me is that I haven't had to train spinvox or ipadio to learn my voice or anything and that I just record an mp3 on my phone. It is all so quick and simple. I can really see this taking on and changing the way we work with technology and just go about our day.

edit 20090915

So here's an example of a post using ipadio. Not perfect. shows I need to practise with it. Not sure if I didn't speak clearly, wen too fast etc. Shame. It had all worked first time so far.

1 comment:

James O'Malley said...

Glad you like the service!

I too am dead impressed with Spinvox - it still surprises me that we're the first people to do this sort of thing.

James