One of the innovations I have been patiently waiting for in the PDA/mobilephone/small notebook marketplace is for some hardware and/or software combination that allows users to talk or tape or OCR interact with their PDA – and the PDA would be smart enough to pick up what was said. Not perfectly; but good enough so that I wont have to BruisedBlackberry Fat Finger- in excruciatingly long time a simple message. I had really expected Apple, IBM or Microsoft to lead the way on this – each has portions of the technology and/or lots of bucks and market share incentives to do so.
Nothing from this quarter. But take a look at SpeechGear and its Compadre software for use in mobile phones, PDAs, and tablet PCs. They are thinking in terms of translation from one language to another – I am thinking faster, much more convenient own language text entry into various devices. I am thinking super-powered tape recorder. Then and only then am I thinking Tricorder like translation services. But if translations voice recognition delivers great results – who am I to complain… except possibly at the price. Bill Saint Gates is saying you have to be big to innovate in IT these days. What Bill may be alluding to is that you have to be big to survive while bringing your innovation to market. But in fact, SpeechGear and the whole CES Show is testament to the the argument … “Au contraire….”
(c)JBSurveyer 2006