On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Alex Feinman wrote: > > Well, its an interesting idea, but it poses some serious problems; > > > > One, for Dragon Naturally Speaking, they'd have to talk directly into the > > microphone at a distance of about 6 inches, and the background noise would > > have to be kept at a minimum; Also, you'd need to lead a different 'speech > > pack' for each language, as languages have differing vowel sounds and > > consonants from ours that would be misrecognised. > > I've been wondering about that. Do they sell mini-parabolic mics, or > perhaps mini-shotguns? Something with *good* directionality. My idea > is to attach one of these to, say, a finger, and then just point the > mic at whatever I want to hear - your mouth, or whatever. Might also > work for the crowded-cocktail-party effect. Quick non-tech problem: it would probably look very impolite (not to mention rather silly) to point at the person's mouth whenever they start speaking. Having this, say, on the back of the hand, with an easy way to turn it on or off, would probably work nicely and unobtrusively. > The problem I see for a mult-translator is you have to set it to the > language they're talking in before they start speaking. Heck, even a > human has a hard time figuring out what language you're speaking, if > you tend to switch between 3 or 4 languages. True, though in most situations you wouldn't be switching between multiple languages; when in France, put it on French and away you go. True, in Asian countries and such which have a billion dialects, you may have a problem, but then that's not a problem with the wearable. :-) > > .Now, the reverse way, where it translates *your* words, perhaps puts them on > > a little Matrix Orbital LCD, sounds actually quite usable. The mike is close > > enough, it would be trained to your voice, and you could either have > > translation software or pipe the text through Babelfish if you have a net > > connection. > > It might be nice to have the running text of everything I say all of > the time. Then again...maybe not. ;-) Hmmm, IRC-style logging for real life. Frightening thought, really. OTOH, it might very well make people think before they speak, if it really can come back to haunt them. :-) Actually, this sounds like an excellent practical market for wearables - for business execs, wealthy tourists and the like. Toss in a GPS HUD (more useful in the country, say, than in a crowded city), easy upload/download of documents, and hey presto! You've got a really interesting commodity on your hands. Out of extremely idle curiosity, how much would a system like this cost? Gurney -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.ml.org
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