Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky
From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Voice Activated Computer (Articulate Systems)
Message-ID: <5565@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 30 Mar 91 05:04:30 GMT
References: <3151@beguine.UUCP>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 25

In article <3151@beguine.UUCP> danielg@med.unc.edu (Daniel Gene Sinclair) writes:
>Today I received a catalog called MacAvenue, which seems to be the Mac
>offshoot of CompuAdd, the pc clone mail order company.  In it, they have
>an add for a voice activated computer board from Articulate Systems.
>It's called the Voice Navigator II.  Here's the text:

I got one.  (Got is the right word.  I didn't buy it myself. I admired
it so much at a MacWorld show that they sent me one a couple of months
later.)

It's great. What it does is, you teach it to recognize
menu-words.  (Say each word 3 times.)  Then you can select from your
menus, in hierarchical fashion, by saying the words.  It is reliable
enough to actually use, at least for my voice.  (Not too good on
distinguishing "file" from "five".)  Also a lot of facilities for
doing other things.  If you have trouble with a word, you can make a
synonym, but I have trouble remembering too many of those.  They said
they plan in a later release to make it easy to put the synonyms into
the menus.

I think it's a win.  Didn't expect to see usable speech recognizer for
a couple more years, at least, in this sort of price range.

But don't expect to use it for text entry.  The menu selection
restriction is probably why it works so well.