tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post7784460834837864074..comments2024-03-28T05:47:44.752-05:00Comments on RIFLES AT DAWN: We Hip OldstersTim Morrisseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00457723301178870851noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post-53385362223304687312010-09-13T09:06:18.664-05:002010-09-13T09:06:18.664-05:00Of course, I can't find the story I cut out th...Of course, I can't find the story I cut out the newspaper a while ago, but I was interested to read I am, at 36, in the third oldest segment of bloggers and a minority, at that!Lunch Box Momhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08595984115469570689noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-573188106264061392.post-39808980815273944392010-09-03T12:46:20.663-05:002010-09-03T12:46:20.663-05:00>> Del Colliano says the first ten years of ...>> Del Colliano says the first ten years of this new century were devoted to the internet; the next ten will be all about the mobile internet. <<<br /><br />Yeah, but it's when I see "innovations" like speech-to-text messaging phones -- where instead of typing a text message you speak it and the phone sends a text message -- and the accompanying text-to-speech application that converts the text message to voice on the receiving end, that I wonder how much wheel-spinning is going on.<br /><br />I mean, it isn't enough to actually dial someone's number and speak with your own voice to the other person...you have to create a text message by speaking it and the high-tech phone converts it to a text message...which is then read back to the recipient in a drunken Swede's voice.<br /><br />Maybe it's simply recycling old technology. I heard a demonstration of DECTalk back when text-to-speech was a big deal. DEC (the old Digital Equipment Corporation) had hired Stevie Wonder as a spokesman. DECTalk enabled Wonder to hear his electronic messages read to him in one of several drunken Swede voices. I punched my name into a keyboard attached to a DECTalk unit and heard it sound out a completely new mispronounciation of my name: Steve Er-bitch. I was impressed!<br /><br />Anyway, the voice quality and accent of these text-to-speech units hasn't advanced much in the intervening 25 years. Yes, I heard DECTalk in 1984 or thereabouts.<br /><br />I'm waiting for the day that cell phones with Bluetooth headsets acquire a new capability: a heads-up display. It'll have a little screen a couple inches from your eye, kind of like the one Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott wears in the new "Star Trek" movie. So you can drive and video chat with your friends at the same time!<br /><br />I like technology as much as the next guy. It seems to me that the mobile Internet craze will settle down soon. To what I don't know...it just looks like a fancy entertainment delivery system at the moment.<br /><br />The Town Crank<br />Neenah, WISteve Erbachhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05065643506800242801noreply@blogger.com