Opera Software will include voice capabilities in its updated browser software, using IBM’s embedded ViaVoice technology, the company says. The upgraded browser, which will continue to be offered at no cost, will be available later this year, Opera in Oslo, Norway, says. Initially, it will offer support for ViaVoice in English only, but other languages may be developed in due course, Opera Chief Executive Officer Jon von Tetzchner says.
Opera Gives Its Browser a Voice
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The X+V standard competes with the SALT (Speech Application Language Tags) standard being pushed by Microsoft, von Tetzchner says. SALT is used in Microsoft’s Speech Server products, due to launch this week.
Come on guys .. one fekkin’ standard, please!! Is this really so difficult to acheive ?
“slash dot period com”
Hands free! Great for “xxx nude search”
Soon there will be no need for us to move any part of our bodies to compute
Come on guys .. one fekkin’ standard, please!! Is this really so difficult to acheive ?
You ask this when Microsoft is involved?
The only problem is, you wont be able to choose to not install it, and you can’t disable it.
Much like their mail and IRC clients.
Isn’t Microsoft going to court over bundling too much (abusing their monopoly by bundling too much).
I don’t know about everyone else, but when I go to look for an e-mail client, I search for an e-mail client. When I want an IRC client, I search for an IRC client. Neither belong in a web browser.
Yes, this will be amazing for people who cannot type or cannot operate a mouse (or people just too lazy to do either), but what about us that can do both or either? Do we have to fight a losing battle with the “feature” or do we get to have choice? Considering Opera’s other decisions, I’m thinking I’ll be losing a battle.
(btw, I use Opera constantly. I love everything about it, except the lack of choice within it and their way of interpreting RSS feeds. It is so very unproductive. IMO.)
to what I was proposing several years ago:
Taking the ‘G’ Out of GUI
Contributed by Jason Christie
osOpinion.com
April 9, 2001
BeOS, Linux, Windows, OS X, QNX. They all have it wrong.
Each of those operating systems provides a workable, mouse-driven interfaces to computer hardware. The trouble is several of us don’t want mouse-driven interfaces, or at least don’t want to be using them five years from now if we don’t have to. I’m guessing I’m not the only IT person with a steady pain in my right forearm.
Computers are a big part of my life, but they are extraordinarily poorly integrated. Reading news on the couch is never quite comfortable enough. It is for this reason alone that I predict Web pads will become the most common way to view the Web within three years or so.
It seems to me that the future of computing will belong to those with the foresight and ability to plan for future enhancements. Now, I’m not suggesting anything radical. None of this “command line only” rhetoric. Graphical apps will probably always require hands-on control (at least until we have magnetic resonance imaging devices reading our thoughts directly). But I am truly getting sick of using my hands to coax my PC into doing things that could be handled with an utterance.
Speak Softly
Yes, there are voice recognition add-ons for, well, most systems anyway. Some? But these offerings lack the deep, OS-level integration necessary for a truly satisfying level of responsiveness. In other words, I don’t want some hobbled-together solution, but rather a well thought out approach for the long haul. I want to program in C++ using my voice.
Obviously, some operating systems — and their respective steering committees — are more modular and receptive to new focus shifts than others. There’s no reason to belabor the differences between the approaches the primary OS manufacturers are taking. Some things are simply endemic to the organization behind the engineers.
Back to the Future
Had a certain OS manufacturer with a significant market share opted for this integrated approach at the advent of speech recognition, the paradigm for computing would have changed significantly already, and the others would have been forced to follow suit. Instead, we are still in 1995, for the most part.
I’m ready for some real changes in the UI landscape. Once speech recognition is tied to biometrics and security, operating systems that lack these key features will probably be viewed as insecure and antiquated.
The ones that aren’t viewed that way already, that is.
———————————————-
Astute OSNews readers will note that I actually sought a few additional developers to work on this project a month ago or so. Now that Opera is handling the voice recognition end, I can concentrate on the other half of my project, which is a hell of a lot less work, and a lot more useful…
If I don’t get scooped yet again, of course. But congratulations to Opera for taking the initiative.
There is no new story on BeDoper, if you read the Zeta Torrents/Nintendo story already.
Those of you who are in favor of this speech recognition stuff obviously don’t work in an office with 200 people seperated only by cubicles.
Hi
You might prefer to use Mozilla Firefox. It doesnt have unnecessary feature bloat of opera and everything else is available as extensions. Its clean and minimalistic
regards
Jess
“The only problem is, you wont be able to choose to not install it, and you can’t disable it.
Much like their mail and IRC clients.”
Yes you can disable. just rename or move the m2 dll from the installation directory then both the irc and mail client will not load. It sounds like a hack, but from the browsing the opera forums, this seems like the official way to disable the clients.
Hi
its a hack and i can understand that its the only workaround but whats official about it. the browser should allow it to be optional and customisable.
opera a few versions before was well know for being a customisable and good browser. now a few revisions later i find some stagnant stuff that arent worth it
regards
ron
You might prefer to use Mozilla Firefox. It doesnt have unnecessary feature bloat of opera and everything else is available as extensions. Its clean and minimalistic
Minimalistic? I myself prefer to use Firefox as well, but Opera, even with all the crap built into it is still smaller and faster than Firefox WITHOUT any of the extensions installed.
“The only problem is, you wont be able to choose to not install it, and you can’t disable it.
Much like their mail and IRC clients.”
According to comments made by Opera staff on their forums, its unlikely to be the default distribution.
It’s probably going to be a plugin, but with close integration to the Opera core to make it much smaller…in the 2 meg ballpark, compared to the 125 meg ballpark for the current ibm kit.
What’s the problem with that?
For the voice technology to work well, a Web page has to be created using X+V (XHTML+V, or Extensible Hypertext Markup Language and Voice), a proprietary specification for browsers in small and mobile devices backed by Opera, IBM, and Motorola.
Pity they don’t use standards like Voice XML. Well, then we’ll have the same story once again…
Those of you who work in an office with 200 people seperated only by cubicles should obviously have heard about ear-phone…
If you want a pure web browser with a simple UI there are plenty you can chose from. To me Opera’s main selling point is it’s rich set of features.
Guess I’m thick, but I never will understand the fuss over features such as M2 and IRC that are tiny in code size (find me a standalone mailer the size of m2.dll; for that matter, there are many standalone mailers bigger than Opera in its entirety) that one can simply choose not to use.
Hi
Its about choice. people who dont want to use those features must be able to customize opera not to display such stuff without fidling with stupid dlls directly.
i dont mind a feature “rich” browser as long as i have the ability to turn off unnecessary things.
irc and mailing stuff can be seperate from a browser. i dont need them or require their pestering
Jess
“irc and mailing stuff can be seperate from a browser. i dont need them or require their pestering”
Umm, they ‘pester’ you in the same way the portrait on the wall keeps staring at you even though you’ve told it a million times to look elsewhere?
What does this ‘pestering’ consist of, exactly?
“i dont mind a feature ‘rich’ browser as long as i have the ability to turn off unnecessary things.”
Odd, I thought you had to turn them on. You mean the mailer and IRC start sending off messages without your intervention?
“Its about choice. people who dont want to use those features must be able to customize opera not to display such stuff without fidling with stupid dlls directly.”
If you don’t set up M2 and IRC, the only things Opera “displays” are a couple of words (e.g., “Mail” and “Chat”) on the menu bar and the panel headings. Just seeing those words there bothers you that much? If it truly does, I’d ask around on the newsgroups and forums whether there might be an ini file setting that would help.
Hi
“Umm, they ‘pester’ you in the same way the portrait on the wall keeps staring at you even though you’ve told it a million times to look elsewhere?
What does this ‘pestering’ consist of, exactly? ”
they pester me in the interface. i dont need it. i want to remove it and not see them anywhere. i only need a browser when i want a browser. is that so difficult to understand
you can find out how to remove dlls and change ini files or mess up in the registry. i dont want to do that. i want a simple easy to use browser. no irc client. no mailer programs.
”
Odd, I thought you had to turn them on. You mean the mailer and IRC start sending off messages without your intervention?
”
no they dont. but i dont want them installed in my system. i want to have that choice offered to me by opera. it is supposed to feature rich and *customisable*.
thats why firefox is appealing to me. opera could have concentrated on the browser engine or anything more innovative instead of adding irc clients or mailer programs.
adding more and more features is not improving the browser at all
stop the sarcasm and understand that they are defects. opera as a browser is just fine. i just want only that
regards
Jess
‘they pester me in the interface. i dont need it. i want to remove it and not see them anywhere. i only need a browser when i want a browser. is that so difficult to understand’
Actually it is difficult to understand why you’re so bothered about it. You can turn off unwanted toolbar buttons and hotlist panels by simply right-clicking on them and selecting ‘remove’.
All that’s there to “pester” you is a couple of menus, why do you find them so difficult to ignore? I really can’t imagine why you consider something so trivial to be such a big deal.
‘adding more and more features is not improving the browser at all’
Not if you use those features and find them very valuable. Opera software are adding features that have been repeatedly requested by Opera users, so obviously a lot of people disagree with you.
Hi
“Not if you use those features and find them very valuable. Opera software are adding features that have been repeatedly requested by Opera users, so obviously a lot of people disagree with you.”
i dont care whether a lot of people disagree. i want the option to remove them if i dont need them. that should be crystal clear for anyone. i want opera to give me the choice of NOT installing the irc or mail clients. why doesnt opera do it. there is obsolutely no reason why i shouldnt given the choice. those who want these features can have them and enjoy them. i just need the choice
regards
Jess
First, my apologies. You’re right, I was sarcastic.
Being a bit more serious:
1. Granted that many (most, I think) like having small, light, fast e-mail and IRC clients all in the same package with the small, light, fast browser, certainly having the choice of just a browser alone is a valid wish.
2. Realize, though, that in order to have the mail and IRC clients be that small, they must be sharing code with the browser. This means that (a) saying time spent on the mailer or chat should’ve been spent on the browser doesn’t make as much sense, since they aren’t completely separate; and (b) you have two choices about separating the browser and mailer/chat/etc.: Go the Moz route and spend a lot of time and energy to wind up with two apps (Firefox and Thunderbird) that duplicate a bunch of the code they shared as Moz, so each one is bigger individually than they were as pieces of Moz, and that still each do pretty much the same thing and have pretty much the same code they did when together as Moz; or go the Opera route and just turn off the labels in the UI. Seems to me the Opera route is a lot more efficient.
3. I really think you should ask in the newsgroups and forums about ini file settings. You may find that it is possible to have what you want without removing dlls (though that’s just right-clicking a file and choosing Delete, no biggie).
Replying to an earlier comment, X+V is actually based on *existing* W3C standards such as XHTML, VoiceXML, & XML Events. So we’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re just making it better (ready for multimodal interaction). 🙂 W3C has X+V in their goodie bag now (MMI Working Group), so start using it to develop apps and we can keep it from being splintered by certain “parties”.