There have been E-mail<->voice gateways around for years.
That sort of works, as you can text-to-speach it, and it's
useful to someone that has a daily drive as their commute. (And, of
course, it needs proper voice recognition to really pull off, be it
for either saying "next unread", or for it transcribing a reply.)
But for general Internet access? Uhg, no way. I can just picture
the text-to-voice now on a webpage: oh, 5 words of actual content
...
@termie: I've been mulling
that idea over for a few years now. Hire some good researchers,
some machines, lots of bandwidth and some phones. Now you can
settle an argument anywhere by phoning the service and just asking.
I wonder if anyone would really use it though?
It would be aimed at consumers: "John says Rwanda used to be
called Upper Volta, but I say it was Burkina Faso. Who wins?"
And so would be priced and marketed with that in mind: "An
answer for a buck"
@rickmeasham: it's
already been done in a few forms, largely sms at the moment, though
google does have google 411 which works pretty well, personally i
expect the google sms search service to get better to the point
where this becomes largely possible with it (it already does pretty
well with your example, "Burkina Faso, Formerly called the republic
of Upper Volta..." when searching for rwanda burkina faso upper
volta)
Doesn't Amazon offer this service as well? It's part of the
Kindle, but they also have it available as a full-out service.
Mechanical Turk or something like that, I forget the exact
name.
11 comments so far
I mean, can you imagine trying to surf the web on the phone?
2 months, 1 week ago by rcadden.
Only thing that comes to mind is if you must have something online but don't have net access otherwise
2 months, 1 week ago by krazykritter.
i would do it while riding a bike
2 months, 1 week ago by termie.
There have been E-mail<->voice gateways around for years. That sort of works, as you can text-to-speach it, and it's useful to someone that has a daily drive as their commute. (And, of course, it needs proper voice recognition to really pull off, be it for either saying "next unread", or for it transcribing a reply.) But for general Internet access? Uhg, no way. I can just picture the text-to-voice now on a webpage: oh, 5 words of actual content ...
2 months, 1 week ago by CAW.
i'd like there to just be somebody on the other end telling me answers to what i ask
2 months, 1 week ago by termie.
yeah I can see for email, but for regular internet? WTF?
2 months, 1 week ago by rcadden.
@termie: I've been mulling that idea over for a few years now. Hire some good researchers, some machines, lots of bandwidth and some phones. Now you can settle an argument anywhere by phoning the service and just asking. I wonder if anyone would really use it though?
It would be aimed at consumers: "John says Rwanda used to be called Upper Volta, but I say it was Burkina Faso. Who wins?"
And so would be priced and marketed with that in mind: "An answer for a buck"
2 months, 1 week ago by RickMeasham.
@rickmeasham: it's already been done in a few forms, largely sms at the moment, though google does have google 411 which works pretty well, personally i expect the google sms search service to get better to the point where this becomes largely possible with it (it already does pretty well with your example, "Burkina Faso, Formerly called the republic of Upper Volta..." when searching for rwanda burkina faso upper volta)
2 months, 1 week ago by termie.
Doesn't Amazon offer this service as well? It's part of the Kindle, but they also have it available as a full-out service. Mechanical Turk or something like that, I forget the exact name.
2 months, 1 week ago by CAW.
MechTurk is about hiring someone to do some task for you .. it could be searching, but it could also be envelope stuffing
2 months, 1 week ago by RickMeasham.
@rickmeasham chacha.com does this sort of thing, and appears to do it (a) with real people who have (b) personality.
2 months, 1 week ago by ruk.