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September 12, 2009
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10:38 amhttp://vodkabuzz.com/vodkas/segrams_extra_smooth_vodka
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August 18, 2009
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4:58 pm
VeeV Review Part I
Read my thoughts on VeeV Review Part Ihttp://vodkabuzz.com/articles/veev_review_part_i
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July 30, 2009
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8:35 am
From LiveJournal
This was originally posted January 14th, 2005 on my blog at robertdot.org before I pulled a lot of content off. I'm reposting because I realized when I got the iPhone 3GS that Apple had implemented almost exactly what I described below with their new voice control.
I was scouring the web looking for a program for my Nokia 3660 that would accept Speech-to-Dial after finding out that the technology is used at least two phones. No luck finding any reasonable solution at this point.
I did stumble across an article called Speak & Dial by Mike Hogan. Basically, Mike says less than 40% of cell phone users use the "speak-to-dial" functionality in their phone.
My problem with the current crop of speak-to-dial is that it isn't true speech recognition. It is the audible equivalent to string matching. The phone says: if what-you-say sounds basically the same as what-you-said-before, then we have a match, and I'll dial the contact associated with it.
That's not good enough. Most are low on memory, so they can only store a certain number of these little sound clips. For example, it may hold 25. That's fine if I have 25 or less people in my phone. But I don't. After 3 or 4 months, I don't remember who has a voice tag and who doesn't.
But, lets pretend that all phones had super-small terabyte hard drives them. I can store thousands of voice tags. Then the problem is that I forget how I stored them. Usually, I stick to a standard of "First-Name Last-Name" when I do it, but most people aren't going to think ahead. Further, I know a few different people that have the same names. That might confuse a phone.
So, basically, any speak-to-dial based on the current system is flawed. But I have a solution.
First, we need a basic speech recognition. The voice recognition chip turns voice into phone commands with little/no software overhead. It's all done on-chip.
The second thing we need is a text to speech app. This could be a chip, but I think a software program would be fine on most upper-tier phones.
The third thing is a set of commands for dialing. The first will be "call" and the second will be "dial". "Call" alerts the phone that a name will be given. "Dial" alerts the phone that it is going to dial a number.
If I say,
Call,
I will then say a name. It can be a first name or last name or nickname or whatever, as long as it is stored in the phone's address book. If I say,Call Erin,
the phone looks for any contacts named "Erin" and maybe "Aaron" depending on it's sound recognition. If more than one is returned, the phone will prompt me:Which one: Erin Lee or Erin Poe?
orWhich one: Lee or Poe?
To this I would reply,Lee.
Then the phone would dial Erin Lee. If no matches are found, the phone will say:Sorry, no matches found.
If multiple numbers were found for the user the phone would prompt:Which number? Cell, Home, Work ...
listing all numbers for that contact in the address book. The user could then reply,Home.
At any point during a dial, the user should be able to cancel out with a voice command like,Cancel call.
This could be predetermined / changed as a setting so that if the user had a friend with a nicknameCancel Call,
it wouldn't not call him.If I say
Dial,
I will then say a phone number. This should NOT be limiting! For example, if I want to dial "911", "2054826876", or "1800555TELLME" it should be able to figure it out. The only requirement is that you say actually numbers or letters. That way it doesn't have to guess if you meant "Night" or "Nite". It should, obviously, translate letters to their keypad equivalent, and understand "pound" and "star". It will then take these spoken commands and send them after a 2 or 3 second pause. If this isn't a standard number format (3, 10, 11, or 12 digits), it would prompt the user (repeating the phone number quickly) to make sure that is what s/he wanted to dial before sending, waiting for a "yes" or "no" answer.The voice dial system should turn off once the call has been placed. This will avoid any voice answering services that use voice recognition, and avoid odd dialing during calls.
Caveats: Unless this chip is I18N, you will have to have a different language chip for each phone. This alone is probably the only reason for staying with the current method. The current method doesn't care if you make clicks and beeps, use gibberish, Japanese, English, or any other language, as long as it can compare wave forms. That means there are no worries about languages.
Salvage: The only way I can think to salvage the current system is by allowing multiple voice tags for each user, and including more storage to accommodate them. As of now, at least on all phones I've dealt with, you can only use one tag per name. If I could, for example, add "Brodrecht","Kathy","Kathy Brodrecht","Brodrecht Kathy", and "Home" to my mom's entry, I wouldn't have to remember which to say. Also, each phone number would need a designation. My T60D did this, but my Nokia 3360 does not. The T60D had an optional voice tag for each type of phone number (mobile, home, fax, work).
This is a first draft of my idea, and is open for your comments / questions to further refine the idea.
http://robertdot.livejournal.com/18690.html
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July 20, 2009
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1:51 pm
Weighing in on NYTimes.com
Read my thoughts on Weighing in on NYTimes.comhttp://vodkabuzz.com/articles/weighing_in_on_nytimes_com
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July 06, 2009
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9:00 am
Square One
Read my thoughts on Square Onehttp://vodkabuzz.com/vodkas/square_one
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June 23, 2009
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12:48 pm
Summer Drink Recipes
Read my thoughts on Summer Drink Recipeshttp://vodkabuzz.com/articles/summer_drink_recipes
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April 15, 2009
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1:41 pm
Twitter Traffic Machine?!
Twitter Traffic Machine seems to be working to introduce spam to Twitter. Awesome! If you've gotten followers recently that only seem to post headlines and links to articles, I reckon they might be from here, and it turns out their content is probably generated from somewhere else and probably contains links to stuff that they and / or someone else (like the guy who start TTM) get paid for. I love spam! Now we can get more from Twitter!http://robertdot.livejournal.com/18432.html
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April 08, 2009
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8:18 amhttp://robertdot.org/?p=186
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March 25, 2009
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11:46 amhttp://robertdot.org/?p=179
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March 19, 2009
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6:07 pmhttp://robertdot.org/?p=177
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February 18, 2009
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2:19 pmhttp://robertdot.org/?p=175
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February 16, 2009
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7:13 pm
NIN Hiatus, Again. WTF?
If you didn't read it, go ahead and read A note from Trent and a wave goodbye. If you're a fan, when you're done reading, you'll say, "WTF?," "Again?!," or a combination of both. You'll say this because Trent wants to take a break and / or kill off Nine Inch Nails. He was pretty vague about it.
I've been a NIN fan since high school, and maybe longer. I had a tape of Pretty Hate Machine some time in middle school or junior high. It cut off in the middle of Sin. I liked it, but it wasn't until early high school that I managed to get a full version of Pretty Hate Machine. From there, I became a real fan. Ignoring singles since The Fragile, I've bought a copy of every album they've made.
NIN has been a difficult band to be a fan of. After Pretty Hate Machine, it was 5 years before the release of The Downward Spiral (assuming you don't consider Broken a full-length album). It was another 5 years until The Fragile. It was six years until the release of With Teeth. Another two years later, Year Zero was released. That's 5 full length albums in 18 years. Most bands will have made at least 9 albums in that time, assuming they didn't break up before then (which may have been why NIN made it as long as they have). It wasn't until Year Zero that I would consider NIN as being relatively prolific (which is on a normal release schedule for most bands).
So, as you read above, NIN is taking at least another hiatus or maybe breaking up for good. If it's the latter, I'm really pissed. If it's the former, it's just the same NIN schedule, but I'm still pissed. For a large part of my life, I've anticipated new NIN releases. Now when Trent has given the public the impression that NIN will be most prolific (because he is clean and totally into this music thing), he says he thinks NIN should "disappear for awhile." What the fuck, man?!
At the best, I can spend another 5 years waiting for a new release. Trent will be in diapers and I won't be terribly far behind him. At worst, Trent will start producing (or even quit music entirely), and no more NIN music will be released. Either way, I want to slap Trent in the face, even though I know he could kick my ass, and tell him through my bleeding teeth that his priorities are really inconvenient to me. I'm sure making music and touring a lot after each release isn't easy. Is it harder being an artist than, say, being a construction worker? I can't buy that it is.
Given the fact that I haven't been able to connect much to the past few releases (which seemed less visceral, and composed than PHM, TDS,and Fragile), it'll take a lot from NIN's next release (if it ever comes) to capture my imagination again. Maybe it was time for NIN to take a break and regroup to do something new and profound (because, despite my disconnect, their new stuff was profound for NIN and some concepts like the I Heart Bees creator's promo campaign were profound in general). I hope Trent takes some time to find something amazing to show us in a few years, or even 5 years. If he doesn't, NIN may have be come obsolete to the present and only holding a part, though deep and powerful, of the past.http://robertdot.livejournal.com/18388.html
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February 12, 2009
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11:12 am
Art or Artist
Local pop station 103.7 The Q has promised to stop playing Chris Brown songs after the news went around that he beat his girlfriend Rihanna who is also a pop star. They've decided to have some kind of make-a-donation-and-hear-any-song-you-want fundraiser for domestic abuse.
Though I know modern music licensing is a bit different than selling a painting (mainly because royalties are paid for songs played on the radio), my art teacher in high school always said something like, "Love the art, not the artist." She said this because she was trying to get impressionable students to enjoy things created by alcoholics, druggies, serial fornicators, adulterers, murderers, self-mutilators, thieves, liars, and / or insane people. While looking at art doesn't put money into artists' pockets like listening to music on the radio indirectly does, can the same be applied to Chris Brown?
Abuse is a hot button, and easy to rally around since most people wouldn't say they are just fine with abuse. Perhaps that is why Amy Winehouse can croon about not having a drug problem when she very obviously does and no one seems to care. So, if Chris Brown did something else, like have illegal guns, would anyone care enough to stop playing his music? Given rapper TI's success, I imagine no one would notice.
So, should we love the art (not Chris Brown specifically, since most of the people I know aren't and wouldn't be fans), even though the artist is a choad?http://robertdot.livejournal.com/18160.html -
7:55 am
American Idol
Erin and I were at my parents' last night. American Idol came on. My parents watch it, so we all sat around for the final decisions for the top 36. I'm only saying this so that I can say that Nate Marshall reminds me of Terry from Reno 911. I can't find video of him from the auditions where I decided this, but here is a video of him singing some crazy stuff:
And here is Terry on Reno 911 Miami:http://robertdot.livejournal.com/17861.html -
7:36 am
Pave the Cow Path Follow Up
Earlier this week, the "Stop Here On Red" sign was replaced by a yield sign. Is someone listening? Also, I was wrong about the lack of a protected left. There is one. I've just never seen it on.http://robertdot.livejournal.com/17602.html
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February 06, 2009
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10:02 am
The Things They Don't Tell You
I got burned twice yesterday because the real specifications of products weren't disclosed:- YouTube only allows 10 minute clips for normal users. It has been this way since 2006. If you are an avid YouTube user, you may already know this. Seeing as I've uploaded 5 or 6 short videos, I never thought about it. Yesterday, I tried to upload my wedding video. On the upload page, they tell you that you can upload up to ten videos at once, reference the best formats, and tell you it has to be under 1 gig in size. I uploaded the video only to be told that it was too long, but they don't tell you how long it can be or how many minutes you are over. So, I had to search the help to find a requirement that should have been on the download page. Lame. So, I had to cut it in half and export it on my old, slow G4 PowerBook, which took 4+ hours. Why can't they offer to split the video for you?
- When I formatted my Mac, I was stoked to see a case sensitive option because it would make it easier to work with our Linux web servers. After customizing it all day, I came home and tried to install Photoshop. Apparently, Photoshop can only be installed on HSF Case Insensitive partitions. They don't mention that anywhere, and the only fix that I could find was to wipe the partition and reinstall the OS, losing all the other changes I did.
http://robertdot.livejournal.com/17154.html
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February 05, 2009
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2:25 pmtag:youtube.com,2008:video:89ylh23xBsg
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1:04 pmtag:youtube.com,2008:video:T6dVwItPXCg
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January 29, 2009
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9:22 am
Yahoo! Updates Graded Browser Support
Read my geeky web design post called "Yahoo! Updates Graded Browser Support"http://robertdot.org/?p=173
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January 23, 2009
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11:34 pm
There Goes The Neighborhood
When we decided to buy our house, we found out some great news. The land behind our house, currently all woods, didn't perk. That means you can't put a septic tank there. Since there was no sewer service, that meant there would be no development behind our house.
In addition to whole Argo Bingo Fiasco, I found out today that there were plans to put in a back entrance to my subdivision on the other side of my next door neighbors. It turns out that the land was annexed into Margaret which has sewer service. That means the 300-ish acres of land behind my house can now be developed. The developers (or the municipality, or whoever) want a road that hooks into the back of my neighborhood to feed into the new neighborhood. That would probably lead to increased traffic in addition to my nice wooded view turning into a sea of houses. Not cool.
What's worse is that, assuming the information I received is correct, there would be another entrance a little further down Argo-Margaret Rd, making the road connecting to my neighborhood redundant.
So, this pretty much blows. Apparently we will be signing a petition to against the road being built at the neighborhood meeting this Sunday. I don't know who is proposing the road and if they'll give a crap. If they don't care that we hate the idea of the new road and decide to put it in, I may be chaining myself to trees or covertly sabotaging the project. Not really, but I can pretend I will.http://robertdot.livejournal.com/16917.html
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A Vanity Page For Robert Brodrecht
Red Mountain, Birmingham, AL
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33.5050640107;-86.775680542