Speaking

Speaking.

Voice has got to be one of the most interesting things going right now. That felt weird to say. (I recited some of this essay using Siri on my iPhone.)

I recited the essay and the underlying ideas and then edited it in Quip on the desktop. I did think about typing up this whole post speech-to-text and then hitting ‘publish’, but punctuation is really hard for a computer to understand. Stream-of-consciousness as a diary or in a text to your friend is nice, not so much on something to send to the world.

I’m really into the idea of using voice as command-line and to transcribe short text messages and emails. I’ve found this particularly useful with the bigger iPhones which are difficult to hold and type using just one hand. So I end up reciting text messages, occasionally quickly editing a missed word if I have to and sending it along.

This just scratches the surface in what’s going on in voice technology now though.

Between:

• tools envisioning voice as command-line (see Comparison of Knowledge Boxes in Siri/Google Now/Cortana) and

• tools re-thinking voice calls (see Talko and Trucaller) and

• hardware like the straight-outta-‘Her’ Moto Hint and

• features in chat apps to record-and-send voice (see new iMessages; they’re voice comms, but just not in real-time)

there’s something really interesting afoot.

Bonus: Did you know: with the recent iPhones/iOS out, when your iPhone is plugged in, you can start Siri by speaking “Hey Siri”. You needn’t touch the home button to enable Siri, just start speaking “Hey Siri” followed by your command, whatever it is. – I wonder if someone on a major TV broadcast said “Hey Siri. Call Mom.” how many plugged in handsets across the country might actually start ringing up moms.

Reminder: call your mom.