The natural human communication method of choice is voice. It’s

efficient, quick, and intuitive – the problem is that computers have had a very tough time understanding natural human speech, until a few years ago

anyway. We’ve all noticed the newer voice response systems at call centers that speak to us instead of asking us to listen to dozens of

choices to select one.

The voice response interface (for mobile access, anyway) was phased out in favor of WAP – that interim text-browsing

technology that was supposed to hold us over until higher bandwidth networks became available. Now that we have the networks, we can have full web

access on our mobile devices – Now we see mobile phones with QWERTY keyboards.

Less than a decade ago, we were promised voice recognition from

our computers. Speech-to-text applications were being sold and even built in to major PC operating systems. I, like so many others, spent hours

training my speech recognition software only to abandon it for the lack of time savings and high error rates.

As fate has a sense of irony, now

that we have these high-speed data networks and mobile devices, speech recognition systems are working great these days. These systems allow the user

to access information anywhere, for free, and they quickly present data verbally or visually on your device. Try them out – they’re certain to find a

place on your speeddial.