100% PROOF THAT DAN B. EVOLVED FROM APES
To:Randall E Westberg who wrote (3256)
From: Dan B. Sunday, Dec 1, 2002 6:54 PM
View Replies (1) | Respond to of 3279
Your bias is showing(as always, it seems), since you've declared failure for Fonix TTS and ASR while admittedly not having tried, and being unwilling to try, the very new products Fonix offers. Worse yet, I guess you are no doubt bending ears of salesmen who are as unfamiliar with the new products as you are(but all the better if you can give them a bad impression, eh?).
The new iSpeak 3.0 TTS product for home computers(free upgrade from 2.0 if you bought it recently), can let one listen to what one otherwise wants to read, while cooking lunch for instance, and the speech can be downloaded to MP-3 players for listening to from wherever one goes in a car and elsewhere(the beach, the gym). It'll speak anything pasted to the clipboard, can read directly from Word, and can read drag 'n dropped text directly from at least 11 different file formats, while using a choice of 14 different voices including AT&T Natural Voices(what I once thought was something better than Fonix, is in fact now just something added to Fonix), and a Lucent Articulator voice. This product has great potential, IMO, but the ASR products have even more, IMO.
Fonix ASR has been chosen by Microsoft to include with their XBOX game development kits(other ASR can be used with XBOX, its just that MSFT chose to ship Fonix ASR to developers, and apparently paid Fonix for the privledge). So there is every reason to believe XBOX games using Fonix ASR will come.
Fonix ASR based voice dialing is new for wireless digital assistants and the various phone versions, and from what I've seen on a message board site posted to RB, is well appreciated, even loved and highly recommended by some who have used it(I haven't come across any negative comments). This may become a great seller and I dare say the most dangerous moments of cell phone usage in cars is not in the talking, it's in the frustration of attempting to dial out when attention to the road is needed.
Fonix ASR Voice Director for home computers is capable of opening applications, and top level program menu functions, simply by asking, at any time. You make it play MP-3's by just saying, "Director, Brown Eyed Girl," for instance, at any time, whatever else you are doing(to heck with looking where to move the mouse around and clicking- you think it, you say it, you are done). This could become a very cool & sought after application in the near future, who knows right now? Certainly not us.
Fonix TTS is in a very expensive Panasonic talking caller ID phone, it speaks aloud the callers name between rings, and the feedback I've seen is that people love hearing who is calling instead of getting up and walking to look- only to find they aren't going to answer for various reasons- and they may hear/learn who they can call back, and finish what they are doing in the meantime without interruption.
All the early stuff you want to bring back may be interesting, but has had little apparant bearing upon the decisions made by the top companies that either are now, or likely soon will be, employing Fonix Products for sale.
One can only hope revenues continue on their recent upward path(based in new products as they are), so that Fonix can survive long enough to keep these products going. With the failure of Arthur Anderson, Fonix's former accountants, accounting delays coinciding with the need of SEC approval in order for the latest significantly dilutive financing arrangment to go forward, may appear dangerous. One can ONLY HOPE, the stockholders won't be left out in the cold. I doubt it enough to buy 11,000 shares for about $615.00 or so, to say that they will come though and out of the rat hole(and into XBOX games). I could lose it all.
Freedom Works,
Dan B |
