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Technology Stocks : PC Sector Round Table -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pierre-X who wrote (77)	3/20/1998 9:16:00 AM
From: tom pope	Respond to of 2025

Please excuse my ignorance - what does the acronym AUI stand for? Audio-User-Interface? Just a guess - based on GUI.

To: Pierre-X who wrote (77)	3/20/1998 12:40:00 PM
From: Jonathan Bird	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2025

I respectfully pose the question, my friend: have you ever used videoconferencing eq? I've used Intel video cameras with MS Net Meeting over 28.8 PPP dial-ups. I admit, the quality is less then stellar. But we are talking about the future here aren't we? There is no technological hurdle here. We just need more bandwidth. We can buy that with money now and it will get cheaper. As I alluded to before my belief that VC will be a killer app goes back to my belief that the majority of people by nature are social beings. Let me go back to AOL. They have this thing called a Buddy List. You place names of other members in it and when those members sign it shows up on your screen in a little window. You can then send those people Instant Messages(private real-time chat) and engage in chit chat, or just say hi. Its also a very efficient way to exchange a volley of messages. Much better then eMail for some things. Even interoffice communication. Instant Messages are immensely popular at AOL. And I mean huge. Its one of the memberships favorite things about AOL. It makes the computer an interactive device. Relationships are built. It's a cheap way to communicate over long distances. People spend more time online when it doesn't mean cutting themselves off from humans. Instant Messages are cool but you have to stop what you are doing to type. Using Net Meeting you can do an audio only call and just go about your business, chatting with one or more people. It is so much more relaxed. Like talking with the person in the cubicle across from you. Right now this is like a CB radio and it hogs bandwidth on 28.8 but it will get better. More people will connect to it. It has a "network externality"(uh oh). People will feel more comfortable spending time in front of computers. More computers will get sold. VC is just an extension of Instant Messages which I know for a fact the masses, and all those just joining the computer people absolutely love. I personally am in introvert. I don't even talk much. I'm perfectly comfortable with the box keeping me in a tractor beam as my wife says. But I can still see what's happening here. Further, right now I have years of eMail correspondence at my fingertips for reference. Everything I've sent and everything I've received. When I start getting video/audio eMail will I want to save that too? Jeez I hope not cause then I'm gonna need a new hard drive. All of those reasons and the fact that its simply provides better communication. People give of communication in there voice, facial expressions and gestures. People simply like to talk to other people they can see and hear. They have been doing it for a million years so it shouldn't surprise anyone if they want to keep on doing it. have you used speech recognition and dictation systems? Yes indeed. In fact basic speech recognition has been a standard feature on the Mac OS since before Wintel PCs were selling standard with sound cards. That was my first introduction to it. Since then I have tried a couple of the Widoze real-time dictation deals and they are cool, and they do in fact work, and you can in fact increase your input speed if you want to wear the thingy on your head and you know what you want to say before you say it. I personally don't write very linearly and so wouldn't benefit as much. When I write linearly I tend to babble like I'm doing right now. And I am a fast typist. What if you could speed up that process by a factor of three? Then you could theoretically spend 1/3 as much time in front of a computer. More people could utilize one machine and fewer machines would be needed in some cases. So maybe fewer machines would be sold. Either that or you could do three times as much work. I'm excited for that. But everybody who does a lot of typing already has a computer. How is dictation going to get homes that don't have computers to buy one, or to buy a second machine? The AUI, when it happens, will be revolutionary. But dictation is just pattern matching. You cannot have a true audio user interface, as in, something that replaces the graphical user interface, without artificial intelligence. And this is of course the hold up. The reality of AI is not even on the horizon yet. But when it comes we might actually have a use for our 5000 MHz Pentium XVIIs. Jon Bird