Abilities Jan 26, 2009 - TalkingDesktop V5 receives high marks from the product evaluation web site Impulsegamer. Read review of TalkingDesktop software Dictation You can dictate text into almost any Windows application such as Word, Word Pad , Notepad, Excel, Internet Explorer America Online, WordPerfect, Microsoft® Office Application, Email - Hotmail, Juno, Lotus Notes, Yahoo, MS Outlook or Express, Eudora, PowerPoint, GoldMine®, Microsoft Works, Instant Messenger, ICQ, AOL , MSN Messenger. You can dictate text into any input field that you can type into. Speech Recognition Speech Recognition allows a full range dialog with your computer so that you can do dictation or issue voice commands. The program supports multiple speech profiles so everyone in the household can speak to the computer and the software dynamically adapts to a users' speech during operation. The software will tell the user when they are speaking too rapidly or too loudly. A vocabulary allows words to be added and customized. Lookup breaking news stories with your voice A live demonstration of how to Lookup the latest news story such as hurricane Ike or global warming news with your voice. You can use your voice to research breaking Google news stories on the internet. These web sites can then be bookmarked for later study. See and Say Concept You can SAY commands or words that are in Blue text. You can SAY, type or click any commands or words in Underlined Black text. Main Menu (slide show) This desktop ring presents you with some of the most frequent commands and requests that you can say to interact with your computer. This Main Menu Ring will shrink to the top corner of your desktop when not needed. Say "desktop" Our Menu Ring shows thumbnail information such as the last contact person, last weather map or news story. Each thumbnail is a snapshot of the information or picture that you have recently referenced. Ask for Contacts by name Say "Contacts" and a list of your friends or business contacts are displayed with associated information, address and phone#. Say the name of a person or company and your computer will lookup the contact. Hey, Mary can also do math. (multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) This video clip shows how our voice control can be used to access your contact list. You can have phone#'s and addresses read back to you outloud, just say the name of the contact. Mary can also do math. (multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) Human Computer Interaction Emerging Basic Awareness of the User Image how great it would be to have software that greeted you by name as you approached ! Well stop imagining because TalkingDesktop does this now ! Our program uses basic awareness to "sense" your approach and then greet you with "Hello John its 6:30". It can activate a hibernating computer monitor and independantly retrieve the latest weather map for your region. The software starts with Jessica as its name and your computer will respond when it hears you say "Jessica". Read a conversation with Jessica, another of our characters. Natural Text-to-Speech Talkingdesktop comes with different voices that the user can select from. Further control of how the computer talks is available with commands such as "talk faster", "talk louder", "talk slower". Run Programs by Voice Name Launch applications and programs by voice names you create. You may control cursor movement with commands ( Up, Down, Page Down or Page Up ) For this video we are using the rotating mechanical GEARS to represent the computer as it interacts with us. We have named the computer Mechanical. This clip shows how to select different on-screen characters and issue a couple commands to control them directly. The last part of the clip shows how to start windows programs by saying their Voice name. Internet Communications Voice Web Browser Our internet browser has been designed for voice input and control. Voice navigate the internet by saying "text link names", bookmark web sites by saying "Bookmark" and display web sites by name. Say "CNN web site" to display that web site in the voice web browser. You can create or change the names of these voice callable web sites. Use standard voice commands such as Up, Down, Page Down or Page Up to move around each web page. Tell Talking Desktop to read a web page or say "Browser" to open the voice web browser. Computer headset if the headset or microphone that came with your computer is not designed for speech recognition The best way to improve your voice interaction with TalkingDesktop is to use a close-talk speech recognition quality headset. Nothing is more frustrating than poor recognition and having to repeat voice commands because the headset or microphone that came with your computer is not designed for speech recognition. More information about computer headsets Internet Information Retrieval Weather Maps Say "Weather" and your favorite weather map is displayed. Say "Northeast Radar" and a radar picture of the New England area is displayed. Say "Caribbean weather" to see a radar map of developing hurricanes in the Caribbean. Voice Named Web Cameras Display web cameras by name. Say "New York Markets"and a graph of the Dow Jones and NASDAQ markets is displayed. News Headlines News story headlines can be scrolled across your desktop from several sources by saying "News" You can ask to have the news read out-loud as it is updated or whenever you desire. You may ask for just "World News" or "Sports News" to be read out-loud. If a news headline interests you, just say a word or phrase from the headline and the associated article will be displayed in our voice web browser. Stock Ticker Your own personal stock ticker can be tracked and updated. It shows price, volume, percent change, name and symbol. Stock alerts can be setup. Say "Stock Alerts" and those stocks that have exceeded your parameters are spoken out-loud to you. Local Computer Information Display Pictures or Graphs by Name The program can display pictures by name such as "motorcycle" where motorcyle points to motorcycle.jpg in a folder on your hard drive. You can enter any name that you want to say to have the program display that picture. Personalized Conversation The program supports personalized conversation creation so that the computer will respond with specific speech when a certain word or phrase is heard. For example you can setup the software to say "water is a liquid and wet" when it heards the word "water".