With far improved voice recognition expected to make its way into iOS 5, the next questions is how Apple will implement it. Well one person, Jan-Michael Cart, has thought of how it might be possible to implement and put together a well-thought out video demonstrating the concept (after the break).
There are number of aspects to the voice recognition he conceptualizes, starting with the notion that it can be used to navigate the entire user interface and is triggered by holding down the home button – much like how Voice Control currently works. Yet instead of bumping you to a whole new screen like Voice Control does, the status-bar will turn blue and serve as a visual guide as to when to speak and telling you how it interpreted what you said.
That’s a fairly straightforward extension of what iOS currently does, what is more intriguing is Jan-Michaels concept of how any text-field can have voice input. All you would have to do is press and hold the text-field and again the status bar turns blue and you speak. For somewhere like notes or mail (which don’t have a text-field but rather an area for a block of text) you would double tab to open the copy and past bar but which would also now have a microphone icon – pressing it would start voice dictation.
As would be reasonably expected, Jan-Michael also believes that APIs would be offered to developers to use voice-recognition and shows how the Facebook app would be an easy candidate for voice recognition support. Make sure to jump the break to watch the video by Jan-Michael, and if you like it, I would highly recommend checking out his YouTube page which has some other iOS 5 concepts including faster app switching using gestures and how widgets could be implemented.
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Voice Control on the iPhone and iPod touch, in spite of the number of commands it supports, is far from “full-featured”. Sure you can ask the iPhone to play and pause music, even call people — but you can’t do more. A new tweak by developer chpwn, soon to be released in Cydia, will give more power to Voice Control by letting it open apps, launch URLs and perform any Activator action, like take a screenshot.
VoiceActivator will have a dedicated settings panel where you’ll be able to create the voice shortcuts you want, and have them recognized by iOS’ built-in support for voice command. So say you want to open MacStories in a new Safari page, assign “macstories” to a new action in VoiceActivator, speak it and Safari will launch. Just like that. Kind of fancy to show off to your friends, although I’m not really huge on the whole VoiceControl UI. Still, the possibilities VoiceActivator will open seem pretty neat.
The tweak will be released soon in Cydia. Demo video below. (more…)
If you have an iPhone and have a 2011 Ford Fiesta — or you’re considering a Ford car for your 2011 car fix — you’ll soon be able to control a couple of apps using your voice. As noted by Engadget, Ford has announced that it will extend of its Sync AppLink Platform to Apple’s smartphone sometime in 2011, allowing iPhone users to control music playing from Pandora vocally. Pandora Radio for iOS and Android is indeed one of the first apps to support Ford’s voice recognition technology in cars.
BlackBerry and Android phones are compatible with Ford’s Sync now, iPhone users will have to wait a little longer. I’ve always been interested in this kind of technologies that let users do stuff in the car without having to look at an additional display, but I do wonder how Ford’s solution will handle high music volume and voice control. I mean, I don’t want to scream to change songs.
Press release embedded below. (more…)
