rlewis@venera.isi.edu (Roger Lewis) (02/01/89)
Given what I've seen of the current technology, the following idea should be reasonably easy to implement in the near future. I'd like to use my drive time to readnews on USENET. Forget the eyeglasses, I'd settle for a synthesized voice. It needn't understand mine, but better versions would. You could read news like it was radio. Add 3 or four buttons (or spoken commands) to represent "kill subject", "next message", and "mark as unread" or whatever your minimum requirements are. You could download the news from your mainframe, and the "Newsman" (TM) would automatically run rn (or your favorite news handler). Then you could later download whichever markers note read and unread messages from the Newsman (TM) back to the mainframe. You wouldn't be able to followup an article instantly, but you could mark it as unread and answer it later when you got to a keyboard. It wouldn't be any more distracting than a radio talkshow. You could listen while shopping, waiting for or using mass transit, while driving, flying (with the pilot's permission), or anywhere else a Walkman (TM) would be usable. Luxury versions would allow a number of different voices so you could make MES's messages speak in one voice, Barry Shein's messages speak in another voice, etc. The Superior models would allow you to sample the real netter's voice from short conversations at Boinkon. :-) Although getting computers to UNDERSTAND speech isn't well developed yet getting them to speak languages appears to be up to speed for this application. I'd accept the Newsman (TM) spelling out words it doesn't know, and it could have an obvious pitch change for sentences ending in a smiley. What I described above would seem to be well within the realm of possibility (as far as my minimum needs). I'm sure netters can provide hundreds of luxury features that I didn't need. What can I say? I have simple tastes :-). -- Roger Lewis rlewis@venera.isi.edu "How did you get your nose ring caught on somebody's fishnets? No, don't answer. I'd rather not know." -My mother
stevens@ANTARES.MCS.ANL.GOV (02/01/89)
I tried this last year before a long driving trip and had about 20 issuses of Sun-Digest dumped out into Votrax and recorded on Cassette tape to listen to in the car.. It worked okay.. but was pretty tiring after a while.. the Fast Forward button on the tape unit worked okay to skip the boring messages. Now if only I could afford a DecTalker :-)
dnewton@carroll1.UUCP (David Newton) (02/02/89)
I was just reading the other day where MIT media labs had come up with a mono display that is in a monocle, 720x286 (i think) so when you wear it, it appears as tho a near-hercules resolution display is in front of your face. This should make it rel easy to make a very small computer (ampro littleboardpc) that you could use nearly anywhere. The thing, if it comes out, is scheduled to cost $100 in oem quantities. Neat, huh dln