PhoneTag Live, you’re it!
Ditech Networks (not the lenders) has had a voice mail transcription service for a while. Now they’re offering live transcription for conference calls. This is a mainstream version of the real-time captioning service that’s been available for deaf and hard of hearing participants through specialty service providers. Going mainstream often has payoffs in quality, variety, and price; what will the future of live transcription bring? Right now it’s on the phone; will we see live follow-me transcription bringing captioning into every environment?
PhoneTag Live Transcription for Conference Calls available now from Ditech Networks | Business Wire
Layared look
Layar is billed as the first commercially viable augmented reality service. For Android devices, aim your camera at any location or object that’s been indexed — a fort, a bar, a train station — and information pops onto the screen, with arrows and captions and everything. They’ve got content from Wikipedia and other sources, and claim to have 500 developers working on content and apps. There are some great opportunities here, as we’ve said before, for people with hearing, cognitive or visual disabilities.
Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Layar Reality Browser 2.0 Launched Globally
Tubal location
If your wireless device has GPS and a compass, this new soon-to-be-an-iPhone-app projects info onto the camera image, showing you how to find the nearest underground station. If you’re in London, that is. Location-aware augmented reality apps like this will open up a new world of guided navigation for people who are blind or disoriented. If they’re in London.
Field of Near-Field Communication is … near
Near-Field Communication — we’ve been telling you about it for years — is about to enter the real retail world, letting consumers pay for purchases without swiping a card or signing. Just having your NFC-equipped mobile device near the store’s point-of-sale terminal will complete the transaction. Nokia built the first device; now Visa rolls out the first version of the payment part of the service.
Aside from eviscerating the “Close only counts in horseshoes” aphorism, NFC offers fumble-free, keyless shopping for those with limited dexterity and/or vision. Let’s hope the retailers preserve that when they implement NFC.
Gaze in the millinery
We’ve reached the point where a camera-based gesture interface, a pico-projector, and wireless computing has come together in SixthSense, a wearable prototype that lets the user grab information about anything in the vicinity. Aim at a package on a supermarket shelf to see its environmental information; aim at a building to take its picture or see its layout in a map view; project a telephone keypad onto your hand and dial away. Information that’s rich and relevant.
Right now, of course, you have to be able to see pretty well, be able to point your head at a target without shaking, and be able to move your hands and fingers accurately and consistently. But we’re gonna fix that at today’s meeting, right, gang? OK, everybody push on the big steel lab door!
There’s a video of this prototype in operation. (Forget our negativity — this thing is bangin’.)
Google gaggle demo steno
Yet another disruptive Google service, for voice communications. Two years ago Google bought GrandCentral, the call routing and answering service that let you coordinate all your phone lines and devices and manage them by schedule, by caller, etc. GrandCentral has just re-opened as “Google Voice”, with all the old features and a few new ones. For example, voice messages are transcribed by default. Deaf users will not need to do back-flips to get spoken messages in text form, and other users may take advantage of such a feature to help manage their days and to-do lists. The fact that Google Voice is free leads us to wonder if they’ll be massaging our messages the way they do with our Gmail and Google searches. Available now only for existing GrandCentral users; open enrollment “in a matter of weeks”.
Google Voice: Google Voice Emerges from GrandCentral, Transcribes Voicemail
Kindle your iPhone flamelessly
As if Kindle weren’t already embroiled enough in accessibility matters, now you can get a free iPhone app with Kindle functionality for downloading and reading books. You can even sync bookmarks between the 2 devices. As to whether the iPhone Kindle app can read aloud (if permitted by the publisher), no news yet.
UPDATE: no, it can’t.