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Heavy Rain's David Cage to deliver keynote at GDC Europe
Administrators of the European version of the Game Developers Conference just revealed yet another keynote speaker for the event -- not at all shockingly, the speaker is Quantic Dream CEO and founder David Cage, whose company has released titles such as Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy, as it was known in the States), and is currently hard at work on Heavy Rain. Considering said studio is based out of Paris, we suppose Cage is European enough to keynote the conference.Cage's address sounds pretty interesting -- it's titled "Writing Interactive Narrative For A Mature Audience." Considering what we've seen of Heavy Rain, he's probably the right person to deliver such a speech. However, considering what we remember of Indigo Prophecy, the first half of the speech will likely be gripping and insightful, and the second half will be nigh-incomprehensible. We fully expect to hear Illuminati conspiracy theories spoken in Esperanto. Backwards. [Image] [Via Edge Online]
Let your Mac take dictation
MacSpeech Dictate has now been upgraded to version 1.5, giving the application more accuracy and a new vocabulary editor. The update also includes a new English profile option, allowing you to indicate if your speech has North American, Southern North American, or a Latino North American accent.The software also includes the addition of the top 100 websites to the "Jump to" command option.This is the first update of MacSpeech Dictate since last February.As I did in my last post on this software, I dictated this article completely by voice. It appears that the software is more accurate in recognizing my speech. Although I upgraded from an earlier version, the software did require me to retrain, which involves reading a short story that takes about five minutes. In my dictation for this post the software missed the word 'and' once and typed 'hand'. I used the 'scratch that' command, re-tried the word, and it worked well.As I dictated some other documents using both Microsoft Word and Pages from Apple, I was impressed at the large vocabulary of the program. It even recognized the word O-ring, which is pretty technical, and could have been easily misinterpreted.If you're already an owner of MacSpeech Dictate, it's probably worth update for the new features. If you haven't tried dictating into your Macintosh, and have a need to do so, the program is worth a try. The developer has licensed the Dragon recognition engine from Nuance Communications, which is the premier voice recognition software on the PC. This newest version of MacSpeech is available for US $199, or as a US $54.95 for current owners of the application. To run it, you'll need to be on Leopard version 10.5.6 or above.
DARPA working on "Silent Talk" telepathic communication for soldiers
We're no strangers to crazy DARPA projects around here, but this one especially strikes our fantastic fancy. The agency's researchers are currently undertaking a project -- called Silent Talk -- to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals." That's right: they're talking about telepathy. Using an EEG to read brain waves, DARPA is going to attempt to analyze "pre-speech" thoughts, then transmit them to another person. They first plan to map people's EEG patterns to his / her individual words, then see if those patterns are common to all people. If they are, then the team will move on to developing a way to transmitting those patterns to another person. Dream big, that's what we always say!
Mac 101: Make any text speak to you
Have you ever wished your Mac could read a long text document to you? Well, with the speech service, you can easily have your Mac read as much or as little text as you want. While in Safari, TextEdit, Pages, and other applications; select the text you want to be read, then click the application name in the menu bar. Go to Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text. Your Mac will then use the default voice to read the text. It will continue reading until it reaches the end of the selected text, or you can select Services > Speech > Stop Speaking to end it immediately. You can change the default voice by opening System Preferences (Apple menu > System Preferences) and going to Speech > Text to Speech. Once there, select a voice from the drop-down "System Voice" menu.Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section!
Anton the robotic tongue has saved you from electrode doom
So we had a choice: either we let scientists at the University of Sheffield attach electrodes to our tongues, or they were going to go and build their own artificial mouth. Because we're not so into the whole electrode thing, they built "Anton," an animatronic tongue made of soft silicone to help them understand speech and subsequently improve speech-recognition software. This isn't the first of its kind, believe it or not -- there's much competition in the robotic mouth world. Because speech recognition systems aren't really benefiting from simply crowding them full of recorded speech, researchers want to better understand how the mouth produces sound and then create algorithms that can simply recognize speech patterns rather than try to match recordings to recordings. Sounds about right to us. Peep the creepy video after the break.
Computer synthesiser enables Neanderthals to be heard
We know, it's a dream of yours to one day hear what Neanderthals from eons past sounded like when they conversed of DAPs possessing a few kilobytes of storage space and longed for computers that wouldn't take up entire caves. Okay, so maybe that's a stretch, but an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University has seemingly figured out a way to actually recreate what ancient human speech (probably) sounded like. By utilizing reconstructions of a trio of Neanderthal vocal tracts, the crew was able to engineer what a spoken "E" would've sounded like via a computer synthesiser; in time, they're hoping to construct an entire Neanderthal sentence. Of course, not everyone's convinced that the discoveries made thus far are entirely accurate, but be sure to hit the read link a take a listen for yourself (hint: it's nothing like those Bud Light commercials).[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of ABC]
Why the language barrier might be a good idea after all
It seems to come up quite often. Someone wants the language barrier bought down. Even if it requires questing or skilling up, they want to be able to talk to the other faction. It would even make lore sense, since at the least, Undead and Blood Elves should probably know common, and Thalassian is probably close enough to Darnassian that someone who knows one language should probably be able to get the gist of the other. That said, Blizzard's held pretty fast to the principle of squelching cross-factional communication. The only way you can make yourself known to the other side is with the default emotes, or sometimes with a bit of creative typing that can only convey crude messages. Honestly, at one point I was pretty gung-ho on removing the language barrier. As an RPer, a big part of the fun for me is being able to talk, act out scenes, say stuff in character, and all that. It was sort of annoying sometimes that I could be in an epic struggle with, say, a guild of Undead assassins, but any actual communication we made, be it OOC arranging of the storyline and in-game events or IC trash talk, would have to all be on message boards and email. It loses some of the spontaneity of in-game interaction. That said, lately I think I've decided that I'm fine with the current of level of cross-faction communication. Talking to the other side would cause more trouble than it would be worth.
Queen's Christmas Day speech broadcast in HD, on YouTube
Those excited to tune into Her Majesty's Christmas Day speech tomorrow will have yet another reason to watch. This year, her entire speech will be broadcast in HD, and for those not near a television, it'll also be available via YouTube. Tomorrow's production will mark the 50th anniversary of her traditional speech, and the new mediums are being used to satisfy her desire to make the address "more accessible to younger people and those in other countries." Interested? If so, you can tune in tomorrow at 3:00PM GMT.
Brain implant, software enables patients to think out loud
Truth be told, we've already seen instances where technology has enabled individuals to speak without speaking, but a brain implant placed into Eric Ramsey's head could certainly raise the bar in this field. The wireless electrode, which resides just six-millimeters below the surface of his brain, records pulses from 41 surrounding neurons involved in speech generation, and thanks to software developed by the associated team, those thoughts will hopefully be translated into words in the not-too-distant future. Currently, the group feels that they can accurately identify the word Ramsey is thinking up 80-percent of the time, and in the coming weeks, a computer will begin giving the patient real-time feedback so he can perfect the art of thinking out loud. 'Course, the team responsible isn't likely to be satisfied until an unadulterated conversation can take place, but it seems we're well on our way to seeing that come to fruition.[Via BBC]
Scientists develop robotic mouth
Apparently, not only will our robotic overlords be capable of crushing and / or dismembering us with their razor-like talons and arm-mounted machine guns, but they will also be able to perfectly mimic our oral movements when speaking. According to reports, researchers from the Tokyo University of Science and the Musashino Red Cross Hospital have created a robot capable of reproducing tongue and lower jaw movements associated with speech. The prototype -- a model of the mouth -- is able to perfectly copy the movements needed to produce vowel sounds. Using a silicon tongue, which is supported by three aluminum scaffolds and wired to eight pneumatic muscles, and a lower jaw which pivots on an axle, researchers are able to program the "mouth" with data based on magnetic resonance imaging. The next step, they say, is to create an artificial mouth which covers all movements (including consonants), allowing the bot to be used for speech therapy, foreign language training... or the basis for Terminator heads. [Warning: read link requires subscription]
Kansei makes a comeback with reactive facial expressions
Quite a lot has transpired in the android universe in the past two years, and it's fairly safe to say that Kansei has made a few solid strides during that time as well. A Japanese research team has purportedly crafted a working prototype that can "pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords." According to a professor at Meiji University's School of Science and Technology, the idea of the project is to "create a flow of consciousness in robots so that they can make the relevant facial expressions," and the device relies on 19 movable parts and a silicon face mask in order to work its magic. Developers also noted that speech abilities should be added within a few years, and while we doubt you had to guess, it's quite likely that fully developed Kanseis will one day roam nursing homes as Japan seeks to care for its quickly growing geriatric set.
XNA Challenge: Abdux
Andre Furtado isn't an artist, as he's quick to tell me when showing off the somewhat simple drawings and animations of his XNA Challenge entry Abdux. But while visual art might not be his specialty, Furtado's work shows a certain artistry in the simple, natural input it uses.Furtado first made his mark on the XNA development world with a speech recognition modification to the platform's built-in Space War game. The mod used simple spoken commands like "move" and "fire" to control a pair of helper ships and won Furtado a Brazilian XNA competition. He hasn't gotten similar speech commands into his new alien abduction game yet, but he says he plans to let people create plagues like earthquakes with just the sound of their voice. "Perhaps in the future we will be made fun of for using keyboards and mice and gamepads to control games," he tells me.Furtado isn't in the competition for personal glory, but for experience and knowledge that he can take back to his fellow students in Brazil. "With technology like XNA, students and organizations can easily build a roadmap to game development without much knowledge of programming," Furtado said. Check out some early video of his latest creation after the jump.
Casio electronic dictionary / translator talks back, recognizes handwriting
While we English speaking folk may prefer our pocket translators to start in English and convert to some other foreign tongue, Casio's latest rendition helps those fluent in Japanese order tickets to the Space Needle, haggle at the Chevrolet dealership, and of course, pick up the correct ingredients for warm apple pie. Aimed at middle / high school students, the XD-SW4800 lineup of handheld dictionaries reportedly house the denotation and correct pronunciation for over "85,000 languages," which ironically enough, probably translates to "85,000 words" when not read through a broken translator. Nevertheless, these handy gizmos come in a variety of colors, and aside from supporting keyboard input, it can recognize stylus-written characters and toss back definitions while pronouncing the word to you via headphones. If America isn't your final destination, it also comes with five other major languages on CD that can be loaded on the 50MB of internal space or on your SD card if necessary, and while these things won't last forever, the approximate 60 to 130 hours of battery life should be more than enough to get you acclimated. So while you're waiting for your passport to show up, make sure you pick up Casio's latest travel necessity -- if you can manage the admittedly steep ¥47,250 ($394) to ¥52,500 ($437) price points, that is.[Via Impress]
Japanese hardware sales, 9 October - 15 October: Oscar acceptance speech edition
The DS Lite! (deafening applause) Oh, I couldn't possibly ... take the stage, me? No, no, no ... please ... well, if you insist .... What can I say to you lovely people that I haven't already said before? But you know, being up on this stage for the thirty-seventh time is really something significant; I mean, I'll remember this one for sure. We here at Nintendo have always pushed the boundaries, daring to do what no one else in the industry would ... we supported the first elvish video game character, you know, and we even backed the gay population with everyone's favorite character, Tingle. (scattered chuckling) And of course, I'd like to thank ... what the hell? PSP, get off the stage! You can't tell me what do to ... I mean ... to dooooo .... Are you drunk? Heavens, man. I deserve the award, me! I have the leet warez, and an arrowww ... a green one, you know? Yours is red, they hate you, they hate you .... Security? Can I get a little help here? Long live the PSPPPPPPPPP! Hey! Put some pants on, man! - DS Lite: 104,487 19,650 (15.83%)- PS2: 24,727 3,537 (12.51%)- PSP: 21,603 553 (2.63%)- GBA SP: 2,299767 (50.07%)- Xbox 360: 1,743 358 (17.04%)- Game Boy Micro: 1,714 441 (34.64%)- Gamecube: 653 165 (33.81%)- DS Phat: 273 13 (5.00%)- GBA: 37 25 (208.33%)- Xbox: 3 5 (62.5%) [Source: Media Create] [A special thanks to Zoolander for the inspiration.]
Woz visits Microsoft, shares words of wisdom
Woz's appearances in the media have, of late, have revealed more of his prankster hobbies than the seasoned legend of the computer age we know him to be. Recently, the Woz visited none other than Microsoft to give his book tour's speech, and David Weiss of the MacBU blogged some interesting notes from the event. While I'm sure he had his trusty lasers and Segway in tow in one way or another, Weiss's notes refreshingly cover more of the meat from Woz's speech, including remarks on everything from chip design, Steve Jobs' programming abilities (which I'm glad to finally have confirmation on) and the more human side of technology. It's an intriguing post that's making me wish I could drop in on one of his talks.[via MacUser]
Microsoft patents real-time audio obscenity mask
We can call it the real-time audio obscenity mask, or we can call it the autobleep, the cursekiller, whatever. The point is Microsoft's patented a unique system for bleeping out (actually just munging or silencing) combinations of phonemes it identifies as obscenities in audio streams without making use of time shifting, or otherwise requiring manual human intervention to make sure the FCC doesn't stick them with some harsh fines. Would this theoretical system be able tell the difference between the real f-bomb and funk, or even homonym swears like those synonyms for a donkey and female dog? You know the ones. Tell you what, let's put it to work on a satellite radio hip-hop station or an old George Carlin record and see how we do.[Via Ars Technica]
