myIVAN navigator - voice browsing

[ernest perez]

"The Future is Now." - Alan Kay

Remember the Apple promotional video ca. 1990, where you could talk to your computer, to surf the net, send correspondence, create documents, get factual information, schedules, find entertainment, etc.

Well, it's not yet quite here, but it's a big step closer. Check out myIVAN at <http://www.myivan.com/>. IVAN, short for Intelligent Voice Animated Navigator, is a _freeware,_ voice-controlled navigator/browser, that is a plug-in for Internet Explorer 5+. OneVoice(R) has licensed IBM's Via Voice speech recognition product, and use it to control their custom browser and plug-ins. [OneVoice is at <http://www.onevoicetech.com/>]

You need to download and install IVAN, and use it with a newer Windows PC and a good soundcard and headset microphone. It's a disk hog, we're talking 260meg of disk space here. You really do need one of the newer multi-gigabyte hard disk machines.

Does it work? It's still an early voice-control app, for sure. A little slow. But the Wizard leads you through voice recognition training, how to correct or modify new words & phrases. The tutorial goes through a step-by-step familiarization with IVAN's capabilities. I think it's amazingly accurate, considering that the on-board hardware test told me that my headset/mike was not of sufficient quality. (they'll sell you one, cheap)

At first it seems pretty limited to their pre-loaded recognition targets. "Go to Disney." "I want to buy a book." "What's the weather in <city> <state>?" 

But then you realize you can start personalizing it to do more 'n more. You can easily define custom URL targets. Like enter your homepage URL, and then go there by saying "Go to home page." Or URL for today's highway conditions on your commute, via "Go to driving home." "Look at my mail," for checking out your email account on HotMail or whatever.

You can't (or I haven't gotten that far) use the Via Voice runtime to enter data or text into query blocks, handle complex interactions, etc. But you can handle navigation and plug-ins pretty well. It does let you "annotate" a tiny superscript number alongside links on a Web page. You don't need your mouse, you can just say, "Go to number 8."

Interesting glimpse of the future. It's a little slow. And I gotirritated by the IVAN cartoon character navigator (looks like a blue M&M) and his voice balloon wandering around and blocking information on my display. But you can "hide" him to get rid of it. Then, it's just voice dialog with your co-pilot (co-navigator?). 
  "IVAN," sez me.
  Ivan answers, "Yes, Ernest, what can I do for you?" 
  "Find me the current Oracle stock price," I say. "Go to number 4," then, "Page down."
  [...and so on.]

Interesting glimpse of the future/present. I've still got 22.8 gig of hard disk left. Maybe I won't take it off, after all. Or maybe I should just go ahead and buy Via Voice. Or DragonSpeak. Hmmm....

Cheers,
-ernest
______________________
Ernest Perez, Ph.D.
Group Leader
Oregon State Library
250 Winter St. NE
Salem OR 97301-3950
503-378-4243, ext 257
ernest.r.perez at state.or.us