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by pbreit 4028 days ago
After owning Echo, Roku and Fire TV, I'm super-bullish on voice commands finally being ready for prime time. It's a terrific interface for home audio, TV and car audio.

I've gotta think Apple will open up Siri to app developers sooner than later.

Houndify looks interesting.
2 comments
wutbrodo 4028 days ago
Definitely. I've been using voice commands in Android for about 5 years now (since ~2010) and I've consistently been shocked at how incredibly efficient an interface it is. The number of capabilities hooked up to voice control has only been increasing since then and it's been great.
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gregpilling 4027 days ago
I have been trying to use Android voice for five years and have been shocked at how many words it completely mangles for me. Just completely wrong. This has surprised me since I am Canadian, live in the USA and have a generic American TV accent.

The failure rate is high enough that I rarely use the voice feature, despite the fact I have problems with my hands that make typos a constant irritation. I know I am just an anecdote - the strange thing is that my voice and lack of accent should be the easiest thing for Android to navigate.

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wutbrodo 4027 days ago
Interesting. One of the things that immediately got me hooked was how well it recognized my voice; That excitement has long since faded and now excellent speech recognition is something I just take for granted that it does well.

Maybe try going into Settings > Voice on the Google search app and downloading the voice pack for the version of English you think matches best? That's still pretty weird though.

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doragcoder 4027 days ago
I think voice with a screen is interesting, but voice alone can be difficult. What is the last voice controlled IVR (phone system) that was awesome to interact with. I think it takes a combination of voice and something can can be confirmed with another "button", or something you can touch or push to confirm or cancel what you've "asked" it to do.

I think it can augment things well, but not be the prime time star.

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pbreit 4027 days ago
You should try out Echo. It works fine without a screen.
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