Speechless Conversations

A new device translates your thoughts into speech so that you can have a cell-phone conversation without uttering a word.

Ambient Corporation, a company based in Champaign, IL, that develops communications technologies for people with speaking disabilities, is calling its latest system "voiceless communication" with good reason. The company has engineered a neckband that translates a wearer's thoughts into speech so that, without saying a word, he or she can have a cell-phone conversation or query search engines in public.


World's First, Live Voiceless Phone Call Made at TIDC 2008
Speaker: Michael Callahan, CEO and Co-Founder, Ambient Corporation Ambient Corporation demonstrates silent phone communication using TI's ultra-low power MSP430 microcontroller technology.

Don't fret: the device, called Audeo, can't read minds, so it won't capture your secret thoughts. It picks up the neurological signals from the brain that are being sent to the vocal cords--a person must specifically think about voicing words--and then wirelessly transmits them to a computer, which translates them into synthesized speech. At the moment, the device has a limited vocabulary: 150 words and phrases.

The video below shows Michael Callahan, a cofounder of Ambient and a developer of the device, demonstrating the technology at the Texas Instruments Developers Conference, which was held in Dallas from March 3 through 5. In his speech, he says that by the end of the year, the device will be ready for use by people with Lou Gehrig's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that can cause sufferers to become completely paralyzed. He also says that in the future, if a person is walking down the street thinking about where a bus station is located, the device will automatically wirelessly query a search engine to find one.

[Text pasted from MIT's Technology Review]

Will a YouTube Platform Matter?

The video site will let people do more with their clips, like watch them on TiVo.

Bloggers and other website managers have long been able to embed videos hosted by the online video site YouTube in their own pages. But on Wednesday, YouTube announced that it would give computer programmers access to some of the technology that underlies its site. The company's goal was to involve itself in other methods of distributing Web video--not just YouTube.com, but websites and services that include TiVo, video games, and Webcam software.

"For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere," says Jim Patterson, YouTube product manager, "including the online destinations and Web communities they already love and visit regularly."

In other words, YouTube--which Google bought last year for $1.6 billion--won't be just a website that lets people view, rate, and comment on videos. It will be a platform upon which software developers can build their own video-player interfaces, customized video, and search tools. Ultimately, users will be able to upload video from sites built on the YouTube platform, instead of having to go to YouTube.com. Later this year, the company will offer another service that will let viewers log into YouTube and watch videos via their TiVo set-top boxes. The service will be available to people who have broadband connections and a Tivo Series 3 system or an high-definition set-top box. (This isn't the first time YouTube has found its way to the television: Apple TV started offering built-in YouTube access last year.)

But there are key differences between YouTube video and the content typically viewed on a television. "What YouTube has shown is that online video represents a new medium that's much more about bite-sized morsels and things that are conducive to the small screen and short attention spans," says Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group. Because YouTube's low-resolution clips might not look good when expanded to fill a TV screen, says Tara Maitra, vice president and general manager for content services at TiVo, the TiVo service might restrict them to just a small part of the screen.

Certainly, some people will be excited to learn that they will no longer need to gather their friends around their computer monitors to watch their favorite YouTube clips. But Leichtman says YouTube on TiVo will really affect only a small number of people. "We have to keep this in perspective," says Leichtman. The YouTube-ready TiVo boxes are "representative of less than 1 percent of all households. It really adds no breadth."

YouTube applications developed by other companies, such as game developer Electronic Arts (EA) or online-slide-show maker Animoto, might have more traction. EA plans to release a YouTube feature in its game Spore, in which players build their own creatures. "When a ... user finishes creating their creature, they have the option to record a short video of their creature in action," says Brandon Barber, director of entertainment development and programming at EA. "This can be uploaded to that user's YouTube account in a few clicks." Since sharing parts of games is something that gamers already do, the combination of EA and YouTube is natural. Animoto has integrated a single-click option that lets a user quickly share a photo slide show on YouTube, also a natural combination of services.


Exactly how YouTube will make money from its platform remains unclear, however. YouTube has said that there is no revenue-sharing model built into its open platform, but in that respect, it's not alone. The social-networking websites Facebook and Twitter, which supply platforms for developers to use, have no clear profit model either. YouTube contends that as more software and services are built on its platform, more users will sign up for them. Ultimately, that large audience could translate into revenue through advertising. At this point, however, none of these companies has implemented a reliable method for making money from its audience.

"I think, at its core, with all the success of YouTube from a viewer standpoint, one still has to ask, 'Where's the money?'" says Leichtman. "The knee-jerk way is advertising," he says. But as Google expands the YouTube service, it has to look for new ways to make money, he says. "YouTube is a phenomenon," Leichtman says, "but it's not a revenue phenomenon."

[Text pasted from MIT's Technology Review]

Numbrosia - Merit Based News

There’s some chatter today on Hacker News and Profy about a new site called Numbrosia. Unlike Digg, stories are not ranked via user voting.

Instead, users solve math puzzles that get progressively harder. The higher their score, the higher their submitted news items appear. The exact number of points for an item is the recent score divided by the number of submitted links, so it makes sense for users to submit just a single story.

There’s no business here, and we’ll likely never touch on Numbrosia again. But I like the creativity, and sometimes seeing something like this creates the seed of a new idea in others. Plus, puzzle addicts will likely waste an afternoon on the site.

Perhaps intelligent testing could help other sites reduce spam or otherwise improve their service.

[Text pasted from TechCrunch]

Paramount to release thousands of film clips on Facebook

Paramount Pictures will become the first major studio to make thousands of movie clips available for use on the internet, launching its VooZoo application Monday on Facebook.

"The short clips for a movie that you've already seen before helps you relive the moment," said Derek Broes, Paramount's senior vice-president of entertainment.

Users of the popular social networking site will have access to footage from thousands of movies, including Forrest Gump and The Ten Commandments.

Facebook users can send the video clips to others users on the site.

The scenes last from a few seconds to a few minutes, covering everything from Audrey Hepburn's monologue about her "no-name slob" of a cat in Breakfast at Tiffany's, to Eddie Murphy's signature chuckle from Beverly Hills Cop.

DVDs of the movies will be offered for sale through a button that appears after each clip is played. Eventually, the studio will be using the same method to market upcoming films.

VooZoo is expected to attract a few hundred thousand users within its first two months.

"My benchmark for success is that people are joining and sending," Broes said.

The task of selecting clips was time consuming. Paramount staffers worked for more than a year to archive and tag the clips being offered.

Paramount officials say they're not sure how much they may reap through the experiment, and have no "revenue goals" attached to the project.

[Text pasted from CBCNews]

Human-Computer Interaction Redefines Science

University of Maryland's Ben Shneiderman, one of the world's leading researchers and innovators in human-computer interaction, says it's time for the laboratory research that has defined science for the last 400 years to make room for a revolutionary new method of scientific discovery.

He calls it Science 2.0., and it combines the hypothesis based inquiry of laboratory science with the methods of social science research to understand and improve the use of new human networks made possible by today's digital connectivity. Through Science 2.0, the societal potential of such networks can be realized for applications ranging from homeland security to medical care to the environment.

Shneiderman points to the effect that the World Wide Web and cell phones have had on building human collaborations and influencing society. "eBay, Amazon, Netflix have already reshaped consumer markets. Web-based political participation and citizen journalism are beginning to change civil society. Online patient-centered medical information has improved health care. MySpace and Facebook encourage casual social networks, but they may soon play more serious roles in emergency disaster response, for instance.

"It's time for researchers in science to take network collaboration like this to the next phase and reap the potential intellectual and societal payoffs. We need to understand the principles that are at work in these systems," said Shneiderman.


A "Google TechTalk" about HCI by Allison Druin, Director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab @ University of Maryland

Francis Bacon vs. Science 2.0

Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon promoted the research strategy that has ruled scientific quests ever since, what Shneiderman calls Science 1.0. As Shneiderman describes it, Science 1.0 is "reductionist thinking closely linked to controlled experiments," a method that, while successful in explaining natural phenomena "sometimes diverges from solving practical problems and only occasionally advancing broader goals."

"Science 2.0 is about studying design of rapidly changing socio-technical systems. These studies are not replicable in a lab," said Shneiderman. "You have to study social interactions in the real world. Traditional social scientists have tried to understand these systems by data collection, but more effective Science 2.0 research involves design interventions to rapidly improve e-commerce, online communities, healthcare delivery, and disaster response.

"Science 1.0 remains vital, but this ambitious vision of Science 2.0 will require a shift in priorities to combine computer science with social science sensitivity. It will affect research funding, educational practices and evaluation of research outcomes," Shneiderman says.

911.gov

Shneiderman and a number of colleagues at the University of Maryland are already on the frontier of applying Science 2.0 methods to the computer-based human networks that Shneiderman calls socio-technical systems. Here are a few new intriguing lines of research.

• Disaster and emergency response -- Shneiderman, Jennifer Preece and several other colleagues are developing 911.gov Community Response Grid, an emergency response system that would rely on the Internet and mobile communication devices to allow citizens to receive and submit information about significant homeland security community problems.

• Why do we trust MySpace? - Jennifer Golbeck is using Science 2.0 methods to understand how people come to trust technical communication networks, something that can't be studied in a laboratory, Shneiderman says. Her results can be applied to many applications of social networking including medical care, voting and homeland security.

• Why We Respond - Philip Wu looks at motivation for participating in community response through information and communication technologies, and studying average citizens' information needs and behavior when they prepare for, respond to, and recover from large-scale emergencies and disasters.
  

Text pasted from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080306170924.htm