2011 20
Testing Android’s speech-to-text capabilities
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Internet & Technology with No Comments
I would like to know how accurate Android voice recognition is for native US speakers. 
I speak English with an Argentine accent but obviously a very slight accent because it is remarkable how well Android understands my English. Interestingly my wife has a German accent in English and Android cannot understand her at all. Android gets almost every word she says wrong, as if she was speaking another language. But in real life few have problems understanding Nina. Now what I found unusual is that when I choose Argentine Spanish as default and speak in Spanish Android makes the same 10% mistake rate that it makes when I speak in English. Maybe I am not a native speaker of any language anymore or maybe the best Android can hope now is to get things 90% right. Another answer could be that Android has experimented much more in English, has found that a significant part of the US population has a Spanish accent in English and recognizes those.
Nokia & Microsoft via BI
Nokia is either dead, or saved by the strategy explained in this article. I give 80% that it’s dead, but 20% is still a chance. And if Windows Phone does take off it will be the miracle that Nokia needs. Problem is that WP should it be a success, it is also available for HTC and Samsung. Indeed it is HTC not Nokia who is the number one biggest seller of Windows Phone now. But Windows Phone sells 15K units a day worldwide and falling and Android 550K and growing fast. Nokia surprisingly still sells close to a million phones a day, most are cheap phones but still the largest maker by units. But HTC and Samsung have destroyed Nokia’s market in smartphones by adopting and thriving with Android and effectively together with iOS killing Symbian. So betting on WP is betting on a platform that as it stands nobody wants and if by thanks to Nokia it succeeds then Samsung, HTC and others will have it as well.
Not only it is hard to understand why Nokia went with Windows Phone but also why it went exclusively with Windows Phone instead of having Android as well.
Nokia married Microsoft but Microsoft gets to sleep around.
The BT FON WiFi network has grown to 1.6 million hotspots in the UK alone. That is a incredible amount of WiFi in one place compared to other networks, like T-Mobile’s WiFi network, that has only 10 thousand in the US. And now, there is another reason to make your friends in the States jealous, the BT FON autoconnection app for iPhone and Android.
The new BT FON app lets BT Total Broadband customers choose to be automatically logged in to WiFi whenever they are near a BT Fon or Openzone hotspot. Sure, there are a lot of third-party apps already available that detect WiFi. But, they often lead to locked or paid hotspots. This new app is much better. It avoids all that, autoconnects, and it’s free.
Another great feature is the WiFi map that shows all the hotspots nearby, so you’ll always know where to find one. But of course the real advantage here is being able to connect to WiFi easily away from home, and this is why the BT FON partnership works so well. We all want the same thing. WiFi everywhere. The BT FON app brings us one step closer to that reality.
Download the free mobile app for iPhone. (Must be in the UK to download.)
Download the free mobile app for Android. (Must be in the UK to download.)
Your download of the BT FON mobile app also contributes to BBC Children in Need.
To learn more, please read the BT press release, or visit BT.com