<![CDATA[Gizmodo: Voice control]]> http://cache.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gizmodo.com.png <![CDATA[Gizmodo: Voice control]]> http://gizmodo.com/tag/voice control http://gizmodo.com/tag/voice control <![CDATA[ Direct Voxx Muso is Natural-Speech Voice Recognition Dongle for iPod nano ]]> There are plenty of iPod cradles that let you remote control the device, some built-in to cars, but Direct Voxx has come up with the Muso that lets you do it by voice. It's an interesting bit of kit that doesn't require training to understand you, and lets you demand particular tracks, scan through playlists, pause and resume playing music just by speaking in natural language like "play California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas." Check out the video to see it in action.

Pretty impressive, and saves all that fiddling around with buttons when you should be busy controlling your car. It's got background noise suppression, so apparently it can cope with driving noise. And its independent battery runs it for 10 hours, without affecting the iPod.

There's just one flaw: its price. At $159 it's more than a 4GB nano itself, and that seems a little crazy. They are planning on releasing new versions for other iPods and the iPhone "as soon as possible," but this one will be out in December. [DirectVoxx]

]]> Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:48:46 EDT Kit Eaton http://gizmodo.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5025713&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[ Toshiba's ApriPoko: a Remote Controller Companion Robot ]]> Toshiba's new robot pal is basically a voice-operated infrared universal remote control, heavy on the cuteness. Programmed to be fairly smart, he'll wait until you use a controller for your electronics, then ask you what you were doing: the next time you want to perform the same action, you just have to tell ApriPoko to do it for you. He'll then wave his IR transmitter arm and *bing*, on goes your TV. He's even equipped with a camera to identify users, presumably to learn their habits. For now he's just an R&D demonstrator device, and is limited to simple commands. We hope we're right in expecting the technology to make its way into consumer gadgets soon. [Robot Watch]

]]> Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:37:49 EDT Kit Eaton http://gizmodo.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=372243&view=rss&microfeed=true