The most feasible of your options would seem to be number one. One can
already record voice memos on most all DoCoMo keitais, and probably most
other carriers as well. This data obviously is stored somewhere.
So the mechanism for digitally recording a voice is already existent in the
phone, and the only real question is how you get access to the data to send
it to a server which can process it into text. If it is sent to a server as
a data file, there is no conflict, at least not as you have the question set
up. Doing voice to text using the fairly limited processing power (2-10
MIPS) available on most phones is probably not realistic. VoIP isn't being
used, at least not anywhere and Japan, and nowhere else I have heard of
either.
The problem with using the built-in voice recording functions of the phone
are limitations on how long the recording can be, and the speed at which
current i-mode, ezweb, and J-sky phones send their data, from 9.6kbps to
14.4 kbps. If you could somehow capture the data before it is stored, you
would have to send it to the server in real time. This should be possible,
since a usual international phone call uses only about that much bandwidth
(alright, I admit that I use the cheap carriers, but they still sound better
than a voice memo on my keitai). I wonder if keitais can compress sound at
that rate in real time, while also transmitting it as packet data? No idea,
though I would tend to doubt it. Oops! I just realised that the RTOS (real
time operating system for those of you abbreviation-impaired folks) that
runs a keitai probably doesn't do very well with multitasking. Using your
thumb might actually be faster. If you can get your hands on J-phone's API,
I have heard that they didn't do as much separation between a Java midlet
and a phone's features, so perhaps the voice memo feature is accesible to a
Java midlet. Gary, you listening and have any comment?
Access, the company that makes the Compact Netfront browser, does not have
any immediate plans to release a voice to text module. I asked Dr. Kamada,
their VP, about this a few weeks ago. From their point of view, an in-phone
solution is not feasible, and a client-server solution is not something they
do much of.
Actually, if you didn't want elegance, just a solution, a CTI server to call
into, a voice to text server to convert, and then send the text by e-mail.
Simple. That completely solves the problem. Why didn't I think of that
before I started spewing? Actually, I did, it just wasn't as interesting as
the alternatives.
Cheers,
Nik Frengle
----- Original Message -----
From: "Samal Chandran" <samal@aztec.soft.net>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 8:18 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) voice in data out?
> Hi,
> Are there any devices out there that supports conversion of voice to text
> on the phone.
> I was wondering about the possibility of using Voice for data input but
have
> text/images as output and the looks like the possibilities are
>
> 1. The phone should be able to send voice to a "voice to text" converter
on
> a server and should be able to switch to data mode to receive data that
the
> server will send back. Doesn't seem like the phone can support voice and
> data on the same connection..so this seems doubtful.
>
> 2. The phone supports "voice to text" on the device and there is
> programmatic access to this feature. The connection remains data
throughout.
>
> 3. The voice is send over a VoIP kind of mechanism to a "voice to text"
> converter on the server, and the server sends back data in some other
form.
> (since the other end is not a human listener, i guess there can be
> compromises on latency, delay etc.). Difference between this and the first
> is that - here the connection remains a data connection throughout, where
as
> in the first case the request is a voice connection and the response is
over
> a data connection.
>
> Are any of these possible? Any ideas/pointers to related work?
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Rgds/Samal.
>
> [ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
>
>
>
>
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Tue Jul 17 16:53:56 2001