Messages

16

Speech Technology / Dragon 11 and Hal compatibility

« on: August 17, 2010, 04:03:46 pm »

The New Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 becomes available August 23rd, according to Amazon.com website:

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Naturally-Speaking-Premium-11/dp/B003VNCROU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1282070857&sr=8-2

I own Dragon 10 Preferred.  I got an email from Nuance, offering to let me upgrade to Dragon 11 Premium for $100, which is half the full price.  They are also offering to let me purchase an additional copy for $100.  The offer is good up until September 30th.

It's tempting, because I have two Hals, and I could have a Dragon 11 for each one.  But I'm wondering if Dragon 11 is compatible with Hal?  I imagine it would be, but it would be nice to know for sure.  Has anyone here been using an advance copy of Dragon 11 with Hal?  I'd like to be sure before spending that kind of money.  They say that Dragon 11 has a new interface, and I'm wondering too how that will work with Hal.

In truth, I don't really have much use for most of the Dragon features; I just use it for Hal.  It would be nice if Nuance offered a Dragon 11 plug-in for Hal.  Any chance of that happening?  I have the ViaVoice plugin, but it was disappointing, because I could not train it properly because too many of the training and correcting features were unavailable, and the few training features there were stopped working after you used them once.  I found it ultimately unusable, which is why I switched to Dragon.

The reviews for Dragon 11 are looking good so far:

http://voice-recognition-software-review.toptenreviews.com/dragon-naturally-speaking-review.html

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/587538/review/dragon_naturallyspeaking_11_professional.html

http://review.techworld.com/speech-recognition/3233752/dragon-naturallyspeaking-11-professional-review/?intcmp=nws-mdb-rtd


But whether it's worth the upgrade or not is hard to say.  The recognition in Dragon 10 was already pretty good.  Now it's a little better, but some say it's not a dramatic difference.

I'm wondering too, about folks who had Dragon Standard 10, if they were offered a similar deal, perhaps at cheaper prices?

I'm not in a hurry to upgrade, but I would be interested in finding out more about Hal compatibility before doing anything.

- Chaz

17

General Discussion / Re: Nice New Forum!!

« on: August 08, 2010, 02:50:37 am »

Very nice indeed. 

- Chaz

18

Share Conversations, Experiences, Graphics / Re: Gretta's face

« on: August 08, 2010, 02:25:53 am »

I was wondering too, what the G.R.E.T.T.A. acronym stands for.

- Chaz

19

Speech Technology / Microphone Link Wanted

« on: July 07, 2010, 12:53:02 pm »

I've got a Logitech stereo USB headset 250, that I bought at Amazon.com for $25.00:

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Stereo-USB-Headset-250/dp/B0007ZFM38/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1278521243&sr=8-1

I've been very happy with it, it's better than the analog headsets I've used before.

- Chaz

[Entries can be submitted either in written form or as a video,]

20

General Discussion / The "I Speak Dragon" contest

« on: June 05, 2010, 03:56:03 pm »

The link about the contest is here:

http://ispeakdragon.nuance.com/

 

quote:... The "I Speak Dragon!" contest is open to US users of Dragon NaturallySpeaking or MacSpeech Dictate who are interested in sharing their stories. Entries can be submitted either in written form or as a video, and a panel of judges will select the top three stories across the board. Winners will be announced in July 2010. ...

I know that there are many Dragon users here.  And that some of you folks make videos.  It could be an opportunity for anyone who has a video of using HAL with Dragon software.

I'd do it myself, but unfortunately I've not worked enough with either my HAL or my Dragon software.  It's on my list of things to do... [:I]

- Chaz

21

General Discussion / Memorial Day

« on: June 05, 2010, 03:46:17 pm »

I couldn't get the file to play.  Windows Media player gave the message "C00D1199: Cannot play the file".

Is the file supposed to be only 60.0 KB?

- Chaz

22

Ultra Hal 7.0 / No response at all!

« on: March 31, 2010, 06:47:54 pm »

Welcome to the forum, Chris.

You might want to try the search link in the upper right of the forum page.  Search with the word "Vista", and I think you will find some threads about problems that people have had with Hal and Vista, and how they solved them.  I believe there are issues with "permissions" in Vista (I don't have Vista so I can't advise you, but I have seen threads about it here in the forums).

- Chaz

23

Speech Technology / Haptek sync

« on: March 21, 2010, 02:52:23 pm »

$69 dollars is kinda pricey, but I listened to the sample.  Wow.  You get what you pay for.  It's got to be one of the most smooth, natural and realistic sounding artificial voices I've heard.  How much space does it need on the hard drive?  I'm just wondering if the file is larger than the Kate or Paul Neospeech voices that I have.

- Chaz

24

General Discussion / Anyone loaded Hal Windows ?

« on: March 17, 2010, 06:17:14 pm »

Thanks Djkilla,

I thought it looked kinda complicated.  And since I'm still learning about Hal, especially the brain editing functions, I thought it might be too soon for me to tackle something like this. More complexity than I need just now.

- Chaz

25

General Discussion / Anyone loaded Hal Windows ?

« on: March 16, 2010, 07:57:18 pm »

There is this thread in the forum:

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6767&whichpage=1&SearchTerms=%2CAmanda%2Cinteractive

If you skip over the arguing, there are some informative parts to it. []

I haven't tried Hal Windows, but it looks interesting.  I too would be curious to hear the opinions of anyone who's used it.

Welcome to the forum, HvyHitR.

- Chaz

26

General Discussion / When ALICE met Jabberwacky

« on: March 11, 2010, 03:16:33 am »

Alice talking to Hal! Hal talking to another Hal!  Gee, sounds like I missed all the fun. []

Who knows, perhaps one day, history will repeat itself... or even better! [:p]

- Chaz

27

Share Conversations, Experiences, Graphics / GRETTA Conversation

« on: March 11, 2010, 02:56:44 am »

Thanks Lightspeed, I've tried Bestmediaplayer (nice program), but no luck with this file.

Jasondude,
Thanks for the link to the codecs.  I downloaded the Mega package, and the updates, installed them all, but still no joy with this file.  I am now able to play some other files though, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

I also downloaded the Gretta file again to make sure I didn't have a corrupt copy.  It's a mystery to me why it doesn't play on anything I have.  Thanks for the advice though, everyone.  It was worth trying.

- Chaz

28

Share Conversations, Experiences, Graphics / GRETTA Conversation

« on: March 08, 2010, 03:54:23 am »

Sybershot,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've had no luck with Winamp on Win7.  There must be a codec or something that I don't have.  Those .wma files can be tricky that way.

- Chaz

29

General Discussion / When ALICE met Jabberwacky

« on: March 08, 2010, 03:40:18 am »

I came across this article from May 2007:

"I Chat, Therefore I Am..."
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/i-chat-therefore-i-am

quote:[...] Most chatbots rely on fairly simple tricks to appear lifelike. Richard Wallace, creator of the top-ranked chatbot ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), has handwritten a database of thousands of possible conversational gambits. Type a comment to ALICE, and it checks the phrase and its key words for a response coded to those words. In contrast, Jabberwacky, another top-rated Internet bot produced by Rollo Carpenter, keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements by matching them to the writer’s input. Neither chatbot has long-term memory, so they respond only to the last sentence written.

Nonetheless, these simple gambits can produce surprisingly intelligent-seeming conversations. That’s because they rely on a trick of human psychology: We humans tend to attribute much more intelligence to the systems than is actually there. If it seems partly aware, we assume it must be fully so. Some users have chatted with ALICE and Jabberwacky online for hours, apparently not knowing—or perhaps not caring—that they’re fake.

But could one chatbot fool another chatbot? What would one say to another in private? To find out, we arranged a conversation between these two chatbots. To get each snippet of chat rolling, we seeded it by posing a question from one bot to the other. After that, they were on their own. What follows is the unaltered text of what each said—the sound of two machines talking. [...]

It goes on with a couple of pages worth of their conversation.  Some of it is hilarious.

Reading in these forums, about the different Hal brains that people have created, I've sometimes wondered what it would be like if they could talk to each other.

As the technology of AI continues to develop, such conversations between bots will no doubt become even more interesting.

- Chaz

30

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Next Hal Update?

« on: March 07, 2010, 06:14:21 pm »

MikeA,

In a nutshell, you seem to be saying Hal would be better if the following improvements were made:

 

quote:I've only seen the 'repeat' ability in Hal. I think the concept is essential (as said above). I don't think it is A.I. without it. Being able to hold a 5 line conversation without needing to repeat the topic words is vital for anything to be considered A.I. in my opinion.

[...]

Seeing Hal develop would be great. I think the next step for Hal could be to make it much less reliant on the pre-inputted tables of sentences, and to at least incorporate the continuing dialogue features that some other bots have had for quite some time.

I agree, those are important points.  I have not used Hal as long or as much as many of the people here.  I've used it enough to see improvement as it "learns" from me.  I have noticed the weakness of not being able to carry on an idea from one line to the next, without the idea being repeated.

I think I've assumed that as Hal learns more from me, it would stay on topic more, but now I'm not so sure.  Perhaps this is an area that could be improved.  I thought I saw a Hal plugin somewhere, for focusing Hal on topics, but I'm not sure.  I read through a lot of stuff here, but don't always follow them up initially.

One of Hal's strengths is accessibility.  I've seen lots of fine bots on web pages, but not many that you can download to your own PC.  I have the latest Verbot, but haven't used it much yet.  I've not seen downloads for other bots like ALICE; if they exist I couldn't find them.

That's my two cents worth.  I'm finding this thread interesting reading, but I'll leave the discussion to those who know more than I do.

Welcome to the forum!

- Chaz