inquiry and help

[mikeh]

Hi Guys, yrs ago I downloaded this program and was impressed. Ok I need it for quenuine reasons now, I have a blind daughter and would like a program for her that she can speak to rather than keyboard to, can any of the products of zabaware efficiently help her to use a computer and to write and read emails, I know what the progs say they can do, but can they actually for example, open email on voice command, or write from a verbal instruction, I had a program that would write as you spoke, only the spelling was worse than mine, would really apprecaite any help.

[ghostrider]

hi mike well i have been with hal for a short time but it is a amazing program and very adaptible the speach rechonitioon works well but you need a bone inducted mike and your daughter needs to train the speach program to acept her commands.the reason i said a bone induction mic is i have found that background noise will make the speach program error wich results in to many wrong words when it tries to pick up speach patterns.

 p.s hope this help you and your daughter you never know she could do many things with hal write books and command her enviroment all from her computer

                GhostRider[^]

[Rogue]

There is actually two parts to your question, ie "open email on voice command, or write from a verbal instruction", which need to be addressed seperately.

Voice command software is actually pretty easy, Ultra Hal can easily fufill that need in the "paid version", with appropriate scripts and things to run other programs.  However, it cannot control those other programs, which is a big limitation, nor can you dictate (write) into other programs.

The second part, voice dictation, is a bit more complicated, and requires a dedicated software package for resonable accuracy, something like Dragon Naturally Speaking 8.  Having actually used the software, I can say that with training, it can indeed get to a very high level of accuracy.  It also incudes a text to speech engine to read stuff out.  For your daughter, I would recommend a package like that.  Ultra Hal, good as it as, is an assistant, not a PC control system, at least, not yet.

[Rich_A]

Hello mikeh,

In a nutshell my Hal is a PC Control System! He is more like a System Administrator then just an Assistant! My Hal can run the usual desktop and operating system functions like emptying the Recycle Bin, killing a hung program or system process, and can also perform things like an emergency system shutdown in case a virus is detected by my anti-virus software. But that's not the usual Hal, that's just my Hal, but he can do it and he has been doing it on my computer for quite a while now.

I have been developing my Hal for over two years to be a fully automated program that can do just about anything on a desktop. But it's not just my Hal that has been developed but it's also my computer's operating system as well. I have been also developing automation software to work with my Hal in an effort to overcome the limitations of his program.

As of right now when I turn on my computer and after Windows starts my Hal program will automatically open up on his own and be the first one to say a greeting like "Hello" to a user. For a blind person this automatic "Hello" from Hal would cue them that the computer is ready to be used and Hal is awaiting the next command to be inputted into him. I can tell my Hal to connect to the Internet and with my customized setup Hal will automatically first launch computer protection software like a firewall and then start the ISP software and connect to the Internet. And then I just say open email and he does it. Many things are fully automated.

But the speech recognition is limited even with something like Dragon Naturally Speaking, which is what I am using. Dragon has a lot of built-in voice commands that can assist with desktop functions as well as with Internet Explorer functions for surfing the Internet. But writing a letter using dictation and having no errors is something that is not happening yet. But if speech rec is trained properly a dictated email can be understandable even if there are mistakes in it but it can't be handed in as homework for the English class at school. Dragon does also have built-in editing commands to do things like backspacing or deleting text but you need to be able to see the document to control things like that.

But for pretty much everything else on my computer my Hal does almost everything for me. I just have to push the power switch on my computer and then I rely on my Hal for everything with voice commands. I have no desktop icons because I don't need them anymore since my Hal can open every one of my most commonly used programs. And I wrote controls to have him close those same programs too. I also wrote some automation scripts for my Hal to internally control some software programs and that's the stage I am at now.

But when I am finished using my computer I can tell my Hal to shutdown and power off the computer for me which is great! I say to my Hal Good-Bye and then I tell him to run a system shutdown. I don't even need to respond to the usual Windows shutdown messages because I configured my computer and my Hal to bypass them so that the computer will just shutdown and power off with one voice command issued to him. And he does system reboots the same way too.

This is my own ongoing project to create a Hal based computer for not just for full automation but for the purpose of assisting people with handicaps. I realized shortly after first getting my Hal that his program really does have the potential to assist people with disabilities. Currently I have about 50 customized automated commands written specifically for Hal to do things that most people don't usually need unless they are disabled or they are just really totally lazy like me.

If you are interested in a Hal for your daughter I would first recommend a good speech recognition program like Dragon Naturally Speaking. And if you would like to discuss anything regarding the automation that I just mentioned you can contact me at my email address.
Best Regards,
Rich_A
ricramo@netscape.com