3 ms·

I certainly don't remember anything of usable quality being available to end-users. My Windows 98 machine could barely play 360p videos and didn't even have a c

by Strom 10y ago

I certainly don't remember anything of usable quality being available to end-users. My Windows 98 machine could barely play 360p videos and didn't even have a camera. The voice recognition that I do remember trying was of very low accuracy. Do you remember any specifics of where & how exactly these features were available?

flukus 10y ago
Not sure about the software but webcams were available from the early 90's. I think there was an old amiga magazine that came with some facial recognition demo ware. For voice there were things like dragon that could do reasonably accurate full voice dictation. IME it was more accurate the google voice is today because it was trained. Moving these to the cloud is more about controlling data than it is about lack of local computing power.
WillPostForFood 10y ago
We had people in the office in the late 90s with repetitive stress issues who were using Dragon NaturallySpeaking pretty effectively.
- the-dude 10y ago
  But where have the repetitive stress issues gone?
  - VLM 10y ago
    Ageism, if your wrists are toast by age 40, but no one gets hired over 30, or whatever the exact numbers are, it doesn't matter much as long as A is higher than B.
et-al 10y ago
I remember around 2007/2008 Sony VAIOs had facial recognition login. I freaked out on how decent it was, then thought about the DMV and Facebook being able to use this and really freaked out.
rhplus 10y ago
State of the art for dictation was probably Dragon Dictate / Naturally Speaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking Windows had an API for basic command recognition, in late 90's giving the ability to navigate through telephony menus, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Speech_API#SAPI_1-4_API_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Speech_API#SAPI_1-4_...
- tgb 10y ago
  Oh yeah, very practical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec
  - flukus 10y ago
    That's a lot better than the results I get from Google voice today. Writing code isn't what it's optimised for though.
  - hendersoon 10y ago
    It was completely usable at the time, but did require a relatively beefy PC. Doctors and attorneys very commonly used it to dictate letters.
    - flukus 10y ago
      And for context "beefy PC" here means less CPU power and RAM than the cheapest smart phone today.
KVFinn 10y ago
Dragon Dictate worked pretty well in 2001 from what I recall, if you were willing to train it.

by Strom 10y ago

flukus 10y ago

Not sure about the software but webcams were available from the early 90's. I think there was an old amiga magazine that came with some facial recognition demo ware. For voice there were things like dragon that could do reasonably accurate full voice dictation. IME it was more accurate the google voice is today because it was trained. Moving these to the cloud is more about controlling data than it is about lack of local computing power.

WillPostForFood 10y ago

We had people in the office in the late 90s with repetitive stress issues who were using Dragon NaturallySpeaking pretty effectively.

the-dude 10y ago
But where have the repetitive stress issues gone?
- VLM 10y ago
  Ageism, if your wrists are toast by age 40, but no one gets hired over 30, or whatever the exact numbers are, it doesn't matter much as long as A is higher than B.

et-al 10y ago

I remember around 2007/2008 Sony VAIOs had facial recognition login. I freaked out on how decent it was, then thought about the DMV and Facebook being able to use this and really freaked out.

rhplus 10y ago

State of the art for dictation was probably Dragon Dictate / Naturally Speaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking Windows had an API for basic command recognition, in late 90's giving the ability to navigate through telephony menus, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Speech_API#SAPI_1-4_API_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Speech_API#SAPI_1-4_...

tgb 10y ago
Oh yeah, very practical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec
- flukus 10y ago
  That's a lot better than the results I get from Google voice today. Writing code isn't what it's optimised for though.
- hendersoon 10y ago
  It was completely usable at the time, but did require a relatively beefy PC. Doctors and attorneys very commonly used it to dictate letters.
  - flukus 10y ago
    And for context "beefy PC" here means less CPU power and RAM than the cheapest smart phone today.

KVFinn 10y ago

Dragon Dictate worked pretty well in 2001 from what I recall, if you were willing to train it.