Sensory Blog

I just read about Microsoft's new DAISY XML plug-in that will allow users to save text files created in Microsoft Word into DAISY XML, which is short for the Digital Accessible Information SYstem eXtensible Markup Language. DAISY XML tags and maps the text documents so they can be converted to eBooks and digital talking books later on. It's designed for…

I made it to a couple of interesting tradeshows over the last month. The Voice Search Conference was held at the Marriot hotel in San Diego, which provided a really nice setting; the show was very well organized and well attended. Voice Search is all about bringing the power (and revenues) from internet search engines to the cell phone market.…

2008 is here, and in the Silicon Valley it comes with a series of powerful storms, winds up to 60 miles per hour and rain, rain, rain. Of course, what this means is power outages are upon us; a short one and the house will probably stay cold enough to not worry about the food going bad. We'll build fires,…

Last weekend I helped my daughter Samantha create a Halloween costume. Actually it was 2 costumes, because she wanted one for her friend also. They wanted to be robots this year. I took a couple of old cardboard boxes, cut out holes for arms and legs, attached old circuit boards and switches to the sides, and put pieces of dryer…

Oh, another Sensory based product that I love is Hasbro's Squawkers Macaw. Actually, it's not just the speech recognition that makes it so cool, it's the way Hasbro combined a variety of speech technologies together to create a fun user experience. My 4-year old son Sam loves to have the bird record his voice and morph it back to sound…