Voice Texting

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Now this is one thing the youth in Pakistan never seems to get tired of: constant text messaging their peers. The charm of hitting a few buttons and sending a text message is too great most of the times to take the time to place a call. Even though some will argue that calling is easier than typing a hefty message one after the other, but a short text message almost takes no time to send. Also, with the decent SMS packages available, there is no end to the number of texts one can send, in a limited time of course.

Concern arises when texting is literally done at all times: driving included. There are strict laws against this act, and a good sized penalty involved but Pakistan observes quite a number of youngsters, furiously tapping their mobile phones while waiting at a traffic signal (if they wait at all). However, there is some hope out there for the texting while driving people. The Clemson University’s researchers have come up with a safe alternative for this and they claim texting while driving can become a lot less distracting. The research team has developed a technology named VoiceTEXT and it is designed to address this very issue.

VoiceTEXT works like this. The mobile phone is connected to an in-car hands-free system and the ‘vocal’ mode is set. Thus, the mobile phone is connected to the central server which is used to save and send the text message. The user records the message vocally, and the system sends this message in three ways:

1. It sends this message as a voicemail message.
2. The message is sent as an attached audio file via e-mail.
3. The message is transcribed via a speech recognition software and sent as a text message.

If the mobile phone of the receiver of a message is in ‘vocal’ mode, then these text messages can be read out aloud to the user, using text-to-speech software. A lot of potential exists for this technology to be integrated into the current phones, because some already have voice-control features like the iPhone. Researchers believe that this technology can be tested, implemented and operational before the end of 2010. Here’s to some safe driving!
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