Forum Moderators: bakedjake
A Scottish computer speech technology company has launched what it claims to be the world's first talking search engine.
[theherald.co.uk...]
Search results will be in an American voice, but newsfeeds will be in a Scottish accent.
An interesting concept, but I've always thought a "talking" type search is too slow. I typically tend to scan SERPs FAST when searching for a website.
Seems inefficient for the average person.
[edited by: bakedjake at 6:03 am (utc) on Nov. 4, 2004]
I did just wonder if this press release should have been dated April 1st.
A nice novelty idea but not sure if it'll catch on, as phaze said there's already accesibilty software that can output a webpage's text to audio.
btw url is speegle.co.uk not .com which appears to have been hijacked already.
:)
Anyone else get flashbacks to "Do you want to play a game?"
Liked the female voice better than the male, had somewhat less creep factor.
General Notes:
For some reason, it kept skipping the 1st result when reading out the SERPS.
Neat Feature: Just type a number, and it links you directly to that # in the SERPS.
SERPS were identical to google. They're just using Google for the search and adding a voice synth overtop.
Graphics and layout were copyright infringing level of similarity to Google. Suspect this is a day 5 project.
On a serious note, Speegle seems to be for visually impared people and visually impared people already have devices that allow them to hear text. Also, Speegle seems to be a rip off of Google's colors and name.
(corrected, sorry, must be a case of the mondays)
[edited by: iblaine at 7:02 pm (utc) on Nov. 8, 2004]
I am hearing impaired myself and I think that it is easier to just read it :)
I've always thought a "talking" type search is too slow.
Quite right. Unless they allow you some mehod of speeding up or slowing down the rate of speech, it would drive me nuts.
I have enough people yammering at me ... I certainly don't need to add a search engine into the mix.
Imagine how corporate underlings will hate such a feature as they spend hours online looking for their next holiday while at work! :)
I can just hear it now ... shhhhhhhhhh you stupid machine. Whisper ... and make it fast! My boss is right across the room! :)
Thumbs down on this idea.
btw - i actually like the male voice better than the female - less robotic
When you make a call to any company any more you get the automated system that forces you to work at their speed ,
Example, you want an option that is going to be under "press 5 now" but first you have to wait 30-60 seconds for the initial introduction to their "intelligent" automated system then you have to listen to each option just to get to your option which is under 5 , you cant go directly to option 5 because you dont in the beginning that is going to be the option you want and you dont have alive voice or a VISUAL clue that that is where your information is going to be.
A talking SE is only going to aggravate, better is to show previews of webpages during asearch .. I do a search query , up pops 20 search results with a small preview of each site ; I can glance at 20 websites all at once and eliminate the garbage in under a few seconds and identify within a few seconds those sites that most likely have the information I need .
What I picture is the blind person using a Braille keyboard to type in their search words. Then they can simpy press a number key to go to the result they want. Then I assume they have software to translate the text of the page they choose into Braille.
Ok so it tells you what the search results are ..so then what do you do? How does that help someone that is blind actually retrieve any information off a website? It reads meta tags . ok thats great ..keyword keyword keyword phrase keyword ..well that sure was useful lol
.. I dont know --if the target market is the visually impared then I'd sure like to see a study of them using speegle because I just dont see this being much help..maybe it would be ..I just dont see it..
What would REALLY be useful for the visually impared would be a braille pad .. (think 15inch screen lying flat on your desk) the pad is filled with a timy BB's that rise upwards with a small amount of electrical impulse
-the top of the screen/pad is covered with a thin rubber/vinyl- the BB's rise spelling out in braille what is on a website.
The text information on a webpage is picked up like a SE spider .. and is converted to a data flow that corresponds each letter to certain region of BB's on the braille pad enabling the the blind person to actually read whats on a website ..
One thing that does strike me is that this engine wouldent really help someone who was visualy impaired. For something like this to be effective they really need to use more than voice, they need to make clever user of keyboard shortcuts, as well as very easy to read text.
Google and other se's could do well to learn from this, accessability is something most large sites are going to have to take seriously if visualy impaired users are ever going to be able to make full use of them.
This is a clever step in the right direction, although I think there will be more to come, maybee not from this engine, but from another.
Mack.
Shouldn't that be SpeegleGuy?
