Microsoft is its own Worst Enemy!
This video interview features MSR’s Jasha Droppo:
I have been with Microsoft Research since July, 2000. My primary task has been to explore different techniques to make ASR more robust to additive and channel noise. Other projects I’ve worked on include general speech signal enhancement, pitch tracking, multiple stream ASR, novel speech recognition features, MiPad multimodal interface, cepstral compression and transport, and the WITTY microphone.
I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Then, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. If you can’t see the embeded YouTube clip, you can either download the MP4 or watch the video on the Web:
Argh! Release the code, already - don’t make me have to stage a podcaster protest, please? And as if this wasn’t enough to frustrate you audio jockeys, there’s another MSR team that has developed an application that will actually edit out speech-to-text recognized words on-the-fly. You could effectively get rid of all those “uhhs” and “ahhs” with simple clicks. I didn’t catch their names, however.
Please, would someone at MIcrosoft just… put this stuff out there and let us (your users, not committees) decide whether it’s worth pursuing?!
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10 Comments
Geoffrey Knobl
March 23rd, 2007
at 1:13pm
There it is. Microsoft has grown too big. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Split them up - just as was suppose to happen after the DoJ originally sued them, that is, before the neocons prevented that from happening.
But this proves they should be removed from existence as the monopoly they are now. Split them up as Dvorak suggested. Do it now!
Matt Hartley
March 23rd, 2007
at 1:34pm
I would agree that this needs to go beta. However, I deal with his challenges everyday. There are checks and balances that must be met and in some cases, it’s just a matter of locating the person that can get this sort of thing into the world outside of the lab.
With that said, I don’t buy his answer. If he was truly ready to get this out the door, he would ping his boss, who would then ping the someone in another dept. Surely there is a Intranet resource with a directory listing? It’s a fantastic technology, hopefully they can get it out there soon.
Greg Birch
March 24th, 2007
at 8:47am
i want this NOW, I want this on my cell phone, and I want to be able to turn it on or off in Vista or XP, integrated with Dragon Naturally Speaking, and I want this for speech recognition when I am dictating data as I am doing exams on my patients.
NOW, NOW, NOW.
is that enough enthusiasm?
Paul
March 24th, 2007
at 11:09am
Microsoft doesn’t do anything unless they can make money from it or give people a reason to use MS-only apps. Why release this in beta for someone to implement in a NON-MS product? MS != Google.
They should marry it to Windows Messenger (even though I like that IM client the least of them ALL).
Ed
March 24th, 2007
at 11:52am
GEEK FIGHT!!!
Julian Bond
March 27th, 2007
at 12:29am
If these had been done as open source projects, they’d already be out there. Just saying, right?
Can you pinpoint the exact moment when Microsoft forgot how to “Ship early, Ship often”?
Maybe Microsoft needs more developers? « Robitaille’s Blog
March 27th, 2007
at 12:30am
[...] March 27th, 2007 It seems Microsoft is sitting on all sort of great things coming out of their research lab, at least according this article from Chris Pirillo’s blog about what appears to be great product to improve ASR (automatic speech recognition). It would appear Chris REALLY wants to see that technology become available now. Robert Scoble posted recently nearly 2 hours of video footage from that same Microsoft Research Lab Techfest in which you can see all sort of other cool toys and projects from their lab. [...]
The Chris Pirillo Show
March 27th, 2007
at 5:26am
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Jasha Droppo [MS]
March 28th, 2007
at 2:50pm
Chris, thanks for being so enthusiastic about this little project of mine. It was a pleasure to talk with you at Techfest.
I’ve just finished writing a conference paper describing the heart of the new algorithm. If it passes peer review, it will get published late this Summer and other research labs may try and make it better. That’s the way science works!
» Microsoft Research: Great Ideas, Where Are The Products? » InsideMicrosoft - part of the Blog News Channel
March 30th, 2007
at 2:47pm
[...] Chris Pirillo seems just plain pissed off that stuff like this isn’t being released, at least not for the moment, and he’s uploaded this video: [...]