Speak to me

Speak to me - Finally there is a light at the end of the Danish speach-technology tunnel. Since the failing of Speach Technology leaders Lernout & Hauspie, there hasn't been much good news for those waiting for decent text-to.speach and especially speach recognition in Danish. There are currently 2 companies working on the lingua, Speechware and NST. According to this article in Computerworld, the NST version is now being commercially used by mobile SMS outfit's Responsfabrikken and MobileMagic, to convert e-mail and SMS messages to speach, and then deliver them through that tried and trusted voice interface that almost every cell-phone out there excels at. And then, as soon as we add to that the promised Danish speach recognition, we can start developing serious applications in that mobile space, without being quite as hampered by those tiny keyboards, and eye-defying screens.

On a less positive note - According to another computerworld article, they summarizr the negative development in the Danish mobile business through-out 2001. Just a reminder that practically every mobile manufactureor in Denmark has cut serious job's in their development departments. Nothing new here, as we have been follwing that development through-out the past year, but it's unfortunate nevertheless. With major cut's from Ericsson and Siemens, there are now a good 500 people less working in development departments than one year ago. It bode's ill for keeping the famously high Danish competance level in the field.

Anthrax diagnosis in the palm of your hand - Wired News reports that Danish biotech company Cantion (a subsidiary of NKT) is working on a chip that can test blood for Anthrax in a matter of 10 minutes.

The chip will then be added to a Palm plug-in which will be a palm-based bio-tech lab.

And just yesterday I was claiming that Palm was finished in Europe. Talk about killer app for a scared world.