Voice Over Web - the Future

Posted on March 27, 2003

in Commentary & Society

by Aaron Schaap (schaapy)

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Aaron Schaap

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User since: April 10, 2002

Last login: April 10, 2002

Articles written: 2

Voice Over Web

Around the time Google announced their purchase of Pyra Labs (indirectly buying Blogger.com) another company came out called Audblog. Their concept is to offer people voice posts on their weblogs via phone and everyday users can listen to their posts instead of reading them - such as you are reading mine right now.

It hasn't taken off and I'm not really sure why. Maybe the people geeky enough to even consider such a concept are too afraid to actually carry on a conversation with themselves. Most of them just like constructing their thoughts through random taps on a keyboard.

I listen to a couple myself and it got really annoying. (1) I was continuously trying to hang on to the person's conversation through all the background noise, (2) things didn't flow as nicely when being spoken than when reading, and (3) you could tell they felt very nervous and reserved. Basically it's good idea but needs a lot of work.

Today, however CNET came out with a great concept that may have come from this idea. CNETRadio.com was born out of the idea that - people are busy and don't always have time to read up on all the news. Real news - not just someone spouting off about their new socks.

The news comes twice a day in .MP3 format. You can listen to it on your computer or quickly burn it for that car ride to and from work (also great for listening during a jog, walking your dog, etc..). With CD's as cheap as they are and being re-writable, it makes complete sense.

Going further:

I think the above it a great idea and I even signed up for it. However, it's just a start with voice on the web. One idea I see this technology being used for is journalist purposes. Folks in the field being able to updating quickly with what's going on. Getting interviews on the spot and actually hearing people's voices.

So how is this different from radio? Simple - not much different. The main benefits would be archiving purposes. Being able to quickly search thousands of voice archives over the web for research projects.

Another difference from radio would be un-edited journalism. There wouldn't be any commercials, there wouldn't be any bleeps, there wouldn't be any "Let's take this out and only point out this side of the story" - there would be pure journalism.

Another idea that comes to mind is quick voice searching. Google Labs developed a system somewhat doing this very thing but very simple right now.

Hook Google's voice search capabilities into un-edited journalism and you now have fully compiled content for websites. Resources from everywhere being pulled in based upon what's going on. If the reporter is reporting on terrorism the site will pick this up and pull in other links that deal with the same situation. Maybe past instances of this or simple "How to deal with Terrorism" links for quick comforting reads.

I'm slowly developing this idea but it could really take care of itself. No more teams of web developers slapping things together and trying to gather resources from the newsroom (which is hard as hell if you've ever worked for a paper) - information would just evolve and grow on itself.

Aaron is a freelance web developer in Holland, Michigan with a focus on making the web a better comunication tool. He spends most of his time playing around with his personal site (www.theparagon.org) or learning about CSS and web standards.

When he's not on the computer he usually sleeping or hiking with his friends.

6 comments on this article. Log in to add your comment | Rate this article:

goto npr.org

Submitted by bedwardj on April 9, 2003 - 09:02.

This is nothing new for NPR. As their site claims they already have over seven years worth of searchable audio.

The content is streaming rather than static mp3 making it harder to download and save. But you can always link to it...

Here is a fun story you can hear when you search for "spotted dick".

Kinda - but not really

Submitted by schaapy on April 9, 2003 - 10:27.

Well - that's a step. However, what I'm talking about is the next step and having a person's voice actually create the site around it. Not the site being created and putting files on a server.

Example: Barbara Walters is talking to (say) President Bush. While the interview is going on LIVE you're sitting at the computer actually seeing their website change and pull in information/resources based upon what Barbara and President Bush is saying. Not something that some webmaster is changing - the site itself is changing. Almost as if it's alive. True, there would be audio archiving but that's not the main point.

Simply - text would appear, images would be pulled, resources would be linked to, etc... And all this would happen seconds after words left the tongue of Barbara and President Bush.

How would the computer know what's important?

Submitted by glaven on April 15, 2003 - 12:24.

Maybe I'm being too complicated here, but how would the program/website know what images/text to pull from the interview? How could importance be indicated to the computer aside from a human operator editing the footage?

Forms of AI probably

Submitted by schaapy on April 15, 2003 - 15:16.

To be honest - I'm not sure. I guess that's where imagination comes in. I'm guessing that you would use forms of AI as well. It would probably take phases or multiple words and cross them with other words in the person's sentence or phrase - then based upon this it could pull a general idea. I'm not a software developer but do think something like this is on the way.

Maybe instead of pulling bits and pieces...

Submitted by glaven on April 15, 2003 - 15:24.

...the program could do voice recognition and write out a transcript along with offering the ability to search the transcript and then displaying the results in video clips and not in transcript. Make sense? For example... search for "I did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewisnky." Instead of being sent back a document which contained those words you'd be sent back a clip that maybe had a few sentences before and after the search string.

but...

Submitted by schaapy on April 15, 2003 - 15:34.

That's a good idea but would it be possible to have that transcript - say in the main content part of the site and then have links to other sites that are similar (like in a right rail)? Almost like an additional thoughts from others on the web.

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