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Could ‘social media tablets’ work for interactive e-books, not just Facebook and Twitter?
September 29, 2009 | 12:47 pm
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By David Rothman
The Kindle’s tiny chiclet-style keyboard takes up space—but isn’t terrific for fast typing.
But what if Amazon someday gave the Kindle voice recognition? Could that work for shared notes in books? For customer-provided book-reviews?
Intriguing possibilities come up in the $250 Lighthouse SQ7 from AdelaVoice.
The “first portable social media device” uses voice recognition. The idea is to help you update Facebook and Twitter friends. The speech recognition, from what I know, is far from perfect. But consider the future possibilities.
Good voice recognition would be one way of dealing with a classic dilemma. You want a compact device for e-reading. But then the small size makes it harder to include a decent keyboard.
What do you think, gang? Meanwhile I’m wondering how well the gizmo would work for basic display of e-books, assuming that’s possible through added software. Screen size is seven inches. Res is so-so.
Stats: “The SQ7 is built upon the SmartQ 7 Internet Tablet from Smart Devices. It includes an ARM11 processor running at 667MHz, 128MB of DDR RAM, 1 GB Nand Flash memory, an 800×480 pixel WVGA screen with 16 million colors, and a 4500mAH Built-in Li-poly battery.“ OS is Ubuntu Linux. An eReader client for this flavor of Linux someday, perhaps? One dreams.
No, this isn’t the optimal machine for e-booking. But imagine what Barnes & Noble could do with an improved model and the right software.
If you order today, shipping will start on October 7. Should anyone follow up, I’ll be most curious if he/she comes up with a way to read e-books. Perhaps time for a Facebook App for e-books? Hey, wouldn’t that be a sneaky way to go?
One challenge: Good speech recognition requires a powerful enough CPU. But like the keyboard, this priority can be at odds with the desire for a compact device. There’s also the pesky little issue of battery life.
(Via Besttabletreview.)
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Comments:
The concept of using voice reco for speech input always sounds good on its face. But so far, it’s been so far from workable as to be nothing but a pain for most users.
I also admit, I wonder what the world will be like when everyone’s talking to themselves to input into their devices. Considering how people use their cellphones, I expect this to be a chatty world in that case.
Actually, I wouldn’t count the possibility out. I just haven’t figured out how well it’s going to work in practical usage, much less have I seen SW that could effectively pull it off.
> I just haven’t figured out how well it’s going to work in practical usage, much less have I seen SW that could effectively pull it off.
Not to mention the CPU factor I mentioned. Future chips could be MUCH better. I wonder if this isn’t a product ahead of its time.
Even 95 percent accuracy could still let some rather distracting errors through.
Thanks,
David
I think it is still ahead of its time, yes.