Digital Home Thoughts: Make Media Center Your Slave

"In an effort to optimize my laziness, I've messed with a number of voice recognition applications but they never really seem to work that well for me. I've tried them out on Windows Mobile PDAs, smart phones, and on my desktop computer and they've all been met by similar results. If I don't speak really methodically and unnatural like I, Robot, I can't get the product to open the appropriate application, dial the person I name, or transcribe my voice to text respectively. Either the voice recognition programs have a difficult time understanding my subtle Southern drawl or they just don't work that well yet. I'm more apt to believe the latter. That being said, I'd be willing to give it another try with my Media Center PC. Few things would be cooler than demanding my computer to start up an episode of Big Brother after I came home from a tough day at work. Well, unless I could maybe order a bucket of chicken in the same breath..."

Embedded Automation, specializes in the areas of home automation, media centers and embedded systems, and One Voice Technologies, developer of 4th Generation voice solutions for the Telecom and Interactive Multimedia markets, today announced a partnership to add voice recognition capabilities to Embedded Automation's industry leading mControl home automation software using One Voice's mceSpeechTools for Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005. If you're into the whole home automation thing and have the version of mControl with Media Center Communicator embedded, you can actually speak to your Media Center and get it to perform functions such as playing music, watching and recording TV, sending email, etc.