Please exuse me for a little-self-promo...
I know, the GotSpeech.net is mostly about Speech technologies itself (and Speech server in particular)
But OCS server & UM model, powered by Microsoft products, is my point of interest as one whole, not only one selected product.
One of main products is Office Communicator 2007, really a state-of-art IM & voice client (trust me I know what I'm saying, I we seen many IM clients)
For corporate market Communicator is one of the most acceptable - the main point for me is :
Communicator 2007 is "strict".
This means the design of this program is not a "software-for-myself" or "I like this pink color for background & a flower here" - this is really a program for work, with much "think-behind".
By the way, I think, that Communicator 2007 is the best solution to test your applications, written for Speech server - as I do in my development environment.
So I decided to write a Vista side-bar gadget for it, somewhat extending the behaviour of this programm.
As far as I know it is the first one gadget for Communicator 2007.
You can download it from http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=2701d34d-ec6a-48ec-9ce2-a3932345f3a8
The Idea was:
1. I do not like to be interrupted by new IM message from my collegue, when I am really busy, but I do not want to miss a thing.
The notifications can be disabled, but by default new window is opened and starts blinking in taskbar.
2. Sometimes for testing purposes I open MANY conversations, not so easy find the one I need, sometimes I'd like to hide them all (or even close)
3. I needed to look inside the api & wanted to do something interestion & usable.
Enjoy, comments are welcome!
Sorry for being idle for too long - I was at my first vacation for 3 years...
Not so easy to come back fully to working state after a month at sea-coast!
The war has started during my vacations - I really was not so far from the place.
Russian warships left their base at Balaclava and Sevastopol in tens kilometers from my beach & directed to the place less then thousand kilometers - Abkhazia coast... Another notice, that the life can be a dangerous & too short...
It was the second notice about the war during my vacations, the first one was tightly related to speech technologies...
So I decided to post it here.
On the Crimea resort Simeiz I rented a room at a private house of local habitant, Maxim.
http://maps.live.com/#JnE9eXAuc2ltZWl6JTdlc3N0LjAlN2VwZy4xJmJiPTY4LjUyODIzNDkyMDM5ODglN2U3Ni44MTY0MDYyNSU3ZTQ2LjE5NTA0MjEwODY2MDIlN2UtMS4wNTQ2ODc1
or
http://maps.google.ru/maps?f=q&hl=ru&geocode=&q=simeiz&sll=43.636075,37.63916&sspn=4.34127,9.997559&ie=UTF8&ll=44.294367,34.216919&spn=1.026198,2.49939&z=9&iwloc=addr
Now it is Ukraine territory, former USSR republic, independent country, but 90% population of peninsula tend to think their Russian (at least only 1 person during my vacations had difficulties understanding Russian - Spanish cook at local bazaar).
Also it is a place, where Russian naval bases of Black Sea Fleet are located.
The house was quite big, with numerous rooms for guests - it is normal for such a place at Crimea, where local residents lease rooms about 3 months a year & live the rest 9 months on this money.
The nephew of house owner Maxim, named Alex, is a guy about 13 years old, very active boy, part of time he was sitting in front of computer staring at some NFS-like game.
I was shocked, when I was told, that strabismus (cross-eye) defect of Alex is a result of direct artillery shell hit to the house of his family in Grozny, Chechnya. Alex survived, with only a part of his family. He got this injury, when he was a little child, now his family is safe, they moved to Crimea.
The civil war in Chechnya is in the same state as, for example, in Basque departments of Spain or in Northern Ireland - it seems to be quiet out where, but in any minute can blow. People, who feed this war, are partly want independence, partly want Islamic state on this territory, partly represent Al-Caeda, partly earn money. Let the God judge them all.
I simply do not understand people (local habitants) - WHY kill & hate each other for any reason, if it is evident, that they will live on the same land for centuries in any case... except for total mutual destruction.
Alex cannot learn at the common school - his mind is ok, absolutely normal kid, except he cannot read & write. The correcting operation can be done only after he become enough grown-up - at 18 y.o. And he stare at computer only to see something like moving lights & car silhouette, not more! Simply imagine a 18 y.o. man, who need to learn everything at the age, when other guys start to work...
I thought, that my enthusiasm about speech technologies, intended to power-up the corporate sector, the result of our common activities in this sphere, can help Alex a little. I proposed Maxim to turn his computer to speaking PC to help the kid read books at least using TTS.
Maxim agreed with enthusiasm, he haven't even heard about such a possibility...
Where is one problem - we needed Russian TTS engine, absent in Speech server for example, so we were unable to use built-it engine, even if we manage to install vista on Maxims' PC.
The one from few freely available Russian TTS engines is Lernout & Hauspie, with not very good synthesis quality - is is easy to understand...
The Russian language is quite difficult to learn & speak for the reasons of pronunciation & grammar, for example the sentence formation and accent position are different from sentence to sentence, verb forms are even more difficult sometimes, than in French for example.
The NVDA (freeware) and L&H Russian TTS engines (present on my WD portable USD HD - always with me) managed to make WinWord to read text "sentence - by - sentence" according to up and down keyboard arrows...
It was really great for these people - now Alex can get new information by himself.
So, my experience from my journey is quite simple:
- Do everything to let people to understand each other, the understanding & respect of another man are the things, that can stop the war.
- Speaking software can empower the business, but it also can help a man to grow up...