Thank god for early adopters. If we were all late adopters every new technology would die in beta. I was reading an article the other day that said voice command technology, though by no means new, is finally now reaching a phase of practicality that makes the benefits of using it worth the effort to actually use it. I consider myself a late adopter and would like to hold out until mind control technology is the new frontier (though I’m joking, I have no doubts that the realization of this concept is in the not so distant future), however voice control is a great start and although it’s not quite late enough in the game for me to start to adopt I think it’s pretty close. But, it’s those brave and ever excited early adopters that will continue to finance and herald the movement of great new technology. What’s even better is thanks to other ever expanding technologies I can watch their progress! I stumbled upon this great video the other day where a user from TechAU compares two of today’s competing voice technologies: Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Tellme. The user’s accent makes me wonder if maybe a particular setting employed on one device and not the other led to an unfair advantage, but if not there is definitely a disparaging difference between the two. I have seen other videos of Microsoft’s Tellme working much better than in this particular instance so I am a little skeptical to its accuracy. Some of the comments on the review mention that certain commands must be used for Tellme to work properly and that Tellme isn’t quite up to par yet with other accents and languages (though I did see another video of Tellme working with other accents). It’s hard to say if this is a fair test but it is an interesting review nonetheless. Here is the video if you are interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=SHoukZpMhDE