Developer teases voice control of Zune, using PC and Windows Phone (video)

The great thinkers of the world have long known a secret that we’re now happy to disclose: it’s not necessity that’s the mother invention, but rather laziness. Fortunately, expending a great deal of effort on a project — simply to perform a task effortlessly — sometimes brings very cool results. A concept app known as ZuneVoice easily passes muster in this realm, which is used to control Zune software on the PC with only a standard microphone and spoken commands. As you can see in the demo video, its creator, keyboardp, is able to play individual songs, issue commands such a “pause” or “next song”, and even display full-screen music videos from YouTube. The developer even crafted an app for his Lumia 800 known as PhoneZune, which serves as a remote control for times when he’s away from the box. Neither application is yet publicly available, though feedback is welcome. Next, we’re told to expect Kinect integration. Perhaps one day, these gems will see the light of day.

The Verge, 1800PocketPC

keyboardp

Web: http://www.zune.net/it-IT/products/windowsphone7/default.htm

Chrome 11 goes beta with speech-to-text capabilities

Well, it looks like Google is unsurprisingly adding more than just a new logo to the latest version of its Chrome browser — the just-released beta of Chrome 11 also now boasts speech-to-text capabilities. That comes in the form of support for the HTML5 speech input API, which web developers will be able to take advantage of to let folks simply talk to websites and have their speech magically transcribed to text. Also making a first appearance in the beta is support for GPU-accelerated 3D CSS, which will let developers apply all sorts of 3D effects to websites — Blingee will never be the same, surely. Hit up the link below to try it out for yourself.