When Music-on-Hold goes bad

The Avoid List

Born of Frustration - James

Hanging On The Telephone - Blondie

Heaven Knows I Am Miserable Know - The Smiths

Hold the Line - Toto

How Long - The Eagles

Hung Up - Madonna (“Time Goes By So Slowly”) 

It's So Funny How We Don't Talk Any More - Cliff Richard 

It's Yer Money I'm After Baby - The Wonder Stuff

No Rush - Josh Turner

Paper Planes - MIA (“All I want to do is ... and … and take your money”)

Patience - Take That

Relax Take It Easy - Mika

Ring Ring - De La Soul (“Hey you doing? Sorry you couldn’t get through. If you leave a name and a number … I’ll get back to you”)

Sam’s Town - The Killers ("Why do you waste my time? Is the answer to the question on your mind")

Say Something - James (“Say Something Say Something Anything Your Silence Is Deafening”) 

Shutt Uppa Ya Face - Joe Dolce

Still Waiting - Sum 41

Talk Dirty To Me - Poison

Things Can Only Get Better - DREAM

Under Pressure - Queen

We Have All The Time In The World - Louis Armstrong

You Don't Care About Us - Placebo

You Never Give Me Your Money - The Beatles

Utility Company no-no's

Back To Black - Amy Winehouse

Boom! Shake The Room - DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince

Every Light In The House Has Blown - Cledus T Judd

Firestarter - Prodigy

Greased Lightning (“It’s Electrifying”)

Hot And Cold - Katy Perry

Lights Out - Santigold

Relight My Fire - Take That

Short Circuit - Daft Punk

The Light - Proclaimers (“A Light Shines On That Helps You To Steer, Makes Everything Clear, Well It Might In Your World But It Doesn't In Mine, Ive Been Stumbling In The Dark For Years”) 

Une Annee Sans Lumiere - Arcade Fire

Suggestions for a Utility Company

Darling Leave The Lights On For Me - Belinda Carlisle

Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) - Outhere Brothers (Energy!  Energy!  Energy!  Energy! ) Nb: Only Listen To The Clean Version!

Energy - Earth Wind And Fire

Light My Fire - The Doors

Our Friends Electric - Gary Newman

Power Of Love - Huey Lewis And The News

She's Electric - Oasis

Telephone Line - Electric Light Orchestra

The Power - Snap

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths

Whatever You Want, Whatever You Need - Status Quo

You Are Not Alone - The Eagles

You Light Up My Life - Debby Boone

Lost in translation: The iPhone's accents problem

[nik's note: this is funny]

SEASONAL scene somewhere in Scottish theatre land:

"Whit did ye get her fir Christmas?"

"Ah firgoat."

"Ye firgoat? Aw, did she gie ye hell?"

"Eh?"

"Well ye said ye firgoat"

"Naw, ah fir goat."

And so the pantomime joke continues, for as long as the colourfully clad dames can draw it out. Eventually the smaller, fatter ugly sister will understand that her taller, scrawnier stage sibling has given a present of a fur coat. But the confusion inevitably won't end there. "Whit fir?" The answer: "Fir tae keep her warm." Obviously. 

The Google application for iPhone, which was developed in the US, is supposed to allow users to search for information by recognising the words they say. Unfortunately, there have been some serious transatlantic translation glitches.

[click heading for more]

George Bush's voice speech synthesised for Text-to-speech

Ok folks, this is just for fun, but on my web travels I discovered this speech synthesis of George Bush using the Cereproc TTS engine. Quality is what you would expect from a voice built from a mixed-bag of public domain speech samples, but actually, it's rather convincing.

For a long time we've never been able to believe photographs thanks to the awesome power of Adobe Photoshop. Perhaps the time when the same is true of voice recordings is soon upon us... [click heading for more]

Since when was "Hello" Ukranian

Here's a bizarre thing - not strictly speech related, but automated translation, so close enough for this blog :-) I wanted to know what "Hello" was in Austrian, so I figured German would be good enough... Seems Google translation has an unusual view of the English language. Check the picture below and see what you make of it yourself :-)

Your call is important to us... no, really... honestly..

Programming P{erl; with Vista Sp>eech@

Sometimes it's ok to sit back, take stock of where we are at, and allow our sense of humour to breathe.

All of us in the speech industry are keen to demonstrate and remind our clients and prospective clients that speech recognition has finally come of age and delivers tangible returns and savings in processing calls. And it does.

But it's easy to get a bit blinkered from time to time and forget the image speech recognition has in social consciousness; the consumers' experience of the technology is often different from the experience the industry promotes (and, on the whole, delivers).

This video is both painful and funny on several levels. It is painful to see someone struggle like this, but also painful to think the speech industry still has to overcome this kind of experience. It's funny because - well, let's face it - someone else's plight is usually pretty funny. But also the results are so predictable yet so obviously unintended.

But it highlights really nicely just what the challenges are of providing intuitive speech interfaces to "everyday" activities.

Even I was swearing at it half-way through, and I wasn't even there....