You Can Hear Me Now!

One of my favorite Star Trek movies is The Voyage Home.  The crew of the Enterprise had travelled back in time to save the earth’s whales and I remember the scene in which Scotty, the starship’s engineer, is attempting to use a vintage Macintosh computer by speaking into the mouse.  Of course his commands fell on the proverbial deaf digital ears as this technology had not yet arrived on earth in 1986.   Nevertheless, I always thought it was so cool that on the bridge of the starship Capt. Kirk could carry on conversations with the computer: making commands, setting the course and asking for answers to complex questions.  While it has been a long time coming, there are now some very practical and easy to use voice commands available on a number of new digital devices.

Perhaps the most well known right now is Siri, the personal assistant application available on the Apple iPhone and iPad. At first you might think that speaking commands is something that is cool but has limited real world uses.  You would be wrong.  There are several tasks that Siri can help with that are very practical and helpful.  For example, tax season is upon us and instead of using a calculator or computer spread sheet to add up a series of numbers, just speak them to Siri. Siri will give you the sum and show each number in the series so you can make sure you have all the entries.  Want to take a brief cat nap?  Just tell Siri to set an alarm.  Forget when you are to meet with a client?  Siri can check your calendar and tell you all the meetings you have with this person.  You can send emails and other messages using only voice commands.

On a road trip and need a cup of coffee?  Ask Siri the location of the closest Starbucks.  On a more serious note, Siri can find the closest gas station, bank or hospital.

For people with Windows devices, there are also applications that can make use of voice commands.  Using Windows 7 or 8 and the Google Chrome browser opens up a whole suite of applications.  By clicking on the microphone icon in the Google search box you can just speak your question.  Google can also do math functions.  Not only can you ask for the sum of a series of numbers, Google will do advanced math functions like square roots and cosines.

While you may not be able to control your starship you can ask Google to display a map.  Give it a try.  Ask for a map of Harrison, Ohio.  Then ask for a map of your street using your address including zip code.

Voice commands have come a long way and will continue to make the keyboard and mouse as Scotty would say, “Oh how quaint!”