************************************* * * * DB/C Newsletter * * August 1996 * * * ************************************* Editor's Notes This month's article discusses three technologies that I believe are going to have major impact on how you, the readers of this newsletter, use computers. Your comments are welcome. PLEASE NOTE: Effective August 3rd, the new area code of the phone numbers of Subject, Wills and Company is 630. For convenience, you will be able to use the existing area code (708) until November 29th. don.wills@swc.com Three Technologies That Will Change Things Lots of technologies have promise, but many never seem to actually live up to their promise. The Personal Digital Assistant technology (such as the Apple Newton) is an example of a technology that has (so far) failed to meet its expectations. This article covers three technologies will soon have great impact on the computer industry and the world. Computer Speech Computer speech technology is actually made up of two separate technologies: speech recognition and speech output. For the past few years, the general consensus has been that speech recognition was too computationally expensive for general use. And when the Speak and Spell teaching aid was released for children about fifteen years ago, everyone thought that speech output technology was mature. In reality, both technologies were immature from a computer science perspective, regardless of the computer processing power available. In the last few years, several organizations have focused on speech recognition and speech output. In most cases, these were smaller companies (like Dragon Systems and Lernout & Hauspie) that licensed their technologies to big companies (like IBM and Microsoft). Computer science and engineering advances of the past few years make computer speech a technology whose time has arrived. In the area of speech recognition, the use of sophisticated recognition algorithms, in combination with application-specific grammars, have made certain speech recognition tasks possible on RISC and Pentium Pro class chips. One task that is possible today is limited-domain speech recognition - speech recognition that uses a small number of words with context-sensitive grammars. A context-sensitive grammar is a series of rules that define which words are valid at any given state in the program. These capabilities can replace the menu/dialog structure of a typical GUI program. In some cases, the grammar dictionary can provide hints to the recognition engine that can increase accuracy to 100%. The speech recognition problem of taking general dictation is not yet solved. An example of general dictation is speech input to a word processor. But many business problems can be solved with the limited capabilities that are available today. In the area of speech output, the situation is somewhat different. The problem has not been the lack of computing power. Rather, the problem has been the lack of appropriate algorithms to make pleasant sounding speech. If you have ever listened to the output of early computer generated speech for any length of time, you know it is somewhat hard to understand and quite tiring to listen to. It lacked the inflections, intonations, rhythms and punctuation that are expected of normal speech. New algorithms are correcting these deficiencies to the point where today's computer generated speech is very acceptable - although it is still distinguishable from a human's speech. IBM, Apple and Microsoft have all been quite active in this area. This Microsoft WWW site has quite a bit of information and good links if you want to know more about computer speech: http://www.microsoft.com/gamesdev/gaudio/gspeech1.htm DVD The next generation of Compact Disc (CD) is about to be released. It is called the DVD. The initials DVD would seem to stand for Digital Video Disc, but the companies that will sell it say that DVD does not stand for anything. Here is a quick summary of the characteristics of the DVD technology. . A DVD has the same thickness and diameter as a CD. . DVD drives and players can play both CD and DVD discs. . A single layer DVD disc holds 4.7GB before compression. . A dual layer DVD disc holds 8.5GB before compression. The initial prices of DVD players will be somewhat more than CD players, but as volume increases, the prices should come down to about the same level as for today's 8X CD drives. The prices of CDs and single layer DVD discs are expected to be about the same. Although not directly related to the computer industry, a standard format for video on DVD has been agreed upon. This format includes MPEG2 compression. Using this compression, over 2 hours of video plus 5 channels of audio can fit on a single layer DVD disc. This format will seriously challenge video tape in the next few years. For more information, visit the Sony DVD WWW site: http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/dvd/index.html ISDN ISDN is digital telephony. ISDN encompasses both switched calls and 24 hour per day fixed connection service (leased lines). ISDN technology has been very slow to emerge. Initial versions of ISDN were deployed in some locations over ten years ago. Unfortunately, many phone companies around the world did not install it quickly or priced it much higher than the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) that is available everywhere. Because of this, adoption by customers has been slow and many industry pundits have called ISDN a failure. But ISDN will succeed because there are no other options. The analog modem has hit its theoretical limit at about 30,000 bits per second. One B channel of an ISDN line runs at 64,000 bits per second. The standard ISDN service (known as Basic Rate Service) comes with two B channels. Several companies provide ISDN terminal adapters that combine these two channels to give effective throughput of 128,000 bits per second. Prices of these terminal adapters have come down to an affordable price of less than $300. Additionally, the price of ISDN service is now similar to POTS in most areas. The Motorola BitSURFR Pro ISDN Terminal Adapter is a good example of the hardware used to connect a computer to an ISDN line. You can find information about this product at: http://www.mot.com/MIMS/ISG/Products/ISDN_Products.html Ascend Communications is another company that is heavily involved in ISDN. Here is their WWW site: http://www.ascend.com These three technologies will have a large impact on the computer industry. Adopt them when they make sense for you. And don't let your competitors beat you to using them profitably. DB/C Class Schedule Class Date Location DB/C 9 Fundamentals Sep 30 through Oct 2, 1996 Oak Brook, IL DB/C 9 Advanced Features Oct 7 through Oct 9 1996 Oak Brook, IL For information, contact Judi Tamkevic at: voice 630.572.0240 fax 630.572.0390 email dbc@swc.com