TalkingDesktop seems to be one of those programs that was conceived to help people improve productivity but somewhere along the way devolved into something else. TalkingDesktop attempts to be something more than just voice recognition software. It seems to aim at being your replacement desktop. It pulls in information about news and weather and your favorite websites into one location, which sounds incredibly handy. And it would be if it were just a little bit more versatile.
TalkingDesktop looks great when shown as a demonstration, but when you try to use it on a regular basis as a command and dictation voice recognition platform, it quickly becomes inadequate. It’s controls are limited and its reaction slow.
The TalkingDesktop interface consists of a large ring with various commands spread around it. There are plenty of useful options for pulling in news and weather and updates from the internet. This would be useful almost as a sort of RSS feed at least, but it takes so long to pull information into your computer that I could easily open a weather site and a news site in the time TalkingDesktop takes to do it.
TalkingDesktop also includes an avatar that speaks to you and actually does a pretty nice job of responding appropriately to commands and greetings. The avatar will even check to see if you’re still there after prolonged silence, and if you are away for a while and the computer hears your approach, TalkingDesktop will wake up the system for you so it’s ready to go when you sit down.
However, the avatar is still as slow to respond and as apt to misunderstand commands as the rest of the system is, so having a CG lady to respond to your commands isn’t much of a benefit.
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