CELL PHONES NAME THAT TUNE
Technology is a wonderful thing and I can't imagine what our world would be like without it. But sometimes there exists a place where technology takes us that's right out of the Twilight Zone. And I experienced just such a place today.
Most all of us know about many of the helpful add-on services now available via cell phones that can tell you everything you want to know about where to find the best restaurant, the closest ATM, what's playing at the local theatre, driving directions, the list goes on and on. Some of these services began by using a live operator who gave you the information. Newer methods used touch tones to get you the desired data. As it was deemed to be hazardous trying to find the correct buttons on your cell phone while driving, mercifully most of these services now use some form of voice recognition. Just speak into your phone and the technology to varying degrees of accuracy will try to interpret what you are saying and play back what you want to hear.
Voice recognition has certainly come a long way. Speaker-independent recognition systems that don't require any recognition training are pretty accurate when it comes to single-word spoken commands. Still, computers that can accurately interpret and perform on conversational speech have some way to go. And while great strides are being made, the technology that can duplicate the brain's cognitive process in fluently understanding a spoken language still continues to elude us.
That said and having a basic understanding about speech recognition limitations and the giant hurdles that still need to be cleared was the main reason I was completely blown away by a demonstration of AT&T Wireless' latest cell phone information service. Remember the game show "Name That Tune?" Contestants vied against each other as they struggled to identify a piece of music on a note-for-note basis. The one who could guess the name of an unidentified song with the least number of notes being played would win. Even for someone musically inclined, it was a challenge. But in many ways, it's sort of like those single-word spoken commands with which computer voice recognition works so well. One note equals one word. But while playing all those notes together in a continuous manner to recognize a song would be easier for the brain, it presents many of the same challenges as does conversational speech. One might think that musical compositions that consist of many instruments playing together might be even more daunting for a computer to identify. Evidently, that's not the case. Because AT&T Wireless has just launched the industry's first music recognition service here in the U.S.
The music recognition service allows customers to identify songs simply by placing their phones near a music speaker. The idea is that if you hear a song and you'd like to know the name of the song and the artist who is performing it, just dial #ID (Pound 43). A voice welcomes you and then asks you to place your cell phone near the speaker through which you are hearing the song for about 15 seconds. I'm not kidding. When I tried it, the voice continued to explain that after the 15 seconds, I would receive a text message on my cell phone that would identify the artist and song title. Skeptically I proceeded to play a Dire Straits song entitled "Money For Nothing" into my cell phone. I have to admit I felt pretty foolish doing it all the time expecting some kind of "April Fools" gag announcement or something similar to occur. Still, I sat there holding my cell phone up to my computer's speakers as my iTunes selection began to play. In fact, I didn't even play the song from the beginning but rather from somewhere in the middle of the song. What happened next was really spooky, probably in part due to the fact I was expecting some kind of joke reply.
All of a sudden, my phone let out its text messaging signal. There displayed clearly on its screen was the following: "MusicID You just heard‹Money For Nothing‹by‹Dire Straits" along with the time and date. It was awesome. I still couldn't believe it. But there it was glowing on my cell phone's screen. Let me say that again. I had just played a song into my cell phone and not 10 seconds later was the song's name and the group who played it displayed on my cell phone's screen. Amazing.
Needless to say, if your cell phone uses the AT&T Wireless service, you have got to try this. The first time is free. After that, the service costs $.99 cents, plus standard airtime charges, each time you use it. By the way, if the service fails to identify your song on the first free time, the next time is free as well.
So how practical is AT&T Wireless' Music ID service? Depends on how many times you've experienced the frustration of hearing a tune that you think you know but can't remember the title, or just need to know the name of a song you're hearing on the radio. Aside from the fact that I think this is an amazing piece of personal technology and that everyone should give it a try just for the gee whiz factor, I believe it more importantly is a demonstration of some of the remarkable new technologies that are waiting for us just around the corner. |
