The other afternoon, Jenni and I succumbed to the desire for Panera Bread for lunch. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, Panera Bread occupies a weird niche in the restaurant scene, high-quality fast food in a warm, inviting environment. Think the sitting area of Barns & Noble or Borders that serves artisan sandwiches, soups, and salads on, in, or with its own delectable breads.
The weirdly cool thing about Panera Bread, at least at the three locations I've been to, is how amazingly fast they are at preparing damn tasty food. You'd be hard pressed to get your drink and find a seat before your coaster pager goes off. That's pretty impressive considering how long it takes McDonald's to get me sub-standard sustenance.
After commenting to Jenni about their super-speediness, she pointed out that it's really not that surprising, given the little they really needed to do to serve sandwiches and soup. Admittedly, whereas a sandwich of elaborate complexity or even a panini still only requires minimal cooking time, just microwaving a Big Mac will take a while. "It's not like they're roasting a chicken back there," we joked (we had some friends over last week for homemade roast chicken).
This got me to thinking.
My phone recently received the upgrade to Froyo (Android 2.2) and as with many of the included apps, the Voice Search received a much needed upgrade. For example, I can now say "Send text to... John Smith... Hey can we change our meeting time to eleven [question mark] I'm running late [period]." The phone then asks me to confirm and then the text message is sent. The cool thing is that the voice recognition is good enough to understand most queries even if spoken in a casual tone (though I can do a pretty good robot impression to get it to understand the more obscure words).
This has me thinking of the possibilities of voice recognition software and, specifically, of the characters on Star Trek who could spontaneously say "Computer, what is our current trajectory?" or "Computer, how many dialects are there of Klingon and Romulan languages, respectively?" The computer would then respond quickly and accurately with an answer, in a crowded and noisy environment. This always seemed like, well, science fiction to me. But with recent phones like the Droid X and iPhone 4, I had an idea of how such technology could be possible.
The newest phones have 2-3 extra microphones just for noise-canceling purposes. Imagine if you had a dozen microphones in each room of a house ambiently listening, then you spoke a nonsense name which activates the query process. The computer then subtracts out the background noise, thanks to the other microphones, and performs the task or answers the question. If all the electronics in the house are connected through the voice recognition computer, then one could say such things as:
"[random name], turn on TV to channel 34 (or even just 'ESPN')." or
"[random name], play music by Frank Sinatra." or
"[random name], lower blinds in the living room." or
"[random name], lock the front door." or
"[random name], what is today's local weather?"
The future could be pretty cool.
The other afternoon, Jenni and I succumbed to the desire for Panera Bread for lunch. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, Panera Bread occupies a weird niche in the restaurant scene, high-quality fast food in a warm, inviting environment. Think the sitting area of Barns & Noble or Borders that serves artisan sandwiches, soups, and salads on, in, or with its own delectable breads.
The weirdly cool thing about Panera Bread, at least at the three locations I've been to, is how amazingly fast they are at preparing damn tasty food. You'd be hard pressed to get your drink and find a seat before your coaster pager goes off. That's pretty impressive considering how long it takes McDonald's to get me sub-standard sustenance.
