Cyber Chatter; Samar Halarnkar


	July 24, 2000

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CYBERCHATTER
A voice for the Net

By Samar Halarnkar

India Today issue dated July 24, 2000 Has the Internet made your life easier? My parents don't think so. Their problem does not have so much to do with learning about cyberspace -- a simple three-month course is taking care of that. Their problem is more fundamental: try as they might, they just can't get used to typing, using a keyboard, or a mouse. My father never had to use a typewriter in his lifetime as a policeman. In the time he didn't spend deploying riot units, he used a steno. My mother, a physiotherapist, always used a pen, preferably a Parker. And so in this age of silicon and light, using a keyboard is ironically an archaic skill which prevents them from trawling the vastness of cyberspace. There are many people, not just from previous generations but also those with disabilities, to whom the keyboard and the mouse are enemies. I have problems too. I can't type or click for very long because my carpal bones complain from too much time at the keyboard. A colleague's hand is often swathed because of strained carpals.

Dotcom to Dotsex?

Exasperated that every URL, including your own name, has been taken? Not surprising, because more than 10 million addresses are gone, as budding Netpreneurs often find. Help may be on the way. The group that oversees the Internet addressing system is getting ready to add several Net suffixes to reduce the burden on .com, .net and .org. New suffixes -- like .biz, .kids, even .sex -- will set off an explosion in the number of potential addresses, websites and e-mail addresses. The controlling group, called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number, was meeting in Yokohama, Japan, as this column went to print. It might approve a proposal to introduce between two and 10 suffixes that will become operational from December. The major downside: more cybersquatters.

Will the way ahead be littered then with white bandages and alienation? Hopefully not. The Net has started talking -- and listening -- to us. I see the future in a smattering of voice-enabled websites. When my carpals scream, I stop work, borrow a microphone and try talking instead of typing. There are just a few such sites, and frankly, they stutter along today. The technology is shaky, but quite clearly, it will spread, especially as the Web goes wireless and is freed from the shackles of the pc. After all, you already have voice-enabled cell phones. But the sites I checked out use a smart, new voice-recognition technology that did not need accent training, unlike my Samsung cell phone where I need to painfully retrain its Korean chips to recognise an Indian accent. I'm now used to strange looks from people who watch me repeating "Home" into my phone with growing fury.

At a web site called www.conversations.com, I've successfully played Votris, a voice version of Tetris, and a game of knots and crosses at the same site, suffering its moronic taunts when I lost. This is just the start. Soon you will be able to routinely close and open web pages simply by saying so. Punching keys or clicking a mouse will become a relic of a past age. As more devices begin to understand your voice, accent and intonation, you will navigate the Web by talking to it. For now, the voice web is still primitive. When I tried playing a game of battleships, the site's scrambled electrons simply refused to understand me. "Alpha four, fire!" I said. "No target specified," droned the robot. "Alpha four, fire!" I shouted, my carpals tensing anyway. "I don't know what to fire at!" it pleaded. I gave up. "Close conversations," I sighed. That, it understood. "Goodbye, game over," came the prompt, distinctly cheery response. I suspect its makers embedded it with a tad too much intelligence.

Download Suggestion

There are navigators and then there's Netscape. I am an Internet Explorer user myself but that has more to do with the fact that it is resident on my pc. I was simply more loyal to Netscape, but the truth is there isn't too much to choose from between the two. Now Netscape has upped the ante in the browser wars by offering their latest version: Netscape 6. It integrates browsing, e-mail and instant messaging: you can see all your e-mail accounts in a single view. At 5.5 MB, it is more compact than its predecessor. And it's free.
www.netscape.com/download/index.html

Samar Halarnkar is general manager (content services) of India Today Group Online. He can be reached at samarh@india-today.com

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