speech

At $189.99, Proloquo2Go is far from the cheapest App Store offering. Believe it or not, though, that price is actually a bargain--one a certain market is seriously happy to pay.

The target market? Parents of kids with special needs--specifically those with autism, apraxia, and other disabilities that affect their communication. Many of these kids can't speak, or can't speak as fluently as their peers, but they understand what's going on around them, and they do have things they'd like to say.

Augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC, devices can supplement existing speech or replace speech that is not functional to improve social interaction, school performance, and--not for nothing--to give the kids a better sense of self-worth. Electronic AAC aids use picture symbols, letters, and/or words and phrases to create messages. Equipped with an AAC device, a child with cerebral palsy whose speech is limited suddenly has a way to tell you, "I want to go to Grandma's house this weekend!" or "I ate cake!"

Proloque2Go is just one of a growing number of AAC apps quickly gaining ground in the special-needs community. The reason is hardly surprising: before these apps came along, AAC devices could cost upward of $10,000--a cost many insurance companies would not cover. And for that hefty price, you got a heavy, clunky device that screamed, "I am different!" You would have looked cooler lugging an actual Commodore 64 around--though, at least then, you could have rocked the whole retro-chic look.

Kids aren't the only ones benefiting from these apps, of course--stroke and accident victims, as well as adults with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease) and other progressive degenerative diseases are also tapping into this growing market. … Read more

In the battle between iPhone and Android, one of several things Android users can hang over the heads of their iPhone-toting brethren is the built-in talk-to-text capability. Luckily, owners of the Apple device can easily retort, "Well, there's an app for that!" In fact, there are several dictation programs available. Better yet, the two I've outlined below are free (for the most part).

Dragon Dictation: This completely free app--which is compatible with any iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running OS 3.1 or later--is simpler in function than the other offering here. However, a new version … Read more

Say you're into yoga, but you have neither the time nor the money to make it to actual yoga sessions regularly. Or you're a cyclist who'd like motivation beyond music in your ears. Or you're trying to do weight training without having to glance at the text on your phone every minute to see what's next.

You might consider MynaTime, the personal workout assistant software announced Monday that gives users the ability to type in specific workouts.

The application--now available on Amazon.com for $24.95 for those with Mac OS X versions 10.5 (… Read more

A recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives seemed straightforward enough: government computers must block viewing or downloading porn.

After all, a series of news reports have highlighted, in scandalous detail, how some financial regulators earning six-figure salaries were watching porn at work as Wall Street imploded. So, as it turns out, did employees of the National Science Foundation and the Interior Department--including ones who were supposed to be inspecting oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

But the exact wording of the legislation (PDF) that the House approved last week by a 239-to-182 vote could, civil libertarians … Read more

commentary The idea of opening up U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments to cameras received a welcome endorsement this week from Elena Kagan, who has been nominated to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

"It would be a terrific thing to have cameras in the courtroom," Kagan told a U.S. Senate committee during the second day of her confirmation hearing.

It's about time. There's no good reason why, in an era when video from everything from law enforcement's adventures in Tasering to celebrity criminal trials finds its way to YouTube, the Supreme Court should … Read more

Bangladesh has joined Pakistan in blocking access to Facebook, citing a page on the social-networking site that called on people to draw images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, the Associated Press reported.

Bangladesh's chief telecommunications regulator, Zia Ahmed, told the news agency that the government had asked local Internet service providers to temporarily block Facebook pending removal of a page publicizing "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

The page was created after the producers of animated TV series "South Park" said that the Comedy Central network had censored an episode of the show that satirized religious prohibition … Read more

I'm just sooo happy to be sitting here reading through an eight-page PDF on algorithms. Seriously. Nothing in this world makes me happier than poring over phrases like "detailed results of the 5-fold cross validation of various components of the algorithm are summarized in Table 2."

If a new sarcasm-detecting algorithm out of Jerusalem's Hebrew University really knows what it's doing, it should be able to tell that I was just kidding there. Yeah, right. No, actually I was.

After an exhaustive look at word, syntax, and punctuation patterns in written user-generated content, the researchers came up with SASI (PDF), or Semi-supervised Algorithm for Sarcasm Identification, which can recognize sarcasm in online sentences and assign each sentence to a sarcastic class (not all sarcasm is created equal, of course). Meager attempts at sarcasm aside, this is a pretty novel idea that could possibly aid those pure souls who lack a sarcasm and irony meter--and could even have commercial applications.

One idea here is that automated sarcasm recognition could help improve review summarization and opinion-mining systems, since the inherently subtle and ambiguous nature of sarcasm sometimes makes it hard even for humans to decide whether a comment is sarcastic. According to the researchers--Oren Tsur, Dmitry Davidov, and Ari Rappoport--studies of user preferences suggest some consumers find sarcastic reviews biased and less helpful.

The Hebrew University team--which will present its findings next week at the International Conference for Weblogs and Social Media in Washington, D.C.--closely examined some 66,000 Amazon reviews for 120 products including books, music players, digital cameras, camcorders, GPS devices, e-readers, game consoles, and mobile phones.

Identifying cues common to sarcasm in online communication (excessive use of capital letters as in: "Well you know what happened. ALMOST NOTHING HAPPENED!!!"; puns; and explicit contradictions), the researchers created a complex algorithm in which a small number of sarcastic sentences "teach" the software to recognize sarcasm. They say the software precisely identifies sarcastic sentences 77 percent of the time--no small feat given the elusive nature of sarcasm, its intractable relationship to cultural context, and differences between the spoken and written varieties. … Read more

Natali Del Conte joins us in the studio to discuss really important issues such as boobquake day, cartoons, and violent video games. Oh, come on, we also discuss Google's failed attempts to reinvent the mobile phone sales paradigm, unfounded causal links between violent video games and sociopathic behavior, and the dangers of colonization. Good show, guys.

Google Nexus One Gone From Verizon Lineup http://jkontherun.com/2010/04/26/no-nexus-one-on-verizo/ http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-26/verizon-says-it-has-no-current-plans-to-distribute-google-nexus-one-phone.html http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20003397-251.html… Read more

A Web site promoting graphic videos of pit bulls fighting in Japan and hunting wild boar is shielded by the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

In a strongly worded 8-1 opinion, the court tossed out the criminal conviction of Robert Stevens, a documentary filmmaker in rural Virginia who sold books, videos, and equipment related to raising pit bulls through the now-defunct Pitbulllife.com site.

A 1999 federal law that Stevens was prosecuted under is "substantially overbroad, and therefore invalid under the First Amendment," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote … Read more