Fun_People Archive
17 Aug
donate your voice to Science

Date: Wed, 17 Aug 94 20:18:10 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: donate your voice to Science

From: arnold@wildfire.com (Ken Arnold)

Well, not science, but anyway ...

We (my startup company, Wildfire Communications) are doing a
telephone-based voice recognition product to handle communications.  If
I told you more before the patent is filed I'd have to shoot you just
before they shot me.  You can probably figure out what it is, though.

This is because you can call our data collection line.  We need lots of
trainings of people saying the words we use in our menus.  We
especially need women to call, since most of our contacts (just look at
the names on this list for example) are men.  But all callers without
heavy non-U.S. accents are useful.

If you call in you get your choice of remunerations; either an entry
into a raffle for a Newton Message Pad (toy factor is high --
usefulness factor is a matter of opinion) or ten minutes of free long
distance in the continental US (which, for some reason excludes
Alaska).  To help us out, call 1-800-430-WILD.  Tell it you don't have
a word list.  To enter for the Newton, enter code 8036.  To get your
$10.00 of phone calls, enter code 7036.

And, no, second prize is *not* two Newtons.  Thanks for asking ...

It will ask you to repeat words, for at most ten minutes each time you
call.  Calling from different kinds of phones is helpful (cellular,
wireless, home, digital, ...).

In any case, it'll help us to get this off the ground.  Please feel
free to redistributed this to anyone.  It takes no computer literacy to
handle it, so even parental units who are afraid to use an ATM can call
and get their free calling time.

© 1994 Peter Langston