This New York Times article (I’m sorry but it requires registration) is an interesting evaluation of voice activated home appliances and gizmos. One of the key points is just how fiddly it may become when/if we all start talking to our home equipment, the author cites a problem where the voice activated television started reacting to a particular newscaster’s voice and raising the volume autonomously. Kind of spooky really. Anyway worth a read.

Also mentioned in the article is the HAL2000 voice activated home automation system (which looks like a real gas)

and the equally funky E-Digital MXP 100, which is a $299.00 MP3 player which lets you select tracks via voice activation – ‘play Britney Spears’…you get the picture. Apparently this VoiceNav system works really well and is speaker independent.