My wife bought a clock which sets itself to WWV for $10 at the 
supermarket.  Plug it in  and pick a time zone.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harvey Heagy" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2007 10:47 PM
Subject: Fw: Sensory Announces New Time-Setting Technology


: Sensory Announces New Time-Setting Technology
:
: By Lauren Shopp
:
: Walking into Grandma's house and seeing the VCR blinking 12:00 could 
soon be
: a thing of the past. With a new update to its FluentChip firmware, 
Sensory
: is making it possible for granny to set the clock on her VCR with her 
voice.
:
: FluentChip v3.1, which Sensory released yesterday, includes TimeSet, a
: technology that allows any RSC-4x enabled device with a clock to have 
its
: time set using natural spoken phrases, eliminating the confusing 
manner in
: which digital clocks are programmed.
:
: The chip will be embedded into consumer products such as alarm clocks,
: microwave ovens, VCRs, DVR recorders, and thermostats. It doesn't 
require
: any user or device training, or an unusual sequence of spoken commands 
or
: discrete input of digits. It is activated by pushing a push-to-talk 
button
: on the device.
:
: Todd Mozer, president and CEO of Sensory, believes the chip's ease of 
use
: will entice consumers. "Historically, you hit the timeset and the 
clock
: says, 'Please say the hour,' 'Please say the minutes', 'Please say 
a.m. or
: p.m.'," he states. "That's cumbersome and takes a lot of steps." 
Products
: embedded with the new FluentChip give users the ability to say just,
: 'Seven-thirty a.m.' to set an alarm clock or program a recording time 
for
: their television.
:
: Mozer says a Hong Kong company, Cyber Workshops, is currently 
developing a
: platform around FluentChip: a clock with other time-related 
capabilities.
: Electronics with the technology could be available as early as next 
year.
:
: "There's a really high demand for it; people wanted it for a long 
time,"
: Mozer states. "We just didn't have the accuracy on our chips to do it. 
The
: issue is we can do it on software on a PC but doing it on a little 
eight-bit
: processor with limited memory is difficult."
:
: Though the chip acts as an alternative to a recording device's visual
: interface, Sensory says FluentChip is in no way trying to compete with 
that
: interface. "[FluentChip] is very complimentary," Mozer says.
:
: 
http://www.speechtechmag.com/Articles/News~News-Feature~Sensory-Announces-new-Time-Setting-Technology-40433.aspx
: