and I'm at my MacPro and open the system preferences to check into something. I wanted to use my headset [which I have never, yet, used but plan to in 2010] to Skype with my daughter. Curious, I saw the Speech preference and decided to check into it a bit.
There is a Speech Recognition and a Text to Speech option; for the former you can have Speakable Items and have the computer follow your commands. I'd never done that, so got the headset on, did a brief calibration so it could recognize my speech, and tried it.
I could [and did] ask 'What Time is it?" and it spoke back to me and in writing in the 'chat' box, "5:50 pm". Then I said "get my mail" and it opened up my email programs, but I'm not sure whether it really got anything, but just that amazed me. Same thing with the "What day is it?" command.
There's also a speech command for "Tell me a joke". I did and got a knock knock joke [shades of halloween] and did it again and got another one. The computer speaks the response and types it into the chat area.
There are of course more useful commands, but this did amaze me.
