Carol's Team Newsletter

It's been a very busy month getting Carol's Team off the ground. The size of the task ahead is starting to sink in, but this is being offset by the very positive feedback we've been getting from our supporters.

Sponsorship

We've already received some individual sponsorship support. See our sponsors page for a list of our charter sponsors. Our equipment sponsors from our previous teams, Alpine Shop (Gateway Adventure) and Big Shark Bicycles (Big Shark Racing) have both agreed to support our new team. Acumen Consulting is donating the web hosting for this site as well as some administrative support.

Just as encouraging as the financial support are the letters we've been getting. We particularly appreciate the stories about Carol. We've posted them on her page. Keep 'em coming.

Development

We've started work on the "proof of concept" for Carol's Song. The next couple months are pretty busy, so we probably won't have something together until May. When we do, we'll post it on the web site so you can play with it. In the mean time, we're putting together a project plan and setting some budget expectations.

A few eager beavers have already signed up to help with testing and tuning. While that's obviously still a ways off (we have to write the thing first), we really appreciate it. The larger the user base for testing, the more accurate the initial language distributions will be. Please don't feel neglected if you sign up and don't get anything to do for a while - we will use you!

We've also been in contact with some vendors about how what we're doing might fit with their products. It's important to note that we are trying to fill a very narrow gap with this effort. People who are very good at what they do are working hard on input devices and better speech synthesizers. We do not wish to duplicate their efforts. There are also some decent predictive algorithms out there for static commands. We are trying to add the creative element to all this - the ability to communicate in your own words using the least amount of input possible.

It is because this niche is so small that nobody has put out the effort to address it. There is simply no profit motive. Rather than compete with products already on the market, we wish to supplement them. We'd like to see this sort of functionality available in many products from different vendors. The only way to do that is to develop it using non-profit funding and then make it available to everybody.

Racing

It's early, but we're off to a great start: 1-0! David and Eric teamed up to win the Chicago Snowgaine, a 6-hour orienteering event. In March, we'll have the Kansas City 9-hour and then a very busy month of April.