I had an idea the last time the UK MSPs (Microsoft Student Partners) had a Lync meeting; Lync is a new product from Microsoft that unifies communications within an office environment allowing people to connect with each other via IM, VoiP, video calling, telephone calling all at the same time. What’s really good with this is that its available via a Lync client on Windows or through any browser. Microsoft are said to be planning on bringing a Lync client to Windows Phone 7 and also Kinect.

The idea I had for Lync was to use the speech technologies within Kinect to automatically transcribe what is being said. Quite often its not too bad if people can only listen into a Lync meeting but I have seen a problem arise when people can only access the IM part of Lync, they miss out on much of the conversation.

Kinect and Windows Phone 7 have both shown that Microsoft has some impressive speech recognition software, Tellme, and I think it would be great if this was brought to Lync too. It would be great if what anyone said was automatically transcribed and shown in the IM. This feature could also allow people to download a transcript of the entire Lync call, this could allow people to also catch up on what had been said previously in the conversation if they join the call late.

I am intrigued by what Microsoft plans for the Lync client for Kinect and the Xbox so that people can call in from their homes but I think the whole service could benefit from the Tellme technology used in Kinect (I actually think most Microsoft products can benefit from technology within Kinect but that’s for a different article).

Do you have any other ideas for