Most Annoying Invention
 

...for me is the voice recognition techonology companies are using on their helplines (ahem phone compnay/revenue I'm looking at you). Does anyone else feel like a total fool shouting 'Sale' 'No' and your PPS number?
And the phone company man finds me hard to understand. Who's idea was this - it's no easier than pushing the buttons and seems much more prone to fault?

Had to rant - I've spent the last few weeks being tortured by a well-spoken machine.

Word is IE have a fancy voice recognitiion system for timetable information, never tried it

Yes, I can't stand these things. They don't seem to offer any more options than the push button variety, so I don't see the point.

When the technology evolves to the point that I can make ad hoc queries in plain English, we'll be getting somewhere. I don,t think we're all that far away.

Ah i remember testing it when it came out and nearly lost my voice it came to a stage I was screaming down the phone without ever getting any success they never understood me! :(

I've tried it once, it works fine unless you decide to speak Irish for fun.