I am fascinated with voice/sound technology. I think further development of these technologies will revolutionize computing and make devices simpler to use. My hero, Steve Wozniak (in my opinion the real man behind Apple – without him they would have had nothing to sell), praised Siri and how convenient it is. I've used Siri a little bit – and I need to ask it more questions to get more familiar with its capabilities – and although there is work to be done, it's highly convenient. For some basic search and command tasks – she's invaluable.  

There are some reasons why voice and sound technology hasn't taken off as much as it could have. Part of it I think is the technology is very new and needs more work; part of it is that we aren't used to speaking commands to a device; part of it is that voice commands and technology isn't very private in a public setting (we value the privacy of our thoughts and speaking makes them public). But I won't go into all of this today – I'll save that for later. 

However, there are some companies working on this – and they may get this to take off.

SlickLogin from Israel (now acquired by Google) allows you to login to a computer through sound technology. You tap a login button on your computer or browser, put your phone next to your computer and you are in. The devices emit a high-frequency sound that the other device can pick up and validate. Humans can't actively hear the sound. Sure there are some challenges – you could be using someone else's phone. According to TechCrunch, "The service was built to be used either as a password replacement, or as a secondary, Two-Factor authentication layer on top of a traditional password."

Talk about simplifying login! We could do away with those crazy personal questions and maddening processes that are just not user friendly. 

This may pave the way for user-friendly voice passwords. Voice is so difficult because of the inflections and consistency – it requires incredible time to process. However, if a team can find an algorithm to find commonality when someone says a word if he is hurried, bothered, upset, happy, whatever – that would more than simplify the login and security process for all devices and applications. And what if there wasn't a word necessary for the password – just a tone. Wow! Imagine the simplicity. You don't have to worry about forgetting a code or recovering it. It would just be easy. 

And it may open the door for sound technology to evolve for other uses.

Exciting things are coming, I think. What is your view about these technologies? (Security experts – it would be great to hear from you)