Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Enterprise, Software, Apple
MIT uses Macs to learn how children gain speech skills

Not only are they assured to get his first few steps on tape, but they're also studying early development and how young children gain the skills to interact with other human beings. In order to do this, they're dealing with huge amounts of audio and video data -- about 250TB. And they're also building an analysis application on the platform called TotalRecall to scan through all the audio and video and pick out interesting parts and patterns (creating the kind of image seen above -- apparently that means something to them).
Of course, there is one thing they do that Apple can't -- when the time came to figure out how to transfer 200GB a day from the home environment to work, they eventually settled on a "sneakernet" approach, packing up the digital tapes in a case and carrying them to work. Here's hoping Apple will announce their own proprietary version of iSneakernet at the next WWDC (with a stylish design and a reasonable pricetag, of course).

![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tyler said 6:55PM on 5-02-2008
This is old news. It's sad how few stories TUAW actually has that are new or not referring to Engadget.
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Fritz Laurel said 7:03PM on 5-02-2008
I was wondering what RuPaul has been up to these days...
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Quikboy said 1:04AM on 5-03-2008
So? Many institutions use PC's to teach children speech skills. In the end, they're still all computers.
I wonder where the unofficial MS blog is on Weblogs.
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TheGeek said 1:33AM on 5-03-2008
Ah good old sneakernet. Often the quickest way to get ungodly amounts of data across town.
@Quickboy
I think you missed the point. They aren't using the computers to teach children speech skills. They are using the Apples to study HOW speech is learned.
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Vince said 1:52PM on 5-04-2008
All non Apple fanbois:
LEAVE.
Sweet story by the way.
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