Hey, Benny!

My barber, er hair stylist, Blanca has for 20 years called me Benny. She proudly displays a copy of my book at the entrance to her store, and must see the word Vinnie on it countless times a day, but I will forever be Benny! Bless her heart and her skills, which my son is now getting used to - albeit he goes 3X less often, though should go 3X as often as I do.

Over the last few months, someone else has been calling me Benny. It is Vonage transcribing my office Voicemail messages.  Mostly, it is Benny, but it has also been Penny, Britney, Danny, Betty and others.

In all the excitement around IBM’s Watson and predictions of much more evolved natural interfaces I am just glad  I don't have to worry about what the results would be in Cyrillic which has two “ soundless ”characters or Devanagari where if a vowel follows a consonant, the two characters are merged into one!