Curtains, drapes, blinds, hangings, shades, valances, jalousies - call them what you will, but consumers see them as a key application for voice recognition technology, according to the latest survey to emerge out the silly season.

Yes, some 44 per cent of web users surveyed on behalf of Intervoice, a developer of voice control technologies, want to use such systems to control their curtains.

So says a release the company put out yesterday. The survey's key finding is that 49 per cent of respondents want to browse the web using voice control, but it's sunny, hot and frankly the curtains statistic impressed us more.

Right behind drawing the curtains, respondents said they most wanted to use voice control for security applications (43 per cent) and to tell their car to turn the aircon on (33 per cent).

"Voice is the most natural medium in the world," says Simon Edwards of Intervoice, sensibly. Then spoils it all by announcing to the world, that the survey's respondents think that teleporting, water-fuelled cars, household robots and talking computers will be common in the next 20 years. ®