Todd demonstrates the SCIDs concept in this video:

Note that the embedded title for this YouTube video is “Truly Hands Free Trigger.wmv”. That’s because Sensory is now shipping Speech Trigger SDKs (software development kits) for mobile devices running either Apple’s iOS4 or the Android operating system. Vlingo, for one, has taken full advantage of the SDK and introduced a hands-free services called Vlingo InCar. As illustrated in the video below, the “trigger” occurs when a driver says “Hey Vlingo”. Then, in response to the prompt “What’s shakin’?” drivers can here the contents of a text message, reply, originate other messages and search for a local business to get spoken directions.

The service is optimized for the Android 2.2 operating system (“Foyo”) and uses Bluetooth for connectivity. Users of the existing Vlingo app, can also originate tweets, update status on Facebook, open and control 3rd party applications and the other activities that Vlingo supports. After a two week “beta” when the service was available only to Spring subscribers, Vlingo expanded to “all Android users” on October 19.

For those of you keeping track at home, the announcement of Vlingo InCar and the release of the “Trigger SDK” was almost simultaneous with the launch of StartTalking from
a Boston-based technology venture called AdelaVoice. As you can see in the video below, AdelaVoice laid claim to being the first and only mobile application that provides a hands-free, eyes-on-the-road way to send and receive text messages. It is a well-understood problem and one that is attracting significant investment dollars, as carriers and application providers work to support safe spoken input of text.

StartTalking Overview

Todd Mozer tells me that the same firmware that supports “trigger words” is being used in high-end, Bluetooth based earpieces from Plantronics to support a hands-free “answer or ignore” function for treating incoming calls. The phone can grab Caller ID information, render it as speech and then prompt the driver to react with “You can say ‘answer’ or ‘ignore’.” It’s brilliantly simple, and much safer than looking around and reaching down to find the phone. In both cases, the objective of the firmware is to provide the most pleasant and efficient user experience possible.

This being a demo, your own experience may be different. As head engineer for the Voice Actions project at Google, Mike LeBeau is quite adept at using the services in ways that are designed to impress and amaze. But, this is not like Google Wave, where some of the most creative minds in collaborative computing and messaging invented and launched a platform to show the virtues of sharing on-screen information in real time with little attention to the actual user experience. This is a combination (I’d say “recombination”) of Google’s formidable speech recognition and dictation capabilities with Google Maps and various flavors of Google Search which, unlike Wave, takes a major focus on the user experience, especially for mobile phones.

The set of services has been seen as a direct competitive foray against the native, speech-enabled features on Apple’s iPhone (including the services that may spring from Apple’s acquisition of Siri), as well as the myriad of multi-platform applications from Nuance (Dragon), Vlingo, Promptu and even AT&T. Perhaps more ominously, Google seems to be making the statement that it plans to compete with a crop of fledgling speech-enabled service providers, like PhoneTell, a company that developed some nifty mashups of voice search and call handling on Android phones, in part because there has been less friction involved in invoking and gaining access to the speech processing and call processing features in the Andoid SDK.

It can be argued that the Colossus of Redmond beat Google to the punch a couple of weeks ago at SpeechTEK when Zig Serafin, general manager of the Speech Group at Microsoft, showcased a set of speech-enabled features for the Windows Phone 7 operating system. But Microsoft’s marketing efforts will be hampered by two major issues. One is the overall lack of traction around Windows Phone 7, which is one of several candidates for third place behind iPhone and Android in race for smarphone marketshare (with the largely non-voice-aware Blackberry is the same boat).

The other major impediment is Microsoft’s mixed message surrounding the “Natural User Interface.” Its attempt to leapfrog the pack involves adding “gestures,” exemplified by the full-body involvement of game-players using a feature called Kinect on the xBox. It seems like a leap of faith to think that gestures will make a difference with small screens and mobile devices. Seems like Apple’s multitouch and Nuance’s predictive texting or services like Swype for input make a lot more sense.

As for Nuance, like Promptu and Vlingo, it has offered voice input for Android for several years now. As noted above, its differentiator is destined to be accuracy (which is the clay feet of all applications in the real world where background noise and microphone quality have greater impact than core recognition software), ease-of-use, and an existing installed of happy users. From my perspective, Nuance’s potential trump card in this game (as noted above) is support of multiple modalities through applying several of the principles that support predictive texting across multiple means of input. We also believe that Nuance has something of a “most favored voice technology provider” for both Apple and Siri which could be an important factor in the battle for primacy among the top-tier smartphone providers (Apple versus a broad range of Android manufacturers).

When we look back on the summer of 2010, the launch of Voice Actions for Android will be seen as a signal event. It goes a long way toward re-establishing the spoken word as the natural input for a phone (duh!). That’s the benign part. On the darker side, Google once again shows that it is not neutral when it comes to claiming pre-emptive market share where it sees potential for growth. The result will be accelerated innovation in the name of competition.

Game on!

Because it serves as a virtual desktop, it brings Cisco’s Quad, as well as Show and Share into the mix. Quad is a highly flexible user interface that serves as a repository for all the widgets, gadgets, applets or feeds that can be packed into a personal portal. Cisco Show and Share is positioned as a “social video community” platform which, as the name implies, provides a mechanism for employees to share videos to support the projects that they are working on with a broader team.

Cisco calls Cius an “enterprise tablet”, which differentiates it from the Apple iPad (while taking advantage of many of the technical attributes that are iPad-like). For instance, the ability to access an enterprise’s secure VPN (virtual private network) is baked in at the factory. Many of the features support quick and seamless transitions from the Cius’s “virtual desktop” to an employees physical desktop in support of mobile employees.

From a competitive standpoint, it is a nice, pre-emptive strike by Cisco against not just Apple, but any incursions by makers of Windows boxes, like Dell or Lenovo, but especially HP. Cisco is also making a bold appeal to the Android developer community by inviting them into the Cisco Developer Network (CDN).

CDN may not rival the iTunes AppStore, but building apps that conform to API’s that can be dropped into Quad and displayed on the Cius out in the wild should be a provocative challenge to Web app developers around the world.

Addendum: Cisco told the trade press that the device will be generally available in “early 2011″. It will be equipped with both front-facing and rear-facing cameras. It will connect with peripherals wirelessly through Bluetooth (in addition to WiFi) and physically through USB ports. Finally, the targeted street price is “less than $1,000.

Greg Sterling has an interesting angle on the competitive impact Cius may have on Rim’s plans to introduce a tablet here.

The optimist in me wants all of the piece parts to work together seamlessly. The reality is bound to be quite different. As was demonstrated by interference in the conference venue, things are bound to go wrong (as the display of Nicolas Cage “animal sex diet” during the demo dramatized). But that did not blind the developer community (or indeed the CEO’s from Intel, Best Buy, Sony, Adobe and DishTV) of the transformative potential of adding “seamless” and simultaneous search to accompany the five hours of TV watching that people are ordinarily doing.

From the RC (Recombinant Communications) perspective, Google claims that development of new applications will benefit from its “open” approach. As described on the Google Developers Blog, the software, OS guts and APIs are the household names of open computing: Android, Chrome and Ajax. The application development toolkits are not fully developed, but they start with the SDKs for Chrome and Android.

From a competitive point of view, Google is treading where Apple (with AppleTV) and Cisco (with its “ownage” of ScientificAtlanta and LinkSys for couchside products), along with Motorola, Philips, Tatung and the mainstream set-top box makers have already done their best to fragment the market. What Google brings to the game as differentiaters is the power of its advertising-based business model along with its experience (and existing functionality) in real-time search/social search, voice search and speech-to-text transcription/translation.

Each of these elements has the potential to spark the imagination of users, as well as the development community. But they are also fraught with risk. Speech-to-text transcription (much less translation) has already created fodder for all sorts of ridicule. Quality is bound to improve over time, but neither transcription nor translation will ever be perfect and much of the early energy should be dedicated to managing expectations.

Lassa asserts that the GM/Google relationship would place emphasis on a better phone-to-car interface, as opposed to the voice control and voice user interface that Microsoft’s Speech Application Group has played up. Thus GM’s approach will enable drivers to use their phones to do such things as start or turn off their cars, lock and unlock doors, and make other adjustments. It was not spelled out explicitly in the article, but given Google’s efforts to invoke automated speech recognition whenever a keyboard comes into play on a mobile device, it is highly likely that all of these functions can be voice controlled – making starting your car another “speechable moment”.

As for the supposition that Android in the car spells the end of OnStar, that is highly unlikely. Lassa notes that turn-by-turn directions through OnStar would become unnecessary because Android phones using Google Maps and a special mount have been successfully deployed for in-car navigation. But OnStar has been sold more as a safety feature and remote diagnostic service. The Android operating system in the car is more likely to augment, rather than compete with OnStar.

The prospects for more automobile-based Android apps is provocative. The car is destined to be the most fertile spawning ground for speech-based apps and the prospects for Android-oriented developers to define a range of “hands-on-the-wheel/eyes-facing-forward” capabilities and activities is very promising. Meanwhile, Ford remains ahead of the game with a well-defined, and now time tested, suite of voice control applications for frequent activities like carrying out phone conversations, messaging and controlling the car’s entertainment system.

In its press release, the company claims to be the first to offer “voice addressing” for text messages. The company claims high levels of accuracy because it is the only application to be “fully integrated with the Android SMS client and uses Smartword, Promptu’s editing tool that lets users see and select from likely word alternatives.” The application debuts today (April 26) for the Motorola Droid with features taht include: voice addressing, “full integration with the phone’s messaging service (including message exchanges threaded by recipient), thumbnail images displayed for contacts and “one-touch navigation to all recent incoming and outgoing messages.

As reported here, Promptu’s revenue model will test the value that users attach to transcription services. If it remains true to form it market bundles of “voice credits” in increments of 50 for $1.99; 150 for $3.99 or 250 for $4.99, as it does for iPhone users. This is in contrast to its closest functional rivals Vlingo (which has charged for a $17.99 for its application on the Blackberry) and Nuance Dragon Dictate, which has not yet announced a revenue model. Vlingo, by the way, has a “beta” of its application for the Android, which has been available since mid-March.

Along with Google, Microsoft and (to some extent) AT&T, these are the initiatives that are shaping the way that spoken words will be integrated into the mobile messaging flow.

Add Logitech to the mix and can imagine how the master of the mouse and the multi-function TV remote will finally solve some of the sticky issues that arise when a single screen is called upon to serve up video entertainment, display photos, render social networking “activity streams” and otherwise accommodate the whims of the multi-tasking, attention-challenged public. If it works as suggested, it is one of the key outcomes of taking a recombinant (rather than a unified) approach to computing and communications. The family TV is transformed not just into a media or entertainment center, but into a big screen on which all manner of icons could invoke the widgets, apps and “links” that make each of our lives what they are.

Like the iPad, it is a tabla rasa or empty slate today. It’s just neat to contemplate how it could transform TV viewing into a much more engaging or social activity. Based on the backlash surrounding Google’s Buzz (and even Wave for that matter), we can only hope that the roll-out is done in a way that reflects an understanding of the different human factors that prevail in the TV room, as opposed to at a cubicle or among the mobile phone toting public.

The description of the range of services to be offered sounds exactly like the Skype application offered on the iPhone. The most salient difference will be that the app will be running constantly in background on the nine devices described (which is not possible on the iPhone). It also marks the symbolic end to Verizon’s (as well as its wireless cohort’s) long-standing concern that VoIP services offered over the data link will cannibalize their core voice revenues. John Stratton, Verizon’s Chief Marketing Officer, told attendees of the Mobile World Congress that he was not concerned about either erosion of the voice traffic on its network or a decline in quality that would result from congestion caused by massive demand for Voice-over-3G.

Stratton said that the application was jointly developed from the ground up, leaving many details up for interpretation. My own belief is that the always-on Skype will be “link agile” using WiFi when available, 3G in some cases or the Verizon cell network if required to sustain qualities. At least that’s how I would architect the service given that subscribers must contract with Verizon for one of its Voice and Data plans. According to an article by Roger Chen in the Wall Street Journal, the “cheapest monthly voice plan now costs $40 for 450 minutes, and a $30 data plan is required with any smart phone.” So you may as well make the best use of all the links you can.

As for the impact on the wireless VoIP world at large, the application seems underwhelming. Sure it rattles AT&T Mobility’s cage by offering a nailed up voice-over-3G service one week after AT&T made it clear that it would continue its WiFi only approach. Yet, the range of services that are offered have an entry-level feeling to them. Meanwhile, Mobile World Congress was brimming with some really impressive X-over-wireless-IP services. Of special interest to me is a “video calling over the Internet” offered through the iTunes store by Fring and this intriguing voice-to-voice universal translator service offered by wireless personal assistant specialist VoxOx.

Harking back to my post about “satsificing”, I’m not sure that any of the services will work at high-levels of quality in all instances, but they are working well enough to make them ready for prime time.

By positioning the site as an effort to “beat Microsoft” the press and analysts cast the search giant Google in an underdog role. Google claims to have about two million businesses using either free or paid versions of Google Apps (I would be inthe “free” category). By comparison, the WSJ reporters observe that there are “around 500 million users of Microsoft Office”, according to the Microsoft spokespeople. That means there’s a long way to go to reach parity.

Yet, as Google adds more store-like qualities to the Solutions Marketplace, the site will take on the “recombinant qualities” of Salesforce.com’s AppExchange, which actively enlists third-party developers to build solutions that incorporate their software with resources in the SalesCloud or ServiceCloud. It is also expected to take on some of the qualities of the AppStore in Apple’s iTunes site, featuring product reviews, success stories and perhaps mechanisms to support user ratings.

Today, in classic Google style, the site features a lot of white space and blue links to landing pages which, in many cases, are blogs running on the original Blogger resource (Blogger’s parent, Pyra Labs, was acquired by Google in 2003). I’m not sure how the idea that Google is launching a “store” for business apps became “news”. Clearly it’s already up and running in the Solutions Marketplace. For instance, if you search the marketplace for “telephony” products you already find four products/services ranging from a unified directory utility to tools for building mashups based on the Android mobile operating system or Asterisk “open source” PBX.

Nonetheless, the news story was good stimulus to revisit the Google Web site to see how far The Sultan of Search has come in enlisting third-party software to augment its own cloud-based offering.

Moto is not alone in its efforts to foster innovation on the Android platform. Elsewhere around the Cellular Telephone and Internet Association’s Internet and Entertainment Expo (CTIA-IE) Verizon made a huge splash by announcing a the intent to act as partners in a venture chartered to co-develop devices that run a broad spectrum of applications on the Android operating system.

In front of the press and in the presence of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless (VZW) made it clear that it sees an advantage to making both its network and devices fully “open.” That means that, unlike Apple and AT&T, Verizon will provide its subscribers full access to the call management and messaging features of Google Voice through Android phones. While Verizon and Google will collaborate on the specification, it is broadly believed that the usual list of OEMs and ODMs will actually make them. That means that Verizon will continue to distribute the smartphones from HTC, Motorola, Samsung and a few others as they introduce Android-based devices.

Schmidt and McAdam also made the right noises about fostering activity among third-party developers. Pledging that the devices will ship with easy access to an AppStore that has more than 10,000 titles. Coupled with all the activity among the MotoDev Summit attendees, as well as the formal launch of Windows Phone, we continue to wonder how application developers will decide how to allocate their resources for design, development and support of popular apps across so many platforms.