It started with a series of video press releases from Google’s soon-to-be device manufacturing subsidiary, Motorola Mobility. Under the headline, “Google Voice Actions Knocks Out Siri on Motorola Android Phones”, readers could see how Google Voice Actions on several models of Moto’s wireless phones carried out dictation, getting directions, posting a reminder and Web navigation tasks faster than the iPhone 4S.

One of the “knockouts” is rendered below:

I first wrote about Voice Actions for Android in August 2010 noting that “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 may have been true and it certainly rattled the chains of Microsoft (which spun off Tellme, but kept much of the IP that will power voice and gesture controlled devices) and Nuance (which, in addition to carrying out the automated speech processing for Siri, is in the process of acquiring Vlingo and continues to refine Dragon Go! and a number of initiatives that define a more Natural User Interface).

What the boxing match between Voice Actions for Android and Siri fails to capture is how real people actually use Siri. This post provides details about one person’s daily experience. While the notorious “sample of one” is indicative of only one subscriber’s preferences, it is fascinating to see how usage starts in the morning with a query about the weather and crescendos into classic Q&A exercises, giving a person a verbal way to ask someone a question before it recedes in memory. That’s the real-life use case (mostly because the idea of reciting text messages aloud fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of “passing electronic notes” in private and asking for directions aloud when you still have to touch the screen and look at a map defeats the purpose of “hands-free/eyes forward” navigation.)

But I have to say that this announcement, coming out of MWC, caught my imagination. A joint venture between embedded ASR specialist Novauris and Existor Ltd, a technology firm that applies artificial intelligence to the challenge of creating “conversational,” spoken interfaces. The two companies plan “to combine their expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing and automatic speech recognition (ASR) to create mobile and wireless applications that allow people to interact conversationally – not just with smartphones and computers, but also with cars, refrigerators, TVs, toys or any device equipped with a suitable embedded processor.”

The ambition to make consumer electronic devices, appliances and automobiles more conversational is very compelling. Nonetheless, I believe the most interesting aspect of the Novauris/Existor output is the potential to remain conversational even in a disconnected state. Many Siri users have told me that their mobile assistant will duck a question now and then for no apparent reason. They speculate that access to the server “in the cloud” may have timed out. At that point Siri will ask for the user to try later or default to a Web search. In their announcement the two technology companies claim that their first output will be a series of speech-enabeled “chatbot apps,” called CleverApps which will run on smartphones without any need for access to “the cloud” over the data link.

In addition to solving the problem of getting an answer in a disconnected state, the new venture’s apps have the potential to reduce data traffic at a time when some wireless carriers are “throttling back” the speeds for heavy users and getting rid of “unlimited data plans.” With product announcements and vendor contests coming fast-and-furious, the ripple effect of Apple’s Siri launch is gathering momentum.

On the iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0, holding the Home Button down for 10 seconds will start Siri. For many handsfree Bluetooth earbuds, holding the “activate” key down will do the same. Once invoked, Siri lets phone users speak to their phones in their own words. In the demo, Apple iOS engineer Scott Forstall showed three different ways to get Siri to provide local weather, ranging from “What’s the weather?” to “Do you think it will rain?” [Here's the commercial - complete with Ray Charles in the background - that Apple will be running to support Siri]

On prior versions of the iPhone, holding the Home Button down for 10 seconds invokes “Voice Control” which enables phone owners to use their voice to control playback on their iPhone or initiate phone calls. Deep integration of Siri enables users to treat their phones as a voice-activated assistant with the ability to conduct Web searches, dictate and play back text messages and carry out voice commerce (by search Yelp! or OpenTable to choose restaurants and book seats), in addition to voice dialing and media control.

The introduction of a Siri-powered Voice Assistant represents the “re-emergence” of Siri because a Siri app is already available as a free download from the iTunes AppStore. iPhone owners who now launch the app are greeted with this message:

I’ve been replaced! The new Siri is even smarter and better looking than me [sic], and waiting for you on the iPhone 4S. Ill be leaving for home Oct 15th

This signals that Apple is destined to de-activate Siri in two weeks, when it may move to the home button on all iPhones. But, in the mean time, it enables iPhone owners to use “plain English” (or the language of their choice) to find restaurants, nearby movies by title and showtimes, events and businesses. They can ask Siri about the weather (as was demonstrated in the live demo at the iPhone 4S launch), order a taxi, request reminders and even originate Twitter posts.

Introduction of Siri for the iPhone 4S represented a step forward for the service. Activation with the Home Button simplifies service activation. Close integration with message origination is an important enhancement. Most importantly, Apple – because it failed to introduce the iPhone 5 – in effect made Siri, and natural language interaction over its mobile devices, the center of attention. The only other features that merited mention as bold moves forward were the dual mode (CDMA/GSM) aspects of the new phone – making it in effect a ‘world phone,” and supposedly higher data transmission speeds.

The only step back was the characterization of Siri as a “beta” product. Phil Schiller, head of product marketing for Apple, sounded almost apologetic as he introduced Siri “as a beta version,” as if, were it to fail, he could say, “I told you so.” That said, the demos worked as anticipated and the crowd seemed impressed. In addition to getting weather information in three different ways, Forstall used Siri to set the phone’s alarm clock, listened to and replied to a colleague’s text message and provided instructions to the iPod application.

The relationship of Siri (which is “powered by Nuance”) to Nuance’s Dragon Go! is something of a conundrum. Both let users speak to their phones to use Phil Schiller’s words, “the way they wanna talk.” But Siri is initiated from the Home Button. Vlingo is in the running as well. It has been true to the Virtual Assistant roadmap that it outlined to us earlier this year.

Apple’s announcement of Siri should have a ripple effect as millions of iPhone users recognize that speech recognition works reliably and has been well integrated with the services that they regularly use. It feels like speech enabled mobile services have reached an important inflection point.

Waze was one of the earliest mashups of crowdsourcing, Maps and Navigation services on an application for Apple’s iOS based devices. It has, over time, added versions for Symbian, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile based devices.

As noted in the video above, its designers have long contemplated adding more “voice” to the app, and they have been true to their word. It’s clearly not the dream “hands-free, eyes-forward” use case that would make it most appropriate for drivers. But it is very cool to have audio “alerts” that are the product of spoken input from drivers providing contemporaneous commentary on the traffic or weather phenomena that they are observing. The company has said that upgrades to the other platforms will be available in the future.

As described in this press release, the new application brings embedded video and audio clips to folks reading Kindle-based books on the new iOS4. One of the first books is a travelogue (natch!), “Rick Steves’ London”. Another featured release is “Together We Cannot Fail”, a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Terry Golway. The latter publication was issued in late 2009 and was accompanied by a CD-ROM that featured audio recordings of FDR’s speeches and radio addresses, including the “fireside chats” that marked the inception of “ambient intimacy” on a mass medium. (Other titles with audio/video include the children’s classic “Alladin” and a cookbook called “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes”).

The new Kindle app for iOS4 app barely preceded its counterpart for Android-based devices. Yet it is the only one that supports Kindle books with A/V. It will very likely remain well ahead of Amazon’s own Kindle branded devices, which use an “electronic paper” display (using technology from E ink) that is not well-suited for video.

Amazon’s new apps features a lot of creative recombinance. While it depends on Apple’s iTunes store to distribute the iOS-based application, the app is tightly linked to the Kindle section of Amazon.com’s ecommerce Web site to support search, discovery, product selection and payment. The company takes the same approach to wireless distribution, which is carried out over “Whispernet”, a wireless data link that initially used Sprint’s EVDO network but has also migrated to AT&T’s much maligned and wireless data network. Versions of Kindle can be deployed on a variety of desktop, laptop and wireless platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Apple (both Mac OS X and iOS), Android and Blackberry.

As a “nice touch” on Amazon.com’s part, Kindle app users can take advantage of “WhisperSync”, which automatically keeps track of how far a reader progressed in a purchased book and provides the option to the furthest page when moving one device to another (for example from physical Kindle to the Kindle app on a mobile phone). Another offshoot of WhisperSync is a “group highlighting” function, whereby paragraphs or passages that are highlighted by a significant number of readers can be, likewise, highlighted in a reader’s personal copy. Obviously this can be annoying (harking back to buying used books in college and finding the previous owner was too judicious with the yellow highlighter), but it can also be as enlightening as the “like” button or Digg indicator on flagged content in a Web site.

The relationship between Kindle on the iOS4 and RC may seem a bit forced. After all, both Amazon.com and Apple operate the sort of high-availability, secure, e-commerce platforms that don’t lend themselves to “mash-ups”, Web 2.0 or tinkering from third-party application developers. Yet the addition of embedded video and audio to Kindle “books” on the iPad is exemplary of how a service provider (like Amazon) can pursue a best-of-breed approach to bringing new products or services to market. In doing so, a multiplicity of go-to-market partners mix-and-match (dare I say “mashup”?) the features and functions of their platforms on an “as needed” basis, in the context of the application requirements and in adherence to the terms, conditions and protocols baked into their API’s (application programming interfaces).

The strategic, organizational and competitive barriers have been breached. Technology was quick to follow. Customers become the beneficiaries. The evolution of the ebook from distribution of .PDF-like renderings of static, text-only documents to much more dynamic, networked resources that take full advantage of what the Internet, World Wide Web and social networks have to offer should be made more manifest by this offerings. It will not be long until the travelogue, kid’s book, cookbook and documentary is joined by other “shared” publications with direct relevance to students and businesspeople, as well as the casual reader.

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.

What’s missing is Avaya’s recognition that Google Voice’s core value proposition comes with the close linking to contact lists, mail stores and applications embedded in Gmail and Google Apps, as well as the ease at which Google Voice enables users to toggle between voice, text and voice mail. Though not noted in the application description in the App Store, I learned that Avaya does support voicemail to text transcription through an agreement with SpinVox.

The App requires the 3.0 operating system and, as noted above, for one-X to be running enterprise-wide on the server side. That makes it a “private cloud” sort of phenomenon, rather than a generalized Web service. Still it is yet another initiative whereby an iPhone app can put more power over telephony functions into the hands of subscribers. But, especially in the wake of the long-awaited departure of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple’s board of directors, we’ll watch with interest as the App Store selection group chooses among utilities that duplicate the native capabilities of the iPhone.

Automated speech winnowed its way into the iPhone demo in two instances. First was the text-to-speech rendering of driving directions offered by TomTom, whose CTO put on a demo at WWDC. But the coup-de-gras was the unveiling of native “Voice Control”, a feature that delivers a voice-enabled user interface when iPhone users hold down the “Home” button. At that piont, they can use the spoken word to conduct voice-activated dialing, search their iTunes library or enter other commands to their iTunes application.

There are already more than two dozen voice-enabled applications for the iPhone, ranging from stand-alone voice-activated dialing (from the resident contact list) to full-blown dictation of text messages, Tweets or FaceBook entries. All require some sort of manual input (pressing or holding down a button) to let the device know that it is accepting spoken input.

In a move that has been a long time coming, Sensory Inc., has finally packaged its technology to support truly hands-free input to mobile devices. By adding resident “word spotting” technology to its firmware, Sensory enables the makers of Bluetooth devices (specifically wireless headsets, aftermarket “car kits”, and stereo headsets) to sell devices that let their users define phrases that “trigger” speech recognition. As Sensory’s CEO Todd Mozer observes, “”What’s been needed all along is a speech controlled technology that doesn’t require a button press to get started.”

We agree. The products will carry the “BlueGenie” brand. It will enable its users to say a simple wake-up phrase like “Hello BlueGenie” to signal the device to “listen” for an operational speech command. It is a new technology from Sensory that both works well in relatively noisy environments, but most importantly, it uses a “patent-pending” technology to minimize power consumption and avoid rapid battery drain.

We’ll be watching to see how many headset makers, ODMs and OEMs contract to use the Sensory technology. At first it will be a nice differentiator, in the long-run we see it as an important feature to prevent driver distraction.