In this post, the peripatetic promoter of cloud-based phone hacks, Twilio, encourages developers to come up with interesting new applications for the iPhone 4S, taking advantage of speech-based assistant, Siri.

Initiatives and contests like this one illustrate one more reason why Apple’s introduction of Siri is a signal event for mobile speech. The “application” (placed in quotes for reasons I will explain shortly) has its limits. In fact, it is not really an application in the traditional sense of the word. Like many of the downloadable “speech-enablers,” Siri defies categorization. There are “command and control” elements that fall in the category of “utility.” There are dictation and messaging components that make it a “communications” app. Finally, there are (or were) the links to 3rd party web sites that enabled Siri to transform the iPhone into a personal assistant.

The pros and cons of the speech-based mobile assistant were tossed around most recently when Google’s Andy Rubin dismissed the idea at an AsiaD (an All Things D conference). The gist of his criticism was that he’d “been-there-done-that-and-it-failed,” with reference to two speech-enabled personal digital assistants. One was General Magic, which was spun out of Apple Computer back in 1990 and had a few, high-visibility partnerships, including Sony, Motorola and AT&T among others.

In hindsight, Rubin may see General Magic as a failure but, in fact, its engineers designed and developed a new operating system (Magic Cap) and scripting language (Telescript) that were precursors VoiceXML and efforts to create tools that support agile programming for speech-based, conversational interfaces. The technologies that started in General Magic live on in the automated speech offerings of GM OnStar. And somewhere among the intellectual property vault owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures are General Magic’s patents, which were bought at auction in 2002.

Rubin also made mention of Wildfire Communications, Inc., a company founded by Rich Miner, who is now a partner at Google Ventures. But Wildfire’s experience is quite different from General Magic. Founded in 1991, Wildfire built a very loyal following for its speech-enabled services which, at the time, were largely built around management of voice and telephony functions, like voicemail management, call origination, call answering and the like. In 2002, France Telecom’s Orange Wireless bought the company for $147 million and offered the service to its mobile constituency.

At the time, the service was well-received by mobile customers but, because it was originally engineered as an enterprise app, Orange realized that it would have to re-engineer the underlying technology platform in order to offer the service in sufficient scale. Instead, the telco opted to shutter the service in 2005. As this article by Tim Richardson in The Register explains, shutting down the service took longer than anticipated because of the protests of a loyal following of Wildfire users who, to this day, feel like Orange was too hasty in its decision to cease the offering.

Siri (as an Apple initiative) shares quite a few of the attributes of both General Magic and Wildfire that attracted the attention and imagination of developers. The big difference today is that modern technology around computing power and storage support offering the service economically at scale. In addition, even without a formal API, the creative energy of 3rd party developers can be applied to enhancing the service using tools and scripting languages that have evolved into agile environments since the days of Magic Cap and Telescript.

Google has reason to be dismissive of Siri because it is important to call into question its ability to provide answers to questions that used to be the sole domain of the Google Search box (and therefore a source of advertising supported revenue for Google). But it can equally be argued that Voice Search and Voice Actions on the Android platform will benefit from general acceptance of speech-enabled assistants, like Siri. We have to see whether and when Apple introduces Siri as a downloadable app that runs on other devices and how well it (re)integrates the service with popular destination sites like Yelp!, OpenTable, Fandango, etc. Today Vlingo and Nuance’s DragonGo! have an advantage when supporting mobile ecommerce.

Greg Sterling and I will be issuing a report on “Mobile Speech Applications and Services” in the coming month. In it we will assess current initiatives and provide our insights and perspectives on the ultimate impact on local search and conversational commerce.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Apple, mobile speech, Twilio, Mobile Apps, Siri