Among the enhancements to Ford Motor Company’s SYNC-based services is the introduction of a news reader based on content from USA Today, “powered by XTone’s Xavi(TM) voice assistant platform”. The service is described in this press release and demonstrated in this video:

Even though Ford SYNC has featured news readers in the past, having added an audio version of the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago, attentive readers/viewers will detect a salient difference between the Xavi-powered USA today and other SYNC-AppLink integrations. Simply stated, other deployments use the voice recognition resources that are “native” to SYNC, a combination of voice processing technologies from Microsoft and Nuance. By contrast, the USA Today service is running on the Xtone’s “Conversational Media Player” which is part of the Xavi platform in XTone’s cloud.

This method of deployment shortened the time it took for USA Today to offer its services over the SYNC AppLink (it behaves like an iPhone) and will also simplify the processes required to offer similar services through a multiplicity of mobile devices. That is the ultimate goal of content providers like USA Today and its parent company Gannett.

Categories: Articles

Tags: speech processing, mobile speech, Ford, CES2013, conversational services, USA Today, XTone