Dan York, chief conversationalist at Voxeo, reports that a developer with the pseudonym “Devoh” used Voxeo’s Tropo API-based development platform as part of a hack to let people phone into Twitter. The new service, called Tweeter Phone, enables registered callers to hear recent tweets from their selected friends. Devoh reportedly attended a single Tropo introductory session, then went home and spent five hours to bring up the new service. This is the sort of rapid application development and API-based phone mashup that is destined to keep the telephone (most likely mobile ) an integral part of everyday communication, community-building and commerce.
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Nuance Takes AirFrance’s Customer Care Line into More Countries
Based on very favorable acceptance of a single-number service that started in October 2006, AirFrance entered the second phase of its speech enabled customer care portal “powered by Nuance”. The initial set of services offered flight schedules, bookings (with intelligent transfer to agents) and real time flight information in French and UK English. In the second phase new contact centers have been set up in Europe, Asia, North and South America supporting calls from over 20 countries.
SVOX Opens Office in Auto Makers’ Backyard
Embedded speech processing specialist SVOX clearly believes that speech recognition may be a big part of any turnaround that could occur in the automotive industry. Stating that it shows commitment to growth, the company has established a new 30-person office in Ulm, Germany. CEO Martin Reber says that the staff will focus on development of embedded speech recognition and “speech dialog” systems. He expects the size of the Ulm-based team to double in the coming years as it takes advantage of opportunities to collaborate with firms like Audi, Daimler and Porsche on R&D efforts for speech processing in future models.
Tuvox’s “New Deal”: An Offer That’s Harder to Refuse
The chilly global financial climate has caused corporate spending to come to a stop, especially when it comes to capital spending. While many executives pay lip service to the importance of optimizing customer care experieince, investment in contact center, speech processing and IVR infrastructure has suffered along with all the other candidates for IT and Telecom investment. Tuvox has designed a new program that lowers the barriers for companies to adopt speech technologies and reduces the cost of continuous enhancement by shortening development cycles.
New Manifestation of Google Voice Adds Voicemail Transcription
For this analyst, the roll-out of Google Voice has been agonizingly slow. Four days after the launch, our inbox still bears the message “Your account is not yet ready to be upgraded. Please check back shortly.” Still, after nearly two years under Google’s tutelage, we must report that, in addition to international calling (at a small fee) the transcription of voicemail is the most notable enhancement to the original GrandCentral service.
VC’s Invest $17 Million More in Transera
Congratulations to Transera. The virtual contact center routing specialist just raised another $17 million from Funders included Accel Partners, which has an office in Palo Alto; Apax Partners, which has a U.S. office in New York; and Lighthouse Capital Partners and Storm Ventures. The proceeds are earmarked (if we can use that term) to step up go-to-market partnerships as well as product development.
Apple Releases New iPod Shuffle With VoiceOver
Apple has released a third-generation iPod Shuffle, the smallest of its portable music devices. Among the new features is VoiceOver, a text-to-speech capability that can tell the listener the name of the song or artist, ability to navigate playlists, or hear status information such as battery life. According to Apple, the new iPod Shuffle is multi-lingual and can speak up to 14 languages.
VoiceOver is already found on the Mac OS X operating system as a built-in accessibility feature for the visually impaired. And in November 2008, VoiceOver was included in an update for iTunes. Because it doesn’t include a visual screen or multi-touch technology, the Shuffle is a perfect candidate for speech services. But the fact that Apple is taking strides to highlight the speech capability for the iPod Shuffle underscores the value and form function for voice navigation on mobile devices.
T-Mobile’s Samsung Memoir Includes Nuance V-Suite
T-Mobile, the exclusive outlet for the Samsung Memoir, positions the device as a smartphones-with-high-resolution-camera. Nuance wants you to know that the phone also ships with both V-Suite 3 (voice command and input) and XT9 (predictive texting) pre-installed. Thus no download or AppStore purchase is required to support Voice Dialing as well as spoken commands “go-to” commands for Web browsing, as well as access and control of the Memoir’s many features and functions.
Ditech Networks Betas TokTok to Integrate Voice into Mobile Web Apps
Ditech Networks, whose core business involves noise suppression or elimination to support speech recognition, took the covers off of a new service called toktok™ at eComm2009 (March 3-5). The new service, which is in “invitation only” beta at this point, is a speech front end to Web services, including directories, calendars and social networks. The service toggles ‘on’ when a subscriber says the word “toktok”, even in the middle of a phone conversation. At that point a prompt solicits commands such as “make an appointment for…” or “conference in…” from the user without dropping the existing call.
Agnitio Secures Second Round of Funding
Agnitio, a Madrid-based voice biometric technology provider, has announced a Series B funding of €5.5 million (US$ 6.9 million) led by Elaia Partners. The round included participation of Nauta Capital, an investor who specializes in technology companies in both Europe and the U.S., who was responsible for an initial round of €2.7 million in late 2007.
In the announcement, Xavier Lazarus, General Partner at Elaia Partners said, “Already leaders in Homeland Security, [Agnitio’s] offerings also bring a new way of considering authentication to many markets, including the telecommunication or the home banking industries.”
Additionally, Emilio Martinez, CEO at Agnitio, said, “We are delighted with achieving this second round of funding from Nauta and Elaia especially in the current climate of severe economic conditions.”
Earlier in the week, Agnitio reported that Medical Management Technology Group, Inc. (MMTG), providers of technology to improve home-based healthcare, signed a contract to deploy Medify Home Health Verification with Onondaga County in New York. Onondaga County is the first county in New York State to provision the service with the first implementation rolled out to users in January 2009.
Medify, powered by Agnitio’s Kivox voice biometrics technology, is a phone-based time tracking system integrated with voice verification. Once a home caretaker is enrolled, they are required to call into a system to verify checking in at a patient’s home.