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.
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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.
A Recessionary Offering from SpeechCycle and Jingle Networks
SpeechCycle, a company that hosts millions of technical support calls, primarily from Cable or satellite TV subscribers, has joined with Jingle Networks, the popularizer of “free directory assistance” to offer a way for businesses to insert sponsored audio messages into customer care calls. The joint offering is well suited for the current economic climate because it gives companies across a multiplicity of verticals to deliver targeted promotional messages while thereby attracting advertising dollars to offset customer care operating expenses.
Voxeo launches Tropo.com
In a development that brings great promise to developers of self-service applications, Jonathan Taylor, CEO of Voxeo, announced the formal launch (in beta) of a new service called Tropo.com at the eComm2009 conference in Burlingame. We’ll have more discussion of the implications of Tropo, but suffice it to say that, consistent with its long-term strategy, Voxeo is offering a free service to voice application developers to take advantage of a standard set of API’s and a growing range of “frameworks” for the application community to build more voice and telephony applications in the cloud, what it refers to as “API-based” applications.
Nuance [Finally] Sounds its Zi
The prospects for more convenient entry of text messages around the world became more real as Nuance Communications and Canada’s Zi Technologies finally agreed to terms whereby Nuance will acquire Zi for a combination of $17 million in cash and another $18 million worth of Nuance common stock. The price represents a 73% premium over Zi’s Friday closing share price on the Toronto Stock Exchange. However it is $5 million less than Nuance had offered for the company roughly one month ago.
Amazon’s Evocative Access to “Public Data”
Amazon.com continues to enhance its cloud-based platform for electronic commerce (EC2) with bells, whistles and data designed to inspire developers to augment Web-based offerings . Last night the company added over a Terabyte of information that are snapshots of “Public Data Sets” designed as a central repository for publicly available information that can be a boon to any cloud computing strategy.