Recent Posts - page 154

  • T-Mobile’s Samsung Memoir Includes Nuance V-Suite

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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”

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    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.

  • Singapore Emerging as a Focal Point for Voice Biometrics

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    A couple of recent announcements have brought a spotlight to Singapore as an emerging hub for voice biometrics applications being deployed throughout Asia.

    According to an article at Straits Times, the Singapore airport authority is considering using voiceprints as a way of authenticating travelers. Singapore passengers currently interact with thumb and iris identification devices, but voice biometrics offers the advantage of remote authentication when verifying someone’s identity compared to a database of voiceprints. Still, some skeptics wonder how the system would work to identify those passengers who don’t have a voiceprint on record.

    Elsewhere, PerSay has announced a new go-to-market partner with Singapore-based INS Indriya, a technology consulting firm focused on voice applications and CRM solutions.

    “The partnership with INS Indriya will provide our customers and prospects in Singapore and Asia with a local center of excellence and competence around the PerSay products,” said Ariel Freidenberg, Executive VP of Global Sales at PerSay, in a statement.

    In Asia, PerSay currently names YeSpeech as a partner in providing mobile banking services in Korea and the AC Corporation is a partner at GSIS – the Philippines primary pension program who has deployed a voice biometric system to allow its more than 1.2 million members secure access to pension services over the phone.

  • Inside the Numbers: Bright Spots in Avaya’s Sales Figures

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    Featured Research
    Avaya’s sales figures for calendar year 2008 provide a glimpse of the uneven adoption of Conversational Access Technologies – or at least Avaya’s flavor of IP-based contact centers and self-service resources. Global results were flat, but IVR sales grew at close to 25%. They highlight the need for cost-effective solutions that leverage the installed base and create opportunities for go-to-market partners.

  • The Collaborator’s Dilemma

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    Today UC is getting all the attention because it is a broad product area that fits into the marketing plans of major software vendors – especially Microsoft and IBM (who lead in conferencing and collaboration). But the process of ‘unifying communications’ alone is not nearly as promising as building better ways to support person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine conversations and today’s measurement of the UC market will always underestimate the value of (and spending on) these endeavors.