Recent Posts - page 162
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Google Nixes GPhone: Clarifying Mobile Search’s Value Chain
Peter Norvig, Google’s head of research, recently said that getting into the hardware business with a Google-labeled phone is not a top priority for the search engine giant. This makes strategic sense for a company that has generated billions in revenues and profits by delivering software and services across a broad variety of branded networks and devices. “Open” networks trumps the prospects of branded, proprietary handsets.
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Microsoft Clarifies Pricing for Speech Processing
Under a new pricing and licensing framework, Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator are sold like Microsoft Exchange or Windows. That makes speech processing available “for the price of IM†in many situations. But the radical difference is pricing for independent software vendors (ISVs) and certified Unified Solutions developers.
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SpeechTEK 2007 Retrospective: Seeking Sustainable Search
Speech-enabled search was very close to the core of SpeechTEK 2007. Starting with a keynote in which Google’s Mike Cohen described what his company has learned from offering 800-GOOG411, then cascading through a number of announcements and panels on “speech search.†It’s clear that much work remains on several fronts (user experience, database refinement, geo-positioning advertiser recruitment and ad placement, to name a few) as ecosystem members forge partnerships to bring a “complete†service to market.
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IP and UC Spell New Hosted and Managed Solutions
On Tuesday, August 21, Opus Research has organized a day’s worth of panel discussions called “The Year of Living Virtually,” as part of SpeechTEK in New York City. Under discussion will be the creative ways that service providers meld IP-telephony and unified communications (UC) to change the nature of contact center outsourcing from its past focus on distributed voice processing applications to promote enhanced call routing that provides on-demand access to agents, voice platforms and Internet-based applications and resources.
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Announcing Voice Biometrics Conference London
Opus Research is proud to announce Voice Biometrics Conference London (Nov. 28-29, 2007 – The Grange City Hotel London).
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Shop Online, Buy Locally: A Closer Look at Recent Survey Data
Last week, two studies described how Internet search is used by the large majority of consumers as a research tool before buying locally. The Web has now overtaken all other media, including printed Yellow Pages as a primary source for local business information. Directory assistance and cell phones were only used 3% of the time as a primary source. However, Local Mobile Search (LMS) expects that will change over time.
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SpeechTech Magazine – August 1, 2007
Feature article in July/August issue of SpeechTech Magazine: “Speech-Enabled Mobile Search Marches On,” by Dan Miller, Senior Analyst with Opus Research
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IBM Makes Speaker Identity Verification Part of WebSphere
IBM brings conversational speaker verification close to “off-the-shelf” status by making it a “feature pack” for WebSphere middleware. Speaker-independent, text-independent and language-independent verification overcomes many obstacles to adoption and has the potential to create a secure and pleasant user experience.
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Google’s $4.6 Billion Bandwidth Bid Signals Buy-in to Mobile Applications
The giant company whose name is synonymous with Web search is ready to invest a minimum of $4.6 billion to acquire wireless bandwidth that is unfettered by carrier affiliation, device “lock-ins†and general lack of “openness.†Google is joined by a number of other service providers who would like to attain access to a national wireless network on a wholesale basis. With an auction scheduled for the first quarter of 2008, the cause of Local Mobile Search will have a decidedly national, even global, scope.
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Voice Biometrics Market Potential Study: Applications Review and Assessment
The market for voice biometrics-based authentication software is starting to mature. The technology has proven its efficacy and value as the basis of password reset applications for enterprise Help Desk, leading to tens of millions of dollars in recurring revenue. Yet the market will reach a positive inflection point as “customer-facing” deployments grow to support secure, phone-based access to financial services, e-government and electronic payments.