It’s DA Time (also, the Pope & Passover).
It’s Pope-Mania here in New York today, and, soon, Passover time (Chag Pessach Samaiach V’ Kasher!). Anyway, religion aside, let’s talk about directory assistance - it doesn’t get much more agnostic than that. So, once again, it’s time to test out some speech products. This time, we’re aiming our sights on V-ENABLE. And since I’m sadistic, or just a responsible editor, I’m making Ryan test it out with me. We’ll be test-driving V-ENABLE over the weekend. It’s a directory assistance company that also offers access to live operators if needed. That’s great, because when you live in the city and are on a crowded street, GOOG-411 usually catches the woman next to me yelling at her child, not me saying “BARNES AND NOBLE.”
We’ll report back to you next week with our results. We here at Speech Tech are some tough critics - we only give out two ratings: fail, or succeed. So, with that in mind, let’s V-ENABLE knocks our socks off. I can tell Ryan is already annoyed by this assignment: “Does this mean I have to listen to ADS?” I hope not, Ryan.
[Image: Uath.org]
What about jinglenetworks and 1800free411? They’ve been around for a while. Personally I thought it worked better than google after I searched a random number to get entered into the april ticket giveaway. Does goog411 offer contests?
Comment by firehazard
— April 22, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
Why in heaven’s name would you use a picture of the Pope from Uath.org (which is the Atheism in Ukraine website)!!!!!!! I find this highly offensive! You mean to tell me that there were no other sources of an appropriate picture? UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!! Are you sure you don’t have a hidden agenda here?
Comment by Charlie
— May 7, 2008 @ 8:46 am
Hi Charlie,
When searching for a picture of the Pope, this is one of the first images that came up. No one on the Speech Tech staff has any hidden agenda in publishing this photo - we were not aware that this page was for Atheism in Ukraine. Mainly because the entire page is written in Ukranian. At times we like to start out our stories with some kind of news hook. This time, it was the Pope’s visit. This was, arguably, a very big deal in NYC (where we’re based) and the rest of the U.S. Sorry if we offended; we certainly did not mean to!
- Lauren
Comment by Lauren
— May 8, 2008 @ 11:07 am