Well Speech Heads, this was a long time coming, but here it is! OUR SPINVOX REVIEW!

Some ground rules before we begin:

Pussyfootin’ Provisos and Liability Claims

Trial Version

The SpinVox service I was using was a trial version. It basically worked through call forwarding, sending all my missed calls to SpinVox for transcription and using a third-party aggregator to send them back to me as texts/emails. If I wanted to listen to the messages, I had to call SpinVox directly. When you use SpinVox natively, the service works through a carrier’s existing channels. So for the most part you don’t feel its presence as much as I did.

SpinVox v. Nuance

Doubtlessly, this review will draw some comparisons to our Nuance VM2T review. The devious of you out there will be trying to piece together which one I think is better. Sorry to disappoint, I won’t be coming down with any definitive pronouncements on that count. I’m afraid those betting stubs you bought are going to be worthless.

For the purposes of our blog product reviews we’ve very purposefully eschewed using any kind of numerical value system-in part because that system is just untenable long term for the blog. Technology will change and, moreover, numbers can be used to suggest comparisons between features that we never intended to compare. For a lot of the same reasons, when we do the Speech Industry Awards (SpeechTek 2009, HOLLA!) we have our judges rate vendors overall rather than dealing with thickly overgrown forest individual products.

Furthermore, for the purposes of this Thrilla in Manila: VM2T v. SpinVox, the two are only comparable so far. Like with SpinVox, when I test drove the Nuance service it was just a demo version that didn’t actually deliver texts to my phone. I don’t really have a great feel for the ins and outs of delivery times or the niceties of interface of either. Given that, the only point of comparison between the two that one could feasibly draw is between the respective engine’s recognition accuracy.

The Equipment

Another disclosure: the mobile phone used throughout this review was a Samsung SCH-U540. My phone, pictured here can be described as pretty much the featurest of feature phones. This phone is so feature, and this is not a joke, that when I was talking to a vendor about usability tests on mobile devices, they told me they test on a “full gamut of phones.” At the high end they tested their software some suped BlackBerry, probably capable of fielding a line drive while processing six terabytes of cancer research, and on the low end, they used a phone that the guy called, “as nothing as you can probably get.” The low phone in question? My exact phone.

So bear that in mind when you read through.

And now…

The Review:

Delivery and Some First Results

One of the immediately cool things I noticed about the service is that when I got a message it appeared as a text from the number that called me. Other than “spoken through SpinVox” appearing at the end of each message, they looked exactly like a text from the caller. That makes it really easy to call or text somebody back without having to dig up their number or dial anything. And hey, if the number is in your address book, you’ll know who it’s from before you even crack the message open. Beats cycling through a bunch of messages you have no need to hear, no? Special added bonus, you can also set up your SpinVox account to send a copy to your email!

There were, however, some issues that I encountered in my use of the service. One was with the delay in delivery of messages. How fast they made it from utterance to text seemed to vary anywhere from a couple minutes to as many as fifteen. Some were also dropped while others were delivered in random chronological order. I don’t know how much I can attribute this to my own carrier’s network or SpinVox, but I can provide an example of where things went wrong. (more…)

Speech Heads, mark down another tick in the distrubingly thick book of Awful Things That More People Than You Would Think Do While They Drive.

A recently released Vlingo-commissioned study executed by Toluna found that 26 percent of U.S. drivers willingly admit to driving while texting (DWT, Vlingo calls it), despite bans, and despite reports of sickening, face-smashing, hellfire accident reports about hapless souls who texted behind the wheel.

According to l’Agence France-Presse, which reported on the Vlingo study, “Last year, authorities in Los Angeles said the conductor of a train involved in a rail crash that left 25 people dead was sending text messages on his mobile phone during working hours.”

No indication if “during working hours” means while he was supposed to be conducting his train.

The Vlingo study maintains that Tennessee is the worst offender in the Union. A whopping 42 percent of Tennesseans distractedly TXT things to their contacts like lolz! can’t wait to c u 2nite while operating a motor vehicle.

Arizona had the lowest reported incidence with only 18 percent, making them more conscientious drivers or just better liars.

Age-wise, 60 percent of 16 to 19 year-olds admit to DWT, while 49 percent of 20 to 24 year-olds proffered their own confessions. Numbers drop off as age increases. Only 13 percent of respondents in their 50s came forward with admissions of DWT-guilt

The incidence of DWT coincides with an overall rise in text messaging. The study found that two thirds of Americans are now texting, up from a little more than half last year.

Perhaps hypocritically, 83 percent of respondents said that DWT should be illegal—-despite many doing it in places where it is illegal like D.C. (the number for D.C. must be higher than 18 percent according to Vlingo’s findings).

The report goes on to point out that though most people think it should be illegal, it is only illegal in seven states and in one of them, Rhode Island, only for drivers under the age of 18—-a subtextual push for political reform?

It’s not hard to see how these results would favor a company in the business of doing voice-to-text work and voice search work. A total ban on DWT, which exceptions for speech-driven iterations, would be a great boon to the company as well as others like it.

As me, I would just feel safer if there was a ban on my brother Adam B. driving—-speech enabled or not.

If you’ve caught today’s news Speech Heads, Mike McCue, co-founder of TellMe will be leaving the company come June.

It seems like all the news is coming up TellMe lately. If you’ll remember, last week we reported on some conflicting analysis on the significance of Microsoft/TellMe’s release of new in-the-cloud solutions. At contention between analysts Daniel Hong (of the Datamonitor variety) and Elizabeth Herrell (Forrester-flavored) was whether Microsoft was poised to really pose a threat to Nuance.

Whether or not that’s true, Nuance seems to be feeling some pressure from the TellMe/Microsoft tag team.

I was cleaning out my email and I noticed the following email blast from Nuance’s PR folks that came in a couple weeks ago:

“Today’s announcement is simply Microsoft looking to get back on the mobile industry map.  Their product is not only limited to Windows Mobile handsets, but just to those running the new 6.5 version of the OS.  Nuance Communications has long been offering these capabilities to all major OEMs and carriers with VSuite and NVC 2.0 for virtually any platform—smartphones and feature phones.  That’s why owners of more than 300 million phones worldwide—-from major OEMs such as Motorola, RIM and Samsung—-already enjoy one-button access to voice-enabled features with Nuance’s VSuite.”

“Today’s announcement” refers to an April 29th story that saw Windows Mobile 6.5 getting speech recognition courtesy of TellMe. I know this by no means new news, but I thought it might be good to illustrate the context in which last week’s piece was couched.

It’s not that often that you get a release from a PR agent about another firm. This rare tactical move on Nuance’s part  suggests some genuine concern. Most of the time a company will just let another’s announcements lie. Perhaps there is a fear that if speech goes native in the Windows Mobile OS, they will have a harder time convincing OEMs and carriers to pay to embed Nuance speech in their devices.

As we’ve reported before, Nuance’s entire business model in the mobile space is carrier/OEM facing. They move their wares through deals with companies like Motorola and Samsung rather than making any direct-to-consumer bids. If Windows viably threatens that model, it may put Nuance in a very precarious position on the mobile front.

When I asked my brother Adam B. what he made of all this Nuance on Microsoft/TellMe huff n’ puff, he only growled throatily, “It’s clobberin’ time!“

Hey Speech-Heads,

Check out this comic–all about speech technology–that was sent in by one of our Speech Tech Blog Readers!

When my Speech Brother Eric B. saw it, he said:  “I’m not sure I really understand it.”

Let the beauty pageant begin, Speech Heads!

Perhaps as a warming aperitif to our own 2009 Speech Industry Awards—-now accepting applications—-Voxeo has made Datamonitor’s 2009 “Decision Making Matrix” for the IVR space publicly available on their site.

Datamonitor recognized Voxeo and Genesys as the #1 slammin’ players in the IVR space this year. The two vendors “achieved the highest aggregated scores across technical capabilities, end-user sentiment and market impact rankings.”

Avaya, Cisco, Convergys / Intervoice and Nortel were also highlighted for their strong market presences, technical capabilities, but didn’t score as highly in end-user sentiment. Likewise, Aspect, Holly Connects and Syntellect were runner’ed-up as “viable contenders” with their own “unique strengths.”

The report has far more detailed explanations and considerations of where IVR has been historically and where it seems to be trending. Check out the full results HERE!

Also, if you feel yourself desperate for more speech awards and rankings, be sure to register for SpeechTek where the winners of the 2009 Speech Awards will be unveiled. I know that since we announced that we’d be taking entries, my brother Adam B. has been hyperventilating into a brown paper bag.

Speech-Heads:

My Speech Brother Eric B. just informed me that the Nomination Forms for the 2009 Speech Industry Awards are now ready, willing and waiting RIGHT HERE.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU0MF8pwktg[/youtube]

Today, The New York Times reported that Amazon’s Kindle 2 much vaunted text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities, provided by Nuance Communications, came up short when trying to pronounce President Barack Obama’s name. The device uttered something closer to Baah-raah-k O-baah-maah (closer to the sounds in “black” and “Alabama,” the Times said. The paper adds that the problem has since been corrected. Obama’s name has added to the Kindle’s TTS dictionary and will be included in the next wireless update.

The Kindle TTS misfire came to prominence as many news organizations began openly speculating on whether subsequent versions of the Kindle could create a viable non-paper-based means of distribution. Wired, for instance was running the headline “How the Next Kindle Could Save the Newspaper Business” in stories about partnerships the The New York Times and Washington Post were looking to hatch, while mediabistro.com pondered, “Can The Kindle Save Newspapers?” Whether any of that’s true, the failure of Kindle’s TTS to pronounce things like the President’s name correctly may put at least a temporary crimp in any role speech might in any Kindle paper-saving venture.

When it comes to that though, don’t blame Nuance. (more…)

The Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS) announced their fourth annual student speech application contest sponsored by AT&T, Cepstral, I6Net, Loquendo, Microsoft, Opera, and,Voxeo.

Applications must involve speech input and/or output, but may be pure speech or multimodal. Cash and/or equipment prizes valued at over $1000 will be awarded to teams of student programmers who design and create applications judged to be robust, useful, creative, innovative, and user friendly.

The contest encourages students to develop applications using speech technologies such as automatic speech recognition and text to speech synthesis and to combine them with other modalities. This year, students may use any of a variety of platforms including AT&T Speech Mashups, Cepstral VoiceForge TTS service, CMU’s RavenClaw/Olympus, Google Android, I6net VXI*, Loquendo VoxNauta Platform, LumenVox
Speech Engine Standard License, Microsoft Windows and Tellme VoiceXML Platform Opera, Voxeo Prophecy, and Voxeo Tropo.

Students anywhere in the world can submit their creative and innovative applications to be judged by speech application experts. The contest also provides a forum for students to show what they can do with the power of speech applications.

For more information and the contest entry form, check out this LINK.

Speech Heads, I don’t know how many of you are also readers of our sister site, DestinationCRM, but if you aren’t you might have missed this little tag-team approach my collegue Chris Musico and I had going on over there. We both covered Microsoft/TellMe’s recent launch of some speech-enabled functionality to their enterprise cloud-based offering.

Chris chatted the distance the venerable Elizabeth Herrell, vice president at Forrester Research, while I yaked it up longtime with the honorable Daniel Hong, lead analyst at Datamonitor, and the results couldn’t have been any more different. While both agreed that IVR was underutilized in the enterprise space, they had divergent views on what Microsoft’s more aggressive pursuit of speech meant for speech big dog Nuance.

While Ms. Herrell seems to think that Nuance better watch its eggs, Mr. Hong sees the releases as less significant and doesn’t think it will make a spit’s worth of difference to Nuance’s nest. Watch the sparks fly HERE and HERE.

“You won’t want to miss this clash of the titans,” says my brother Adam B.

Hey Speech-Heads,

Just a quick update to let you all know that the 2009 Speech Industry Awards are right around the corner.

Check out this link for all the pertinent information.

This year’s Speechies (R) (TM) are going to be Hot Hot Hot! As my Speech Brother Eric B. said:

“The awards are heating up–so hot that I’ve got a new pair of oven mitts just to handle it.”

And don’t forget Speech-Heads, the Speechies will be handed out at SpeechTek 2009–so be there or be square.