Hope you had a nice weekend! It’s raining here, and pretty miserable. We’ve been out for awhile due to an issue close, but should be back in action this week. Based on some news from RSS feeds, it looks like the day is getting off to a nice start, news-wise. And yes, that is a picture of William Shatner in his Star Trek days. And yes, this post mentions William Shatner as he relates to voice biometrics.

* BlackBerry announced its new BlackBerry Bold 9000, a new smartphone equipped with 3G capabilities. BlackBerry is one of a line of companies that have beat the new iPhone to the 3G finish line. Apple’s new version of the iPhone is expected to see a release this summer. The Bold phone is, “banking on the … sleek appearance to win over executives and field workers who’ve grown tired of sacrificing style for functionality.” I think that’s PR-speak for, “Please buy this instead of the iPhone. We made it look cooler.” [CRN]

* My favorite British pharmacy, Boots, announced it has chosen Intervoice to develop its natural language self-service application. [TMC]

* Another woman has joined the high ranks in the speech technology field — Susan Almeida will serve as vice president of global services for speech analytics provider CallMiner. You go, girl. [EarthTimes]

* Speech technology for Danish people. Yay! [PR.com]

* Sensory’s BlueGenie Lite = speech synthesis for Bluetooth devices. Todd Mozer, Sensory’s CEO, says in the article: “We’re able to replace all these awkward presses and beeping with speech.” Awkward presses and beeps - GONE. [Wireless Week]

* Every employee’s worst nightmare: Companies’ HR departments using voice biometrics to detect lying about sick days. Don’t ask me what ’skivers’ are; but it’s another funny British word to say. [Birmingham Post]

* Mother’s Day was yesterday, but I just found this article today. It’s about cool presents to buy your mom. My favorite is the ‘SmartShopper’, which uses voice recognition to store grocery lists. Great - groceries! Just what every mom wants to be reminded of on her special day. I’m also imagining the totally awesome possibilities regarding how this device could seriously mess up utterances. [The Sudbury Star]

* When I was growing up, my mom’s idea of enhancing my cognitive abilities was reading to me, and letting me watch PBS. Today? “Smart toys.” Experts say the toys, “contain technological enhancements that enable a child to form dynamic, emotional relationships. Smart toys incorporate microchips, voice recognition and wireless capability so that toy and child can spend quality time together.” This is so incredibly sad. Another ‘Baby Einstein’? I hope not, because it has been proven that ‘Baby Einstein’ does absolutely nothing that would make your child more intelligent. [The Telegraph]

* Umm…apparently William Shatner has an award called ‘William Shatner’s Heartbeat of America’ that he gives away. This year it went to a voice biometrics company. Voice biometrics: the heartbeat of America. [PR Web]

The mobile news will not stop! Today, news hit the Web that a 3G iPhone will likely be released this summer. A Bank of America analyst made the prediction: a small build of 3 million phones in May, followed by 8 million phones in June. The release of the 3G phones, which will come equipped with apps from the iPhone SDK (the beta with UI tools was released last week), could also coincide with (finally) speech on the iPhone. According that same report, Apple expects to sell 10 million 3G iPhones — analysts think this is wishful thinking; I tend to disagree. Why? Because everyone I know who owns an iPhone is my age (23), has a job paying less than $40K per year, and is willing to pay lots of money to have the newest Apple product. You can’t argue with the power of Apple Cult.

[Image courtesy of Station-A]

***Update: I got someone from TellMe on the phone. Read about their involvement with the iPhone here.***

Sure, March is the holy month for college basketball (FYI - Ryan is a UCLA fan; I’m an MSU girl), but here at Speech Tech, it’s Mobile Month. Even more news today! The sci/tech feeds at Google News are abuzz with stories about Microsoft partaking in the iPhone’s SDK. No big surprise — Microsoft would be silly not to want a stake in the Apple mobility space (and who doesn’t desperately want Excel spreadsheets at all times?). Though most stories report on the integration of the Office suite into the iPhone, a speech tech company, TellMe, is also rumored to be part of Microsoft’s iPhone app projects.

According to a PCWorld blog post, TellMe’s technology could be integrated into iPhone apps –

“Another group at Microsoft interested in the iPhone is from the voice recognition unit at Microsoft featuring the TellMe software that Microsoft recently acquired. TellMe is currently developing voice recognition software for the Windows Mobile operating system, but the iPhone SDK gives plenty of potential for the iPhone route as well.”

Woohoo! Not only is Nuance still on board with Android, but now we may see speech in the iPhone, as well. This also means we have more fuel for news on this here blog — it gives Ryan something to do aside from give us real-time updates about the Sweet 16. Of course, this is all still a gamble. Microsoft has apparently only been looking at the SDK for a few weeks, according to the same PCWorld blog post. Keep your fingers crossed, speech community.

[Photo illustration courtesy of our own Ryan Joe]

Crush: Developers Answering the Call from iPhone
Why We’re Loving It: We hope that of the 100,000 developers who downloaded the iPhone’s SDK will do something speech-related for the product. Though Google’s Android has been met with interest from companies like Nuance Communications, the iPhone’s fate with speech apps remains unclear. We didn’t get any TTS or STT last time, but maybe a group of speech-happy developers will change all that in coming years. Of course, the overwhelming response to the SDK release (those 100,000 downloads took place within just four days of the release) also brought up fears that some of the downloads came from hackers. For more on that, check out this article from eFluxMedia.

Hex: Directory Assistance - Paid, Ad-Based, or Free - You’ve Gotta Step It Up!
Why We’re Hating: After a conversation with a vendor about directory assistance, I was thinking a lot about how often I have been frustrated beyond belief with DA speech recognition errors. Though I prefer free services (I’m 23. I’m poor.), the inefficient, broad search capabilities irritate me beyond belief. But the real problem? Poor speech recognition, and an insane amount of sensitivity to background noise. When do people typically call DA? When they’re outside. Outside conditions in New York are not what you’d call “serene,” to say the least. In addition, people in bigger cities like NYC or LA seem more likely to tap DA: we have more streets, more stores, and five freaking boroughs. As far as ad-based search goes, I haven’t found that quality improves, even with developers’ increased spending capabilities from the ad support ($$$$$). Paid services? No way. It just reminds me of my grandmother dialing information and being connected on a switchboard operated by Lily Tomlin. Developers: people love DA; people need DA; people want DA. Don’t ruin a good thing.

Holy crap. Big news from Cupertino today! Resident Speech Tech heartthrob Steve Jobs announced that the long-awaited iPhone SDK will be published. You know what this means: let the app games wars begin. Since the iPhone debuted without speech, Apple opening up the floodgates to developers could come as a means for big-name vendors like Nuance to pounce.

For anyone who attended Conversations ‘07, you’ll remember [aside from the 90-degree Boca weather] the short video aired at one of the mobile session opening speeches. In the video, a guy using an iPhone performs various Web searches using his voice — he navigates pages, writes reviews, and gets directions. So while a lot of people in my generation [30-and-under] still aren’t entirely sold on the idea of TTS and STT (I know I’m going to get flack for saying that, but you’re hearing it from a REAL 23-year-old with tons of iPhone-using friends), I’d be interested in seeing how speech heavyweights might take part in the app-building process. And if anyone would use it.

Don’t think I’m too cynical, though — OK, I am. I also enjoy playing devil’s advocate. What do you think about speech + the iPhone? I’m still curious as to the possible implications of that little speech patent Apple released in December ‘07, and how speech recognition could play a part in the next iPhone, or in its SDK.

Related Stories:
- Apple Prepares iPhone SDK [eFM]

[Image: SiliconValleySleuth]