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!“

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.

Now back in the loving embrace of our New York offices, I thought I’d take a look back at Voice Search and give you Speech Heads out there some final views.

Like all trade shows, there was of course a fair amount of wheeling and dealing-companies ponying up to each other, seeing if they could hew together some kind of symbiotic relationship that would produce some killer solution capable of reaping mega profits. Sort of like a Power Ranger’s Megazord, those giant fighting robots the Rangers had that were made up of various other smaller robots.

In all that hubbub, it was pretty clear that there were three companies that everyone was looking to try and integrate their offerings into: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

There was hardly a minute between sessions I didn’t see Michael Cohen from Google or the gaggle of Microsoft folks not surrounded by eager speech impresarios. Marc Davis from Yahoo, who was only in town for a couple of hours to boost oneSearch at his keynote, was literally deluged by a crush of people wanting to exchange business cards (full disclosure: me too!) before he had to jet back to San Francisco.

The prevailing feeling at the conference, as I described in my last dispatch, was that mobile voice search is  where it was at; that there we would see real and massive growth for speech in the coming years. All heads were turned to giants like Google and Microsoft to lead the way, too. They, many feel, could provide the shake up that speech has really needed.

The field has been kind of limited in scope for the last pack of years. Until late, it hadn’t really expanded too far beyond the places it’s traditionally been found: call centers, command-and-control functionality, and dictation. Without new territory, speech has plugged along without ever seeing explosive growth. With the entrance of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo into voice search, the speech community seems to be excited by the possibilities, and, though they might be reluctant to say it on the record, some of the potential changes in players.

It’s no state secret that Nuance has been dominating speech, acquiring technologies like IBM’s patents, or Philips’ speech, and a slew of others. In the process, as you might find in any aggressive climb to the top, it’s stepped on quite a few toes getting there and has no shortage of discontents. You don’t have to push too hard to get people griping about Nuance in San Diego.

“In a market where there hasn’t been a big brother, [Nuance] rolled up into one,” Joseph Bentzel, chief marketing officer for SpeechCycle and, it should be noted, a competitor, told me. “But in a market where there are bigger brothers doing it for free and virally…” he added before trailing off with half a smile and letting his pause sketch out the possibilities.

While Nuance has cast a large shadow over speech, acquiring its way to the top, building a strong speech provider out of a company that originally just handled OCR scanner software, ScanSoft, Mr. Bentzel thinks it’s reached the end of the line as far as being the undisputed king of speech. By his account, voice search will grow the market and create a space outside of Nuance’s purview.

“Nuance will not exist as a leader in 24 months unless Paul Ricci [Nuance's CEO] reads this article and hires me,” Mr. Bentzel jokes.

Part of Nuance’s problem, as he sees it, is that they’ve tried to become the one-stop solution for all speech needs. They’ve tried to control the process from the ground up, acquiring and integrating technologies into their own banner. This has had the effect of freezing other companies out, and, in some cases, making them hostile.

“This is the Rebel Alliance,” Mr. Bentzel says of Voice Search. “This is the Luke Skywalker Show. We’re on the ice planet and they’ve ignored us.”

While he seems totally at ease comparing Nuance to the Empire from Star Wars, Mr. Bentzel is also quick to say that everyone in speech ought to “thank Paul Ricci for putting speech on the map.”

“I’m not one of these Nuance haters,” he insists. He says he’s more or less agnostic and only sees problems where market growth is impeded, so forget about thinking he views Ricci as some kind of Darth Vader force-choking everyone at the table.

In fact, he suggests that there wouldn’t be much speech out there without Nuance’s drive to make it a big business.

Mr. Bentzel’s position (and others like his) represents an attitudinal shift in how the field has come to view itself. If I, or anyone else for that matter, made the mistake of saying “speech industry,” there were a group of people on hand, just ready pounce, saying, “Speech isn’t an industry, it’s a tool.” Speech is starting to see itself as a subordinate modality to larger functionality, not an end in and of itself the way it has been viewed in its more academic roots.

If you don’t believe me, just try saying “speech industry” for yourself at SpeechTek in August. When you walk into that trap, they’ll whip out that little tool mantra like it were a brand new gun they’d just been itching use and you were the hapless mugger who made the mistake of trying something today.

It’s a crazy mixed up world out there, Speech Heads. Even without the recession, everything is in flux and it seems like everyone is trying something today. Carry a speech-gun and watch your back is my advice.

***SPECIAL NOTE: Due to an oversight entirely on my part, we had erroniously reported that Nuance didn’t have much of a presence at Voice Search. In fact, they did. Brad Bargan, Nuance’s VP of product development, participated in several events. My most humble apologies to them and to our readers.***

Good morning! This post is coming to you super-early, because I have way too much to do later today. So, before my boss creeps in, here’s all the news for the week so far. Our faithful, intrepid managing editor Len hath returned from the Genesys G-Force conference (read his posts about G-Force here), and he’ll have more to report to you in coming days. Such as what he did with the Genesys-emblazoned belt buckle … and how the rest of the office kind of wants it to add to our wall of “free stuff vendors send us.” So, unless you’re totally intrigued by how Xerox (haha, remember photocopies?) plans to compete with Google and Salesforce, or that giant squid is still freaking you out (hello, it has the world’s largest eyes), follow the jump for less-disgusting news stories! [Speech Tech Blog, Information Week, Associated Press]

(more…)

I wish there were two of me. No, seriously — except not in that creepy way portrayed in the venerable film Mulitiplicity. Because, seriously, there is way too much news on which to report for this issue of Round Up & Release. So sit back and relax, unless you live in California, because, according to scientists, you will be hit with a catastrophic earthquake within the next 30 years. No! Google! Apple! I’m already sad.
(more…)

Since I enjoy writing “Crushes & Hexes” so much, in the coming weeks, the blog will continue to feature breaking news updates from Ryan, while I focus only on regular features and product reviews. The newest addition to our features is “Round Up & Release,” a compilation of the biggest stories and developments from the speech tech world. While “Crushes & Hexes” focuses on the tech community as a whole, RR&R is just about speech. I hope you like it – it will appear every Thursday on the blog. As always, keep the comments coming, and send us feedback! Seriously, Ryan and I get all giddy when our readers comment. Sad but true — it’s the small things. Full post after the jump!

(more…)

***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]

Back in New York! Totally forgot that flights from Orlando are always 70%-occupied by small children and screaming babies. The whole flight was like a big tribal gathering, complete with shouting and the sounds of kids playing with their newest toys. Yeah. I’m glad to be back in New York. So, let’s get rolling on what was arguably the biggest presentation at VoiceCon. Cisco wrangled in Al Gore to participate in a live meeting with other panelists via Cisco’s TelePresence product. What is TelePresence? It’s a fancy word for videoconferencing! Gore was in Nashville, Cisco president & CEO John Chamber was in California, and there was also a British reporter in London involved. Each of these panelists was projected on to a TV set in the VoiceCon keynote room. Three big talking heads in one room! It was hard to contain my joy.

All criticism aside, Cisco gets major props for doing something the other keynotes didn’t — they not only showed how their technology worked, but tied it in to their presentation’s title, “Climate Change and Technology Innovation.” Rather than fly all three panelists in to Orlando, they saved major bad-carbon by using TelePresence to conduct the panel. The picture was extremely clear, never broke up, and it was easy to hear everyone. A little piece of my cold, black heart melted. The company’s main point: using videoconferencing not only saves travel expenses, but allows a company to use technology as part of a green initiative. Nevermind the fact that one session I attended said videoconferencing creates the “appearance” that your company has a green program (the “appearance” — surely you can do better than that).

So, major ups to Cisco’s Sue Bostrom for being one of the most well-spoken presenters at VoiceCon – she was also the ONLY female keynote speaker – and gave a clear speech without sounding like a well-trained robot. You go, girl. An illustrated wrap-up follows after the jump!

(more…)

Greetings from the Orlando Airport! I’m wearing black clothing (anticipating cold NYC weather), but 99 percent of the people here are dressed like they just stepped out of Epcot. Also, lots of fanny packs. Anyhow, VoiceCon ended today. Though I wanted to live-blog every day, I was unable to do so for a few reasons: my MacBook was set on “better performance” and my battery kept dying; the conference’s free WiFi network always gave me only ONE BAR during sessions and keynotes; and I was busy every day from 730 am – 830 pm (usually, the people at VoiceCon looked at me like I was insane for staying that late, and kicked me out). So, yes — mini-traumas aside, I enjoyed the conference.

Usually, I’m holed up in the Speech Tech, sucked into the world of ASR, IVR, TTS, STT, ACD, and VUI. This time, I got to check out some UC solutions that will have a real impact on the contact center space. The biggest issues in UC/VoIP? Interoperability, integration, tons of “strategic partnerships.” I was reminded of Forrester analyst Brian Haven’s keynote speech at Nuance Conversations at several VoiceCon keynotes. The message from both speeches was the same: companies need to wise up to their changing consumer and employee demographics — and, with a plethora of information available at one’s fingertips, the enterprise must adapt and embrace the changing nature of business relations. This extends past presence and UC/UM sessions; it also penetrates the contact center and overall IT infrastructure. Head geeks, unite — VoiceCon was all about you. Read on for some of my favorite sessions’ highlights…

(more…)

This is a transcript of the morning keynote panel between

Bill Meisel, President, TMA Associates

Mike Cohen, Manager, Speech Technology Group, Google

Victor Melfi, Chief Strategy Officer & Senior Vice President, Marketing, VoiceBox Technologies

Neal Bernstein, Senior Director, Local & Mobile Search, Microsoft

Michael Wehrs, Vice President, Evangelism & Industry Affairs [Ed: Yes, that is his real title], Nuance Communications

John Tadlock, Lead Technical Architect, Consumer Application Architecture, AT&T

I typed the discussion out as I listened. So if it’s a little sloppy in parts…tough tamales, readers.

I did this for two reasons. First, it was a really good debate and the panelists gave some great information that I was unable to include in the daily Speech Tech news story. I just didn’t have enough space.

The second reason is because one panelist calls another an “ignorant slut” [Ed: According to staffers here, this phrase originates from SNL's Weekend Update editions with Jane Curtin...and is hilarious in the context of voice search.]. I wanted to share that.

And yes. Yes. You’re welcome.

Meisel: Voice search is vague and we’ve kept it vague for this conference. Voice search is a way of implying, like web search, that you can get things quickly and easily. How do you see this paradigm? What can we do with it?

Answers after the jump!

(more…)