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]

You may remember my previous review of free voicemail and STT provider YouMail. Well, rather than writing a freaked-out and angry email or making a furious phone call, the people at YouMail were kind enough to do a follow-up interview with me following my review. We went over how to better use the features and navigate the system (I griped that the prompts were often confusing and hard to understand). I let them share their piece, and got some first-hand advice on how to use the system.

So, after speaking with them, I can say this: because I’m lazy, I like this service. I do not care about the ability to make personalized greetings for my callers, nor do I want transcriptions. My favorite feature is the audio file of each voicemail, which is sent automatically to my email account. Yes, I am too lazy to pick up my phone and actually call into my voicemail. Instead, I can put on my headphones and listen to the file play. Sometimes, for laughs, I read over the voicemail they transcribed and see how horribly wrong the technology was. One more YouMail bonus: when playing back your voicemails, they start with the most recent one first. Gnarly.

The verdict: because I’m a sloth, I liked YouMail’s service. One facet of it. And, because I’m too lazy to cancel my account, I’m keeping YouMail for now. Am I excited about this? I don’t know. I’m also apathetic.

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]

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.
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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!

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It’s time for another edition of the Speech Tech blog’s regular feature, “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we highlight companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: Speech Tech Pro Translates The Four Questions
Why We’re Loving It: Murray Spiegel and Rickey Stein, friends who met at New Jersey’s Kol Dodi community choir, have translated the four questions of Passover into 300 languages. [That's 1200 questions...but I'm bad at math.] The story of how the two met and formulated the idea is even more endearing:

“[The two] might never have discovered how much they had in common if Stein had not overheard Spiegel talking about translating the Four Questions into Klingon during a rehearsal break.”

Spiegel, who works in the speech technology field, co-authored the book 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions with Stein. And with Passover coming up (11 days, people!), the book should make a nice addition to anyone’s seder. The book sells for $39.95, and comes with a CD and DVD. And this passage from the previously linked article further indicates why Stein and Spiegel are so awesome:

…[T]he emphasis is on the link between culture and language. For example: How do you translate “leavening” into Gujarati (India) when the language has no word for “yeast,” or into Polish, which has five synonyms for “leavening”?

Hex: Mobile Phones…on Airplanes. Seriously? Why?
Why We’re Hating: Have you ever flown from New York to Florida? Minneapolis to Los Angeles? Anywhere? Great. The actual experience of flying is painful enough [delays, non-edible food, flat soda, movies like I Am Legend], and airlines are about to make it a lot less tolerable. In Europe, officials are beginning a testing phase that would let fliers talk on their mobile phones during flights. Great. Just great. Not only do I have to hang out with screaming babies, but now I get to hear the businessman next to me yelling at some poor secretary, and the 15-year-old boy talking to his girlfriend for three hours (”Baby, I love you…and my retainer…”) And who would I be? That 23-year-old that makes everyone listen to my L’il Mama “Lip Gloss” ring tone every time I get a call. AND, can you imagine if these phones were speech-enabled?! That opens up a whole other can of worms — “I SAID I WANT TO GO TO YAHOO.COM!!!!!” But, if you’re in the U.S., don’t fret. So far France is one of the only countries offering the service.

[Photos from DylanGreene & CartoonStock]

Well, I would, if it hadn’t already passed, and I was Catholic. You may remember my announcement last week that I’m testing a new product and will post my reviews on the ST blog. So, which vendor am I reviewing? Hints: it’s related to mobile, free [I <3 beta], and integrates Web 2.0 into its business plan. The full scoop after the jump!

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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]

It’s time for another edition of the Speech Tech blog’s regular feature, “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we highlight companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: Speech Technology in the Mobile Market
Why We’re Loving It: After a few days of uncertainty regarding Nuance and Android, we got a definitive answer yesterday from Mike Thompson at Nuance (see yesterday’s post). The verdict: “We’re actively participating,” Thompson says. Cha-ching! In other Nuance news, the company announced it had signed a multiyear deal with Samsung to incorporate its speech recognition technologies into Samsung mobile phones. But one of the biggest news items was SpinVox’s $200 million-announcement: the company received that much in fundraising rounds with investors like Goldman Sachs. After an impressive showing at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, SpinVox has really been hitting it big-time, and with the $200 million, they’ll be doubling the number of mobile providers carrying its voicemail-to-text technology, as well as investing in an Advanced Speech Group in Cambridge.

Hex: Vishing - Giving VoIP and Contact Centers a Bad Name
Why We’re Hating: Following VoiceCon, I kept in touch with Krishna Kurapati, president of voice and information security company Sipera Systems. He sent me a brief email yesterday about “vishing,” or the use of VoIP/Internet phones to trick callers into thinking they’re getting in touch with a call center, when in fact their personal information is being poached by fraudsters. I’m too young to remember, but my mom tells me that people were hesitant to use ATMs when they first hit the scene — I worry that, because VoIP is still relatively new to the call center, that this will make people not afraid of speaking with their company, but also help them learn more about identity protection. In a February 2008 article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, writer Teresa Mcusic put it this way:

These so-called “vishing” attempts are on the increase because costs are going down for international phone calls, thanks to Internet phones, and identity-theft call centers are popping up all around the world targeting the U.S.

[Photos courtesy Wikipedia & SecureComputing.com]