So it turns out I could have cashed in my government bonds and bought EDS, guys. Because I own almost $14 billion in bonds, right? Sure. Anyway, HP announced today that it’s buying Texas-based Electronic Data Systems. You might recognize EDS from our own little magazine–EDS’ Alex Halikias writes a column for us called “Inside Outsourcing.”

The announcement means HP will be able to stake a claim in the technology outsourcing space, and directly compete with IBM. As more ginormous companies and government agencies turn to outsourcing tech projects, the market is expected to grow, according to analysts quoted in the news article. The acquisition means HP will now have 210,000 employees in 80 countries. Whoa — we have three editors at Speech Tech.

HP makes the big bucks in selling printers, PCs, and servers, but also made $16.4 billion in revenue in business consulting. The EDS acquisition will only further strengthen the company’s grip on business and technology consulting. We’ll keep you updated with news when we hear more. Also, EDS’ CEO, Ron Rittenmeyer, will stay on board with the same title. [MercuryNews.com]

In other news– Though Nuance ended its second fiscal quarter with revenue above expectations, the stock has been sliding. Goldman Sachs analyst Derek Bingham is quoted in the article as saying:

“Nuance’s March report showed that the company’s Network Speech business is not immune from macro slowing, consistent with slowdowns we’ve seen in other large-deal areas of software.”

The company’s stock is down almost 7 percent today. [Barron's]

[Image: LearnMergers.com]

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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Yes, we’re crushing on the mobile market…unless your name is Motorola. As you might have heard, in 2009 Motorola will RAZR off (sorry, couldn’t resist) its money-hemorrhaging mobile devices group. From what I’ve been reading, Moto execs rode the RAZR’s success as a fashion accessory at the expense of furthering innovation.

Gizmodo published today a pretty pissed-off letter to Motorola CEO Greg Brown from Numair Faraz, former adviser to ex Motorola CMO Geoffrey Frost. The exact ins-and-outs of why the Motorola handset division failed isn’t within the purview of Speech Technology Magazine, however Faraz says something interesting towards the end of his missive:

Understand that the next big feature in handsets isn’t a camera or a music player — it is social connectedness; build expertise in this area, and sell it down the entire value chain.

This is consistent with what Nuance Mobile’s VP Mike Thompson told me: “The interesting expansion point is that not only are command and control of the device important, what’s emerging as a fast-growing trend is connectivity to the mobile internet…”

What role does voice have in all this? Well, you need the right applications to attain this sort of connectivity and, given the nature of mobility, it’s likely that those apps will require multimodal interfaces. GUI is a big limitation if you’re navigating rush-hour traffic. Speech rec, according to Daniel Hong in today’s news story, is essentially an “enabler” for these important mobile applications.

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]

We had the following comment attached to a previous post:

Re Android: Google seem to have quietly removed the speech.recognition package from the Android API. I say quietly: the removal is noted in the API Diff specification for M3-RC37a to M5-RC14, released 15th Feb, but I haven’t been able to find any more public announcements - for example, it wasn’t mentioned in the m5-rc-14 release announcement.

Google have also not responded to a couple of queries about android.speech.recognition on the android-developers mailing list.

I was also very interested when Android was launched last November, especially with the involvement of Nuance, and the prospect of an accessible speech tech API. However, the speech tech parts of the Android API were never made available and now they’ve been removed. It’ll be interesting to see what the iPhone has to offer.

I had Mike Thompson, vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile on the line yesterday so I asked him if indeed the speech recognition package had been dropped.

The Nuance response, from Mike Thompson:

No that’s not true. The outlook is just as positive as it has been all along. We’re actively participating. The exact release cycle of their SDK, what’s included and what’s not, why things get included and why things don’t, I don’t know all the details of that but things are very positive on that front and marching in the same strategic direction they were.

If there’s more to report, I will.

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!

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