Featured below is a special guest column written by Judith Markowitz, Ph.D. In addition to being a columnist for Speech Technology Magazine, she is also an independent analyst in the speech and voice biometrics fields. She can be reached at judith@jmarkowitz.com. She attended and spoke at the Voice BioCon in NYC last week, and sent us some of her impressions of the show.

The theme of the Opus Research Voice Biometrics Conference was “connecting the dots.” In his conference keynote Dan Miller made it clear that the dots Opus wanted to connect were business and market. Then, Miller established the groundwork for those connections by advocating that all segments of the industry view voice biometrics from a broad, business perspective. “Remember,” he said, “technology does not equal product, and product does not equal solution.”

[Click "More" for the rest of Dr. Markowitz's report.]

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Opus Research’s third annual Voice Biometrics Conference in NYC today.  As we’re actually preparing to ship the June issue, I’m not live blogging from it, so I can’t give a thorough convention report.

Voice biometrics strikes me as an area that people have a great deal of hope for, even if there aren’t a great deal of publicized consumer-facing deployments (especially in the US).  Still, Opus senior analyst Dan Miller thinks the market will pretty huge by 2011.

My understanding of it is that while the technology is there, vendors are still experimenting with how best to deploy it. Additionally, enterprise customers, as always, are a little hesitant to adapt this new technology.

For instance: End customers still don’t know what exactly the technology is. To the extent that the public thinks about biometrics at all, Hollywood has given them images of retinal scans (see: Demolition Man, Minority Report) or fingerprint scans (see: Men in Black, Bourne Ultimatum–though, ok, that movie did showcase voice biometrics being compromised).

So how do enterprises educate customers about voice biometrics?

Julia Webb, VoiceVault’s EVP of sales and marketing said user involvement is critical: enterprises should explain the benefits of voice biometrics to callers during the enrollment process, even at the expense of longer call durations.

In fact, Rex Stringham, president and CEO of EIG, said during a test, callers preferred a longer enrollment process so long as the benefits and the technology were explained. (He also said that the sampling was “sizable” though not statistically significant).

Stringham also said that immediately bombarding the caller with detailed explanations tended to lead to refusals to enroll. Start the dialogue, he said, assuming that no help is needed: “Assume everyone’s a power user until they prove you wrong.”

Miller pointed out that none of the voice biometrics panelists agreed on how to enroll a customer into the system. Problem: how do you make sure that the person whose voice print you’re collecting is in fact the person he claims to be?

Stringham conceded that voice biometrics offered a “semi-secure” password in that “once it’s established, it’s secure.”

Studies conducted by both Stringham and by Harris Interactive (on behalf of Nuance) indicated that customers wanted a combination of security and convenience. Occasionally, these can be mutually exclusive. So if the enrollment process is too convoluted, customers will opt out. Of course, if the enrollment process itself isn’t secure…well, that pretty much undermines voice biometrics as a useful layer of security.

How to reconcile this?  I don’t think there’s any agreement yet. Webb mentioned two extremes: on the one hand, you can send a password through the mail. On the other hand the FIPS 201 standard actually has people physically show up to register. They’re fingerprinted and a square inch of flesh off their back is hacked off and preserved for future reference (kidding about that last part).

Anyway, voice biometrics companies will have to come up with an effective middle ground.

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]