Speech Heads, I don’t know if you caught my story about VoiceTrust looking to extend its footprint via its new iPhone app, VoiceSafe, but back when I was working on the story spokesman Richard Tigges sent along some publicity screenshots of the program in action.

The pictures give you a little bit more of an idea of what the application looks like/does. In addition to storing passwords, credit card numbers, and all that sensitive information you’d expect to try and lock in a biometrics solution, you can also store secrets like:

• Someone’s birthday;
• The number to your alarm system; and
• The details of a one night stand.

It’s this last item which demands some attention. This may be some cultural ignorance on my part, VoiceTrust originates in Munich, Germany, but who stores the details of a night stand in their phone and then labels such details (obviously sensitive if they are being stored behind a biometric wall) “OneNightStand”?

You’ll note that it even has a little “XXX” logo next to it as if to make it more obvious. I tell you, I haven’t seen that kind of bone-headedness since my brother Adam B. got those binoculars from our dad for Christmas.

The GirlTech Password Journal has been given a make over for 2009, Dear Readers.

Even pinker than before, this iteration sports a new translucent shell and a new locking mechanism. The remake has been described by some as a drive to keep the girl-facing, biometric speech solution relevant in the current recessionary market-which has slowed the already recently slow biometric market.

The new locking mechanism may be a response to the old fold-over-styled security system that drew criticism for its perceived flimsiness. Version 6 now opens more like a book than a folder-version 5’s design, which numerous Amazon reviewers noted was easily pried open.

“It’s a piece of plastic. A nosy brother…who pries [sic] it open will break the lock,” noted reviewer K. Nettles of 5, adding, “This journal is not going to overcome problems with lack of mutual respect within a household.”

Since we haven’t been able to get a hold of a copy for ourselves, we can’t say whether these issues have been resolved. From pictures, though, it seems that the translucent cover produces new security concerns, namely that the contents are visible.

As for whether underlying speech technology supplied by embedded provider Sensory’s has been improved, we don’t know.

The journals actual ability to recognize a correct password and correctly establish a speaker’s identity has long been the source of critical ruminations in its decade’s long existence.

One review by Jed N. Kaplowitz contends that even though the journal “was so fickle about the way [my daughter] spoke the secret code, it wasn’t fickle at all about who entered it. Her brother’s voice worked just as well to open it, and it turned out my deeper voice opened [sic] it too. I could say a word that was close to the original and it would open,” he writes in an Amazon post titled “Made my daughter cry.”

“My daughter tried using it by hiding it in her room, but she quickly lost interest in it, and now it’s on the bottom of her toy box,” the post adds.

The GTPWJ also has its fair share of devotees of course; it has, after all, been in manufacture for 10 years.

One review by Lydia Cummings gushes “I own one, and it is such a wonderful thing to have!…I know all the secrets to owning it,” before offering a number of tips which require owning a piano and speaking your password at a consistent tone.

I asked Sensory’s CEO, Todd Mozer, if he knew whether there had been any updates for the GirlTech this time around and he wasn’t sure. Apparently, there are and have been a couple of different versions that are on the market.

By our own count there are six GirlTech versions, the Zizzle High School Musical (HSM) Secret Journal with Musical Password, the Bratz Passion 4 Fashion Secret Sign in Journal, and the Hannah Montana Secret Keeper Diary Journal.

Mozer says that the journal is his company’s longest running product, lasting something like 10 years.

“I’ve heard that it’s the best selling girl’s electronic product of all time. I’m confident it’s also the best selling consumer/low cost biometric product in the world,” he writes in an email to Speech Tech Blog.

Since its inception, the product has seen several IC upgrades and three technology upgrades. It’s gotten a ton more physical makeovers, too, and I expect we’ll keep seeing them if they keep selling. I expect my brother Adam B. will keep buying them too…

Well, well. I figured with Christmas upon us it would be kind of a slow week for the blog, but I have figured wrong.

There’s been an outpouring of response to my post about the GirlTech Password Journal (GTPJ). So far, the post has seen more comments than any in Speech Tech Blog history. A number of disgruntled Speech Heads have been writing in to say that they’re dissatisfied with the biometric speech solution. I can’t say for sure, but it seems like many of you out there have been coming to us, having maybe received one of these bad boys (well…girls, really) for Christmas feeling like you got the short end of the stick and looking for answers.

The chief complaint out there seems to be that the GTPJ not only keeps offending parties from reading the journal’s most private thoughts contained inside, but also the authorized user.

One reader put it best when he or she wrote, “MY 6 YEAR OLD SIXTER HAVE ONE BUT IT RUBISH.”

I have to admit, I’m kinda glad that we’ve tapped into a raw nerve here. Not only has it gotten a lot more people looking at the blog (always good), but it seems to be highlighting, in its own roundabout way, a perennial problem in speech: if you don’t spend a lot of money, there is a lot of short end of the stick to go around.

Because of high development costs and the increased centralization and consolidation of major sectors of the speech industry through mergers and acquisitions, this speech stuff has stayed relatively expensive for a long time. For large enterprises that can absorb the big expenses, quality hasn’t been an issue. They can spend the capital to get speech solutions that work with a high degree of accuracy and precision. However, when you’re making toys and are looking to keep costs low and maximize profits, that’s another story altogether.

I remember my sister’s Furby, for instance. That thing recognized what we were saying only maybe 30 percent of the time—and that’s probably being pretty generous. To keep toymaking costs low, the hardware and software on many speech-enabled kid’s products has been less than thrilling. This is particularly egregious when manufacturers make all sorts of promises to kids that the products just don’t deliver. The stuff never seems work like it does in the commercials, and many a child is left bawling mercilessly as his parents tear their hairs from the roots in wild frustration.

This isn’t true all over speech. We’re starting to see some positive movement in price, especially with speech-enabled smart phone apps–a lot of which are really good and free to boot. But speech, like history, doesn’t move in a straight line. So watch out.

I’ve said this all before when I warned “Caveat emptor” at the end of my original post about the GTPJ, but maybe I ought to translate this time around so there can be no question: Let the buyer beware. Yes, buyer beware, dear Speech Heads.

While we were all sleeping and unaware, the once fledgling field of Girl Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Mattel has released a state-of-the-art “Girl Tech Password Journal.”

The journal promises girls a secure voice recognition password system that should allow only the authorized user access to its treasure trove of secrets. The thing is a kind of plastic folder that physically locks itself and opens only when a user speaks the correct password. It also uses some rudimentary voice recognition software to ensure that no one who has surreptitiously learned the password—like say a meddlesome younger brother or a nosy parent—can get in.

Further still, the journal recognizes a few other voice commands like light, date, and time, which provide access to more sundry features found inside. And if that wasn’t enough, Mattel has also provided “double the privacy” with additional analog security features like its Magic Pen and Glow Light. When used in conjunction, the Pen and Light “will reveal [your most private thoughts] only to you. The page will look blank to prying eyes!”

The Girl Tech Password Journal is only one of a steadily growing number of toys that have been coming out with voice recognition technology embedded into them. As voice technology has improved and become cheaper, it has trickled down into all sorts of unexpected places with increased sophistication in its applications.

Girls, before you run out and get one though, a word of caution: the Password Journal has some notable security flaws. As with all voice technology in the toy price range, the functionality is compromised greatly in order to cut costs. This is no advanced biometric solution. We know of at least one parent who was able to get into gain access to his daughter’s most private thoughts by speaking her password over and over in a high falsetto.

Caveat emptor, dear reader.

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.]

(more…)

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]