Windows Mobile gets enhanced voice-command capability

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Microsoft Corp. has high hopes that a new speech-recognition application for the forthcoming Windows Mobile operating system will be attractive enough to draw people to the phone platform.

Microsoft today planned to announce a new service that will work on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices and will let people speak into the phone to search the Internet, make phone calls and dictate text messages. Thetechnology comes from Tellme Networks Inc., a company that offers hosted voice recognition services and was acquired by Microsoft in 2007.

Zumba Phone May Revolutionize Phone Industry

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A handset with an unlikely name is being touted as potentially revolutionising the industry, due to what its makers claim is the world’s most accurate voice recognition system.
The Zumbafone could be available by the end of this year, according to reports.
The innovation is a circular pad that can be placed over the ear and detaches from a small handset that contains a circular dial pad and screen. Simply removing the earpiece pad from the handset activates a connection to the internet. You then simply say the name of a contact to dial a number or send a text. When you receive a text it can them be read out to you.
No contact information is stored on the handset itself, with all data being held ‘in the cloud’, which the makers say makes the phone 100 per cent secure. As it is fully tied to voice recognition, the claim is that if lost, the phone cannot be used by anyone else. [click heading for more]

Nuance’s VSuite 3 Ships on Latest Katana Series Handsets by SANYO

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Nuance’s VSuite ® software is commercially available on the latest Katana series mobile handsets by SANYO. VSuite 3 enables the voice command and control capabilities featured on the Katana® Eclipse and Katana® LX handsets.

The latest Katana series handsets by SANYO give users the power of VSuite’s innovative speech recognition application to place calls, find contacts and launch their favorite applications with simple, easy voice commands that work without any voice or user training required. All commands and responses guide users with both visual and audio cues. The Katana LX and Katana Eclipse handsets also feature Nuance’s T9® predictive text software.

Yahoo OneSearch 2.0 slowly spreads voice search

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On Thursday, Yahoo slipped voice recognition into the OneSearch 2.0 home-screen shortcut--available for a smattering of Nokia Series 60 phones--and in the Yahoo! Go 3.0 files for select BlackBerry, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia Series 60 models, such as the BlackBerry Curve and high-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. Those using older versions of either of these apps will have to download them anew to get the chatty update.

Operating the voice search is simple--on BlackBerry, just hold down on the green 'talk' button and speak your search term. OneSearch will start scouring Yahoo's database for answers as soon as you let go. Nokia owners can hit the pencil key to get going. Those without pencil keys will launch tier search by pressing the right shortcut key (labeled Y! OneSearch) and speaking or typing into the search box that appears. [click heading for more]

Nokia Picks Nuance For Speech Recognition And More; Will Open Up Technologies To Developers

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Nokia is signing a multi-year deal worth "tens of millions of dollars" with Nuance Communications in an unusual arrangement, where Nokia will not only license Nuance's speech-recognition and predictive text technologies to use internally, but also to make them available to developers working with Nokia. Michael Thompson, GM for Nuance's mobile business unit, said in an interview that the deal is being called "the Open Interface Framework," however declined to give many specifics about the program, including when it would launch and whether developers would have to pay a fee to participate. [click heading for more]

'Say Where' Enables Speech-Recognition Queries on iPhone

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Say Where, the first speech-recognition application for iPhone, launched Monday. My thoughts after some testing can be summed up as concisely as, "Thank God it's here," "It's pretty cool" and "It's free, so you should definitely try it."
A common complaint about iPhone has been the handset's lack of speech-recognition capabilities. Despite iPhone's versatility, the phone can't recognize voice commands to dial a contact, for example. To be clear, Say Where doesn't enable iPhone to translate speech into text messaging or dialing a contact, but it's a step in that direction: The app recognizes voice commands for Google Maps, Yelp, Traffic or Yellow Page queries. [click heading for more]