First Carrier-Deployed Voice-to-SMS Application Hits iPhone App Store

Promptu Systems Corporation today announced that the Italian version of its fully automated voice-to-text messaging application created for Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) is now available to Italian iPhone owners from Apple's App Store.

Like Promptu's forthcoming ShoutOUT, dettaSMS lets Italian speakers dictate their text messages in fluent, natural speech, instead of typing on the iPhone's touch-screen keypad. Transcribed SMS messages can be reviewed, edited and appended to before being sent.

"dettaSMS is the world's first carrier-deployed voice-to-text SMS iPhone application," said Giuseppe Staffaroni, Promptu's CEO. "To insure privacy, security, and scalability, message transcription is completely automatic -- no human is involved."

dettaSMS is integrated with Telecom Italia Mobile's billing system and built on Promptu's network speech recognition (NSR(TM)) architecture for speed, accuracy and scalability. Promptu's fully automated speech recognition delivers high accuracy, low latency and unparalleled security. User privacy is assured because the real-time voice signal is never processed manually.

Voice recognition will kill 118 service

VOICE RECOGNITION specialist, Nuance, is predicting the end for premium rate directory assistance services. Especially, it sees the likes of the moustached 118 118 service in Britain, for example, going down the Swanee.The reason is quite simple. Nuance has a complete range of products which will entirely dispense with the need for human-powered interactive directory services.
The company can already claim to have handled half a billion automated directory enquiries in 2008 which have utilised Nuance technology..
Typically, Nuance powered directory services use voice recognition to guide callers to their ultimate objective. The service normally only needs to ask the caller three questions before providing the appropriate telephone number.
Nuance actually claims - almost certainly correctly - that the majority of UK directory enquiries calls which aren't free are placed by corporate employees who don't give a fig about the cost.
When the corporate money dries up, it argues, such employees will be faced with paying for directory searches. There are several ways out of this dilemma.
The most significant option will be to place search technology onto mobile phoneswhich can look through an on-device addressbook and then go out onto the Net to obtain a number.
Rather than requiring the handset's user to key in text, the software will utilise speech recognition to create the search string. [click heading for more]

Speech Recognition on the iPhone, Via Vlingo

iPhone owners can download a free Vlingo app through the iTunes App Store. Much like the Blackberry software, the application lets users place phone calls to people in their contact lists by speaking their names, and initiate Web searches by speaking their search terms. (There’ a nice video here explaining all of the application’s features.) But unlike the Blackberry app, Vlingo’s iPhone app can also be used to search local business listings and see the results on a map—for example, by speaking an inquiry such as “movie theaters in Boston.” And it lets users dictate status-update messages that are posted instantly to their Facebook or Twitter accounts. [click heading for more]

North American Directory Assistance Is "Best of the Best."

Over the past eighteen months, user-paid directory assistance (DA) providers performed at levels that are almost as high as statistically possible. This makes the United States' DA service "the best of the best."

There are three components that drive the accuracy of DA: the automated front-end systems, the operators and the databases. According to the Fall, 2008 National Directory Assistance Performance IndexSM, an independent analysis published semi-annually by The Paisley Group, Ltd. (PGL), automated systems are performing at 98.7% accuracy, operators at 99.0% accuracy and databases at 95.7% accuracy. This results in 94.3% of all calls being handled accurately. The margin of error is +/- 2.6%. 

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Speech technology improves service at council

Warwickshire County Council employees have entered their names into a new speech recognition system, to automatically direct customers to the person they want to speak to.

The speech technology, by Macfarlane, will ask incoming customer calls for the name of the person they wish to speak to.

The system will then match them to names contained in its database, and route calls through to the correct telephone extensions. [click heading for more]

GOOG-411 arrives in Canada

Search engine giant Google has launched their GOOG-411 service in Canada.
The service was till now available only in the US market.
GOOG-411 is Google’s voice-recognition local search phone service which enables anyone with a telephone to dial in and ask for nearby destinations. [click heading for more]

Call Genie and vlingo Announce Combined solution for mobile search with natural language capabilities

Call Genie Inc. and Vlingo Corp. today announced they have partnered to deliver a comprehensive multi-modal mobile search platform that enables 'on the go' consumers to access information anytime, anywhere. [click heading for more]

The Paisley Group’s NDA Performance IndexSM Finds

Over the past twelve months, user paid directory assistance (DA) providers performed at levels that are almost as high as statistically possible, making the United States’ DA service “the best of the best.”
There are three components that drive the accuracy of DA: the automated front-end systems, the operators and the databases. According to the National Directory Assistance Performance IndexSM, an independent analysis published semi-annually by The Paisley Group, Ltd. (PGL), automated systems are performing at 98.7% accuracy, operators at 98.3% accuracy and databases at 95.0% accuracy resulting in 91.0% of all calls being handled accurately. The margin of error is +/- 3.2%. [click heading for more]