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.

Speech Recognition Software Hits Blackberry

SHAPE Services GmbH today announced the availability of a speech recognition feature in IM+, the mobile instant messenger. SHAPE has joined forces with Yap Inc., pioneer of the first fully automated voice-to-text platform, to add the first of its kind, thumbs-free message dictation feature to IM+ for BlackBerry(R) smartphones.

IM+ with speech recognition will allow users to dictate their instant messages and send them as text to their contacts in Facebook(R), AIM(R)/iChat, MSN(R)/Windows Live(TM) Messenger, Yahoo!(R), ICQ(R), Jabber(R), Google Talk(TM) and MySpaceIM. Recent studies indicate that over 70% of consumers prefer using voice to interact with their mobile devices rather than typing. Speech-enablement increases message creation speed and greatly improves the usability of instant messaging on mobile devices.

Consumers Seven Times More Likely to Respond to an Outbound Speech-Enabled Call than SMS -According to Environment Agency Survey

SpeechStorm has today revealed the results of an Environment Agency survey into proactive outbound notifications i.e. where a text message (SMS) or an automated phone call is used to proactively contact customers. The Environment Agency commissioned the survey to contact a selection of its small business customers and measure the effectiveness of SMS messaging versus outbound phone messaging to raise awareness of their Internet services. Working in partnership with outsourced contact center provider Teleperformance and using SpeechStorm’s Proactive Notification Suite the Environment Agency surveyed a sample of 250 customers using automated voice technology by phone and 250 using text messages. In each case the customer was alerted about new legislation and given a ‘call to action’ to find out more information online. The survey found that consumers are seven times more likely to act in response to a speech rather than an SMS notification. [click heading for more]