Sybase and Toyota Receive Patents for Embedded Mobile Search

The iAnywhere subsidiary of Sybase has teamed up with a division of automobile giant Toyota to win a couple of patents in the mobile voice search domain. According to a press release issued (November 12, 2007), “Sybase iAnywhere and Toyota InfoTechnology Center Co., LTD. … have been awarded joint U.S. patents (number 7,228,275 and 7,292,978) on techniques to significantly improve open conversational speech-recognition-based interfaces.” The patents arise from development work that the two companies conducted to support speech recognition in cars. [click heading for more]

Free Cell Phone Direction Service Gets Voice Recognition Boost

Dial Directions said its free service, DIR-ECT-IONS, is now available in all cities in the continental United States. The service relies on speech recognition and voice interface technology. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other metro areas launched a limited release over the summer.
Callers tell the voice-activated service their originating location and their destination and receive instant text messages with MapQuest driving directions. [click heading for more]

The United States FBI Selects Dragon NaturallySpeaking Speech Recognition Software from Nuance

Nuance Communications today announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has selected Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® through Nuance’s Site License Program (SLP) in order to offer speech recognition capabilities throughout the FBI. In an effort to boost efficiency and keep pace with an ever-increasing workload, the FBI will make Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal available to agents and professional support staff across the entire organization, enabling them to quickly and accurately create comprehensive reports, interviews and other documents by voice, increasing productivity by three times over manual typing. [click heading for more]

VeCommerce appoints new General Manager to drive adoption of speech recognition in EMEA

Maidenhead, 9th November 2007, VeCommerce, a leading supplier of voice self-service and speaker verification solutions has appointed Brett Feldon as its General Manager, EMEA, to develop the company’s operations in the region. The company has seen a rapid increase in the demand for speech recognition solutions during 2007 and expects this to increase a further 30% in 2008.

Brett commented, “We have had great success in designing solutions for both the financial services and betting industries and more recently have developed speech recognition platforms for other applications such as flight information for Dublin Airport. We also have plans to enter new markets that VeCommerce is already addressing internationally, including the public sector and utilities, and the continued development of our voice biometric security applications that help reduce fraud and identify theft.”

Cutting Costs and Keeping Customers With Speech Self-Service

Speech-enabled IVR is top-of-mind for many companies. As call centers look for ways to reduce cost, speech applications have traditionally been one of the lower cost alternatives. Over the next 12 to 18 months, 30 percent of Best in Class companies plan to implement a speech self-service application. [more...]

The state of the art in machine conversation: HAL's still pure Hollywood [ars technica]

Anyone who has followed science fiction will remember the soothing voice of HAL, the computer that methodically killed all but one of the crew of the space ship it controlled. Perhaps the most compelling scene in the movie is the conversation that HAL had with the lone survivor as he inactivated the computer. The scene was notable largely because the conversation seemed so normal; HAL's end of it seemed positively human. A perspective in today's issue of Science takes a look at the prospects of creating computers that can mange this feat, and engage in natural-sounding conversations. [more...]

Loquendo TTS & ASR Powers Umanify's Interactive Digital Assistants

To bring life to Interactive Digital Assistants from Umanify, Loquendo has been chosen to provide their speech recognition and text-to-speech engines to power Umanify's umanServer Enterprise 2.6 conversational agent's platform. Not only do the assistants look realistic and life-like, but now, thanks to Loquendo TTS and Loquendo ASR, they are also able to understand, listen and speak with customers in an intelligent and expressive manner. [more...]

Philips gets rid of Medquist

Philips confirmed yesterday its intention to sale its 70% ownership interest in transcription software company MedQuist. MedQuist provides medical transcription technology and services in the United States. It also offers digital dictation, speech recognition, electronic signature, and medical coding technology and services.

Toshiba welcomes new addition to the family

LORD Rees, president of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College, has officially opened the Toshiba Cambridge Research Laboratory on the science park.

Toshiba has three main areas of research underway in the new building, in quantum physics, speech recognition and computer vision. The speech recognition team is working on a system that will be trialled at next year's Beijing Olympics, where users will be able to speak to a small PC which will translate what has been said in, say, English, into Chinese.

Soliloquy Learning Revamps Soliloquy Reading Assistant

Soliloquy Learning, Inc. has updated its signature program, Soliloquy Reading Assistant, which combines advanced speech recognition technology with scientifically-based interventions to help elementary and secondary students strengthen their reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension skills.