Move Over Touch: Voice Recognition Grows Up

Nuance Communications said today it’s offering an upgrade to its line of speech recognition software aimed at carriers and handset makers. The new software includes a combination of on-handset speech recognition and server-based transcription that means it can do far more than navigate an address book. It’s also a sign that carriers are interested in offering up voice recognition as an easy way to navigate through content on mobile phones — while at the same time getting consumers to use their data plans.
The new software will allow users to dictate texts and emails, find information on the web and bring up applications such as Twitter on their mobile phones (check out the demo). Sounds a lot like the functionality offered by my all-time favorite phone application, Vlingo, which prompted me to override the existing Nuance voice control on my BlackBerry. [click heading for more]

Speech recognition solution to generate documents at Newham University Hospital

SRC, a provider of digital dictation and speech recognition to NHS Trusts, has been selected to deploy speech recognition to the Radiology department at Newham University Hospital NHS Trust (NUHT). The solution enables Radiologists, Sonographers and Reporting Radiographers to create documents and reports directly from voice commands and spoken words, rather than using the current time-consuming method of self-typing. [click heading for more]

Nuance Announces First Fiscal Quarter 2009 Results

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2008.
Nuance reported GAAP revenues of $216.8 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2008, an 11 percent increase over GAAP revenues of $195.0 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2007. The Company reported non-GAAP revenue of approximately $244.4 million, which includes $27.6 million in revenue lost to accounting treatment in conjunction with the Company’s business and technology acquisitions. Using the non-GAAP measure, revenue grew approximately 17 percent over the same quarter last year. [click heading for more]

Diminishing Driver Distraction

According to a new study released byFord, users of the Ford SYNC infotainment system are less distracted while driving than those who perform the same tasks in a conventional manner.
The Ford SYNC study tested making and answering a phone call, locating a number from within a mobile phone contacts list, playing a song, and receiving and answering text messages. Throughout the exercise, researchers tracked how long drivers took their eyes off the road, their response time and how the position and speed of their cars changed. [click heading for more]

American adds customer-recognition technology

American Airlines says customers who call for flight information will get it faster because of new speech-recognition technology.
The technology is designed to save the airline money by reducing the need for employees to handle customer calls.
American said Thursday that the "Remember Me" system will recognize phone numbers and greet customers by name if they've signed up under American's frequent-flier program, AAdvantage. They can list up to three phone numbers from which they'll call the airline.
If the customer is booked on a flight that day, the system will offer gate and flight information without prompting, the airline said.
The technology was provided by Tellme, a company that Microsoft Corp. bought last year. [click heading for more]

Innovation: Speech prediction software

If people who finish your sentences drive you crazy, it's a safe bet that you're probably not going to be nuts about new software that can do just that.
It's been dreamed up as a speech-recognition equivalent to the predictive texton cellphones. Mutter a half-considered thought into the microphone and the software will plunder a database to complete half-formed words or sentences - in Japanese, at least.
The system looks for fragments of words and other signs of hesitation such as filler sounds that Japanese speakers use when searching for their next phrase, just as English speakers "um" and "er".
It can work backwards too. If you're using the voice-controlled jukebox made to demo the idea and ask for a song by "someone, er, Jackson" it will offer up Michael, Janet, and even Joe.
You can imagine how that could be useful for requesting songs from a car's stereo while driving, or requesting a new location from a GPS device. [click heading for more]

Saynergy: Lifelike Speech Interaction is Born

In a bid to improve lifelike speech interactions, Vocalcom, Umanify and Loquendo have partnered to combine their respective technologies and create a digital assistant, Saynergy.

The new offering provides advanced natural language interaction and makes it possible for enterprises to improve user experiences with lifelike speech interactions that offer another level on interaction over the limited field of context and set commands of past systems.

For contact centers, this means the ability to manage open questions from their customers and helps solve complex questions through dialogue, just as with a live agent. [click heading for more]

Allied Irish Bank’s Speech Recognition Deployment is Shortlisted in the FST Awards

Allied Irish Bank (AIB) has been shortlisted in the 2009 Financial Sector Technology awards for the much coveted Best Use of IT in Retail Banking award category. AIB has deployed a speech recognition solution for its high-value Relationship Managed customers. The solution, which is the single largest speech recognition deployment in Ireland, has greatly enhanced the customer experience by eliminating layers of IVR touchtone procedures, speeding up the process of reaching the intended person or function. Developed by SpeechStorm and implemented by eircom, the hosted solution has allowed in-branch staff to focus more on value-add activities and reduced the load on contact centre staff. [click heading for more]

Zumba Phone May Revolutionize Phone Industry

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]

Speech and text recognition programs ready for the office

Technology that once seemed best suited for unintentional comedy is now ready for practical application. Software for text and speech recognition is now sufficiently mature to be considered for general office use, say the editors of the Hanover- based iX magazine. Text recognition or optical character recognition (OCR), requires just a standard multi-functional scanner with 300 dpi performance or better to produce decent results. None of the programs tested by the magazine showed any glaring weaknesses.

Speech recognition is a far more complex process, though, and requires more from the user. An extensive training text typically must first be read into the computer to achieve decent accuracy results. And in some cases specialised dictionaries must be purchased as well to get the software up to speed.
Yet once speech recognition software has been trained, there's no longer any need for exaggerated pronunciation and slow speech. The user can simply speak normally. Only minor differences were found in results between the different speech and text recognition programs. [click heading for more]