This morning I had the pleasure of speaking with Jon Catlin, Vice President of Product Development at Syntellect on their revolutionary VoiceXML testing tool, Voiyager. Voiyager does what Syntellect terms Dynamic Application Discovery, in essence, it completely tests every possible path of a VoiceXML application with remarkable speed; something that previously wasn’t possible in VoiceXML application development. I think it is very cool. You can hear Jon talk about what the product does and how effective it in this podcast. Just click on the podcast tab.

Yesterday I had a talk with Tellme about what they have been up to nine months or so after being acquired by Microsoft. I’d followed them since their birth back in the late 90’s during the original “voice portal” craze, when companies like Tellme, BeVocal and HeyAnita! all came into being, touting web surfing using your voice. At the time all the analysts were crazed about surfing the web using your voice. That died down for awhile, and companies such as Tellme changed their business models to incorporate application development for self service applications and the like, creating large developer networks, tools, and networks for hosting applications.

I stumbled on a new one today. I just got a new credit card from Capitol One – you know the no hassle guarantee people. It had that sticker on the front that said that you had to call to activate your card, so I did. First off, I was greeted with that irritating “press 1 for English”, but that isn’t my main beef. It was that the next prompt, surprisingly asking me to say or enter my 16-digit account code. Yippee! Speech recognition. I could almost forgive them for making me press a button because I speak English. But wait. After giving them my 16-digit account code and being transferred to an agent queue; notice I didn’t say agent; the very first words out of the agent’s mouth, once I got one were “please give me your 16-digit account code”. This company is savvy enough to use speech recognition in their application (albeit for only one prompt),but they don’t even have basic CTI? Goodness gracious. What happened to their no hassle guarantee?

I just got a notice that two of my ‘Twelve Days of UC’ wishes - the value of video and going green - are being addressed in a first of its kind town meeting that is being shown to a live audience during Cisco’s keynote session at VoiceCon in Florida on March 19th. Former Vice President, Al Gore, Cisco’s Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, and Cisco’s EVP, Chief Marketing Officer, Sue Bostrom, physically separated from each other by thousands of miles, will meet together in a virtual unified communications environment, to talk about how technology innovation can play a part in mitigating climate change. Using Cisco TelePresence, of course, these three will virtually meet on stage in front of live audiences in London, England, Orlando and several other places. Those attending the keynote will get to watch the live discussion via a TelePresence system that will be placed on stage, while others will get to see it in several other TelePresence rooms around the world. Those unable to attend can view it live as a streamed webcast session.