So summer is not completely as boring as I wrote in my Dog Days of Summer post this week. There is activity in the speech technologies bullpen.
Late last month, newcomer, Vlingo, announced a new product, Vlingo for Blackberry, which will allow users to create and send e-mails and text-messages, search the Web, work with mobile applications such as dialing their phones, look up contacts or work with their calendars - all using unconstrained speech. This speech applications works on all Blackberry devices, which I was happy about as I have a Blackberry Pearl and applications such as FaceBook, are sorely lacking in functionality on the smaller Pearl keyboard. I’m going to try out Vlingo for Blackberry. Hey, if I’m lucky they will have voice-enabled FaceBook so I can carry my social network addiction on the road. Something like Vlingo would be spot on perfect for the Blackberry Pearl, as it has a small keyboard that has dual letters for each key. FaceBook for Blackberry has a password screen that doesn’t show you the letter that you have typed in the password fields, for security reasons. The problem with this is that with the error correcting mode for typing on the Blackberry, if you can’t see your password, you have no idea what letter Blackberry has put into the password field as it tries to guess at the correct spelling of a word. It’s impossible to log on.
Along those same lines, Google announced last week that Blackberry Pearl users will now be able to use voice search on Google Maps. More cool stuff for me to try out. However, Blackberry users weren’t the only ones to benefit from speech technologies this month as Fonix released Fonix iSpeak(TM) for the Apple iPhone(TM) 3G. iSpeak allows users to use natural language commands to do things such as dial by name or number, or navigate through their music libraries to find and play a song. iSpeak stands to solve a problem with the iPhone, which is that is has no built in voice-activated dialing of its own (I haven’t seen the new iPhone, but the press says its really true, so shame on you Apple).
In a different area of speech, IBM announced that they have developed audio masking technology, which uses speech analytics to identify and mask sensitive information in contact center audio recordings, such as credit card numbers, so that only authorized people can gain access to the information. In a significant adjunct function, the application uses metadata to also mask sensitive information that is captured in recordings of call center agent screens, which can be tied to contact center audio recordings. Recording and analytics are used in the contact center for compliance, quality monitoring, and agent training, and because of the breadth of uses of the data, there are multiple points at which sensitive data can be overheard or seen. I think this is an outstanding use of speech analytics as it helps eliminate a problem that is a by product of being able to capture the data in the first place. This new technology was developed in IBM’s India Research Laboratory.
Finally, this morning Verizon Business announced that they are offering customers an additional deployment choice for their speech services using Verizon’s Open Hosted Speech Services (OHSS). Prior to now Verizon Business customers have been offered speech-enabled IVR applications on a hosted basis only with Verizon building and maintaining the application. But now customers can chose full hosting, they can build and maintain their own CPE version, but still use the Verizon speech platform and network for other services, or they can do a combination. Verizon Business customers can also choose to maintain just select parts of an application and have Verizon Business take care of others, which is quite handy. This new service is further validation of the customer choice that I frequently mention on being able to choose hosted, partially hosted, or on-premise depending upon need.