Industry Updates

• The Mobile Voice Conference will be held in April 2010 in California.
• Sony is preparing the voice-recognition system in SingStar for use by developers. In the game, the technology allows users to navigate their song library by calling out voice commands.
• Computers may be better at lip-reading than humans.
• A blogger interviews the founders of inVox.
• Is Google Voice is a threat to the mobile industry?

Alliteration is Bad!

Vonage Visual Voicemail. Did they learn nothing in high school? Oh, and they are now partnering with Nuance on speech-to-text stuff.

Industry Updates

• Acapela Group is acquiring d-fabric, an automatic, text-extraction firm. Well, that’s just d-andy.
• VoiceBox Technologies has raised about $13 million in Asia over the past year but needs more. Let’s hope the CEO isn’t Sicilian if the company’s death is on the line.

iTune Speech

It looks like Apple is jumping into the speech-to-text fray as well…

Industry Updates

Nuance’s One-Shot speech-recognition software is being deployed by Mercedes-Benz and Becker.

Podcastle.jp now lets you search the audio of podcasts in Japanese. Voice-recognition technology converts the audio into text. Users can also change any recognition mistakes.

Vonage Holdings is adding unlimited free calls to countries including Mexico and China in addition to offering speech-to-text conversion of voicemail.

800PBX has been relaunched as InVox, a provider of Web-based interactive voice response platforms for small businesses.

An Internet Identity Workshop will occur from November 3 to 5 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Registration is now open. Voice recognition is becoming more important in biometrics and security.

Industry Updates

TuVox, a hosted, interactive-voice-response provider, will continue hosting Virgin America’s self-service systems through 2012.

Motivational Fulfillment and Logistics Services is now using SmartAction’s Virtual Agents to process customer-service inquiries with an artificial-intelligence engine.

Speech-recognition software by Vlingo can now be downloaded in the U.K., Germany, Italy and, Spain. Additional languages and devices are expected to be added over the coming months.

Verint Systems believes that its call-recording and speech-analytics technology can help public-safety departments by offering a easy way to analyze items like 911 calls.

A Digital Personality

Adam Boretz writes, accurately, that companies will be able to use speech-recognition technology create individual, digital personalities tailored to their brand. Here some ideas we came up with:

• Apple: The voice of a snotty, indie geek with a superiority complex and high-pitched voice who still manages to fit in because his rich daddy buys him all the cool clothes
• Microsoft: The voice of a bored, balding, fortyish, cubicle-dwelling drone who is just wanting for his pension to kick in so he can retire in peace — he has worked for years, why do anything different now?
• Nuance: The voice of a high-tech, robotic version of the Cookie Monster that gobbles up all the unhealthy, itty-bitty, speech-recognition companies in sight while leaving only the crumbs for everyone else
• SpinVox: The monotone voice of a depressed man who mumbles to the government cashier to give him his unemployment check — just like she did for the past twelve weeks
• Us: Well, you’ll just have to wait and see…

More later.

IM 3.4

Shape Services has submitted its IM 3.4 client to Apple’s store for the company’s approval. Reportedly, it allows users to send instant messages and tweets through speech-recognition technology. (See here and here.)

But even if Shape gets the go-ahead, it might just be a case of too little, too late…