You will find current information about the market and trends in voice business here:

05 January 2010 – Information Week

At an event described by members of Google's public relations team both as "seminal" and "anticlimactic," Google on Tuesday introduced its Nexus One mobile phone. Software represents the other half of the equation and what Google can do with software is magnified by the power of its cloud infrastructure. For example, all of the text fields in the phone's apps have been speech enabled, allowing users to speak e-mail messages, then see Google's cloud-based servers handle the speech-to-text transcription. Those who dislike virtual keyboards may find spoken input more appealing. Privacy advocates will no doubt now worry that Google is logging every speech-to-text interaction.

05 January 2010 – TMC.net

PerSay a Telaviv, an Israel-based provider of advanced biometric speaker verification products reportedly announced it launched the first of its kind eBanking Web site that uses Voice Biometrics to reset clients’ passwords. The launch of the Web site ushers a new beginning in the usage of Voice Biometrics know-how by fiscal sector. The service with inbuilt and easy to use multilevel authentications is expected to offer improved protection for Web sites and for all Web-based dealings.

01 January 2010 – Reponse Resource

Salmat VeCommerce, a leading supplier of voice self-service and speaker verification solutions, suggests that the UK’s financial institutions are behind their Australian cousins when it comes to tapping the missed opportunities of offering more secure mobile banking services for customers. National Australia Bank (NAB) has recently revealed its intentions to adopt voice biometrics for its mobile banking users as a replacement for using SMS pass codes. The motivation is not only linked to improving security but also convenience for the customer.

01 January 2010 – Cooperator

Microchip technology and innovations like biometrics and voice recognition devices have revolutionized the residential security industry. Once purely in the realm of science fiction, computers can now perform retinal scans and hand print analysis to verify individuals' identities and grant entry into residential buildings. The future of security technology is definitely now.

01 January 2010 – Speech Community

Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced that it has acquired SpinVox, a leading provider of voice-to-text services to telecommunications companies across five continents. By integrating SpinVox’s carrier services with Nuance’s advanced speech recognition platform, Nuance will further accelerate the growth of its voice-to-text business and scale to meet the needs of a growing, global customer base.

08 December 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

Despite the global recession, speech analytics continues to grow at a rapid rate because of its ability to help enterprises provide improved customer experience, cut costs, retain customers, and minimize risk, according to a newly published report from DMG Consulting. The 2009-2010 Speech Analytics Market Report predicts the speech analytics market will continue to grow annually with a 45 percent increase in 2009, a 40 percent increase in 2010, a 42 percent increase in 2011, a 32 percent increase in 2012, and 25 percent increase in 2013.

06 December 2009 – SPEECH Community

If you've been to Times Square in New York City over the past couple weeks, on any day from 12:30-2:00pm or 6:30-8:00pm, you may have noticed that Google Search by voice is powering Times Square's largest combined displays -- the Reuters Sign and the NASDAQ sign. Anyone can call 888-376-4336 and say the name of a business or a location that they want to search for, like "museum of modern art" or "pizza". Then, the query and local search results from Google will appear on one of the two electronic billboards. This is all part of Verizon's "Droid Does" campaign and has been developed in partnership with Reuters and R/GA, a digital advertising agency.

06 December 2009 – Wireless Week

Microsoft yesterday unveiled its free Bing voice-enabled search app, powered by its Tellme subsidiary, for Windows phones. The company says users can keep their hands on the wheel when they're using voice to access maps, driving directions and traffic information. Like Google's Maps Navigation, the app is a beta version. Microsoft says Bing Maps overhauled its experience to better reflect how people are using the Web to complete tasks and make decisions. Bing Maps now offers a Streetside and enhanced aerial view, so users have the ability to see what's around them from the street level or from the sky looking down.

06 December 2009 – Retails Solutions Online

Zetes, the leading pan-European provider of solutions and services for the automatic identification of goods and people announces it has implemented a voice directed put-away solution within 130 Argos stores, to enhance operational efficiency in the back of store area. This is the first time any retailer, either in the UK or mainland Europe, has used voice in-store as a quick and easy way to speed up the put-away process and operate a more flexible, customer driven stock room. Since introducing the voice solution, Argos has seen significant process improvements through reduced time to the final sale point.

06 December 2009 – Call Centre Clinic

Telephonetics VIP, the speech automation specialist, has helped Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to improve their DNA rate. The Trust provides over one million appointments and operations each year and had experienced problems with patients that 'Did Not Attend' (DNA). DNAs are a serious problem across the NHS, costing an estimated £600m and increasing waiting times. At an average cost of £101 per appointment at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, the Trust considered a number of reminder solutions and chose Remind+ from Telephonetics VIP.

24 November 2009 – The Globe and Mail

In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy by Douglas Adams, different species communicate using the Babel fish, a leech-like creature that facilitates instantaneous universal translation. You would think that universal translation would lead to a world of understanding. Unfortunately, by removing barriers to communication, the Babel fish causes conflicts and wars. However, scientists are not letting that cautionary tale stop them from using computer technology to facilitate the translation of text and speech.

24 November 2009 – Moneywise

VoicePay is already in talks with Visa and MasterCard, and has established an open system for financial services companies in around 50 countries, which will allow them to establish a central voice biometrics registry. Once a customer is registered centrally, Ogden says that voice signature can be used globally. At the moment, the technology is not entirely foolproof and is susceptible to the same kind of mistakes as humans – for example, mistaking a stranger for a known person or failing to recognise a voice. Having said that, experts say the error rate experienced overseas is generally quite low.

22 November 2009 – SPEECH Community

On Tuesday, 25 August 2009 the BBC's One Show featured an item about automated speech recognition services, and focused on the National Rail Enquiries TrainTracker™ service, which is provided by Eckoh and BT. The results showed that the service recognised all the callers that tested the service, regardless of their accents, and as One Show’s Marty Jopson said, speech recognition systems do work and are here to stay.

22 November 2009 – SPEECH Community

The idea behind Recombinant Telephony is relatively simple: splice together the basic materials of today’s communication technologies with new software elements to introduce new services that support customer requirements. A fast-growing community of technology providers, application developers and service delivery specialists are helping fuel spending on software, services and “appliances” that fulfill on the Internet’s promise to support a better user experience for commerce, communication and collaboration.

22 November 2009 – PCMag

In addition to rolling out its Chrome OS code, Google on Thursday also unveiled automatic captions and timing for YouTube. Automatic captions will use the speech-to-text algorithms currently used in Google Voice to produce captions for a selected video. These captions can also be translated into other languages. Auto timing, meanwhile, allows users to add manually created captions to YouTube. Automatic captions are available on some education channels and most Google channels at this point, but will soon be expanded. Automatic timing is available now for all new video uploads.

22 November 2009 – The Times

Google is gearing up for an all-out assault on the mobile-phone market that will include a new, Google-branded handset and the first comprehensive Google phone service with unlimited free calls. The real breakthrough, however, will come with the marriage of the Googlephone to Google Voice, the Californian company’s high-tech phone service. Google Voice gives US users a free phone number and allows unlimited free calls to any phone in the country — landline or mobile. International calls start from a couple of cents (just over a penny) a minute. Google Voice also uses sophisticated voice recognition to turn voicemails into emails, can block telemarketing calls automatically and offers free text messaging.

11 November 2009 – CNN Money

MedQuist Inc., a leading provider of medical transcription services, and a leader in technology-enabled clinical documentation workflow, today announced unaudited operating results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2009. The third quarter was the best quarter for sales orders in our recent history and we expect to start seeing the benefit of those orders in 2010. The sales success is attributable to our new sales and marketing programs that leverage all MedQuist products including, SpeechQ for Radiology, DocQvoice for capturing dictation, DocQscribe which incorporates an extensive range of features that optimize the transcription and editing process, DocQment Enterprise Platform with speech recognition for workflow management, coding services, and technology enabled clinical documentation services (transcription) which enable the efficient deployment of electronic health care record systems.

07 November 2009 – TMC.net

Further to the continuous demand for a better understanding of the competitive landscape in the interactive voice response, or “IVR,” market, Datamonitor, an independent, premium business information and market analysis company, has developed the IVR Decision Matrix report titled, “Decision Matrix Selecting an IVR Vendor in the Enterprise Competitor Focus.”

07 November 2009 – CNET

Google Voice may be heading for Europe. A filing with US regulator the FCC reveals the number of subscribers to the service, and that Google already has deals in place with companies outside the US. Google Voice gives users a single phone number, which forwards calls to specified mobiles or landlines. Features include free calls, SMS and voicemail transcripts. Google has signed deals with "international service providers for inputs to Google Voice", according to a letter filed with the FCC.

07 November 2009 – Business Wire

The global outlook series on Voice/Speech Recognition Systems provides a collection of market briefs, concise summaries and statistical anecdotes of research findings. The report offers a rudimentary overview of the industry and details trends such as, growing demand for speech-based searching and analytics, increased focus on voice Internet and speech-enabled systems by technology vendors, and growing popularity of network-based speech recognition and distributed speech recognition technologies. Additionally, the impact of the ongoing economic recession is discussed, while also identifying growth drivers such as fast paced adoption of speech recognition systems at contact centers, growing use of biometrics, and technology advancements in mobile and in-vehicle applications.

27 October 2009 – Reuters

NIVS IntelliMedia Technology Group, Inc., a consumer electronics company that designs, manufactures and sells intelligent audio and visual products, today announced that the Company has signed a letter of intent to manufacture mobile phones for China Telecom Corp. Ltd. to be used with China Telecom's 3G network, e-Surfing. Mr. Tianfu Li, CEO and Chairman of NIVS, commented, "Aside from enjoying higher margins than our current products, we plan to eventually integrate our speech technology into these smart phones, making use of our cutting-edge technological advantages.”

27 October 2009 – InformationWeek

Google on Tuesday plans to enable a subset of Google Voice features, notably voicemail, when using an existing mobile number, a move that partially thwarts Apple's effort to keep Google Voice off the iPhone. Google Voice provides a variety of calling services in conjunction with a new Google Voice number. The service is designed to receive calls to the user's Google Voice number and then ring all of the existing phone numbers supplied by the user to connect the incoming call.

27 October 2009 – Reuters

Although mobile network operators and technology suppliers are firmly committed to LTE as the cornerstone for 4G networks, major disagreements about the importance of including voice service as part of early LTE deployments could lead to the kind of industry fragmentation that adversely affected 3G rollouts, according to the latest report from Unstrung Insider, a paid research service from TechWeb's Unstrung.

25 October 2009 – Speech Strategy News

A recent study conducted by Sanderson Studios for Tellme Networks, a Microsoft subsidiary, confirms that smartphone users are more inclined to buy a device that offers them the ability to push one button to say what they want and get it. (Tellme, according to a panelist at SpeechTEK, processes 10 billion transactions per year.) The research shows that 75% of people would choose a smartphone that allows them to compose a text message, search the Web, or dial a contact simply by speaking, rather than by typing or using a touch screen.

25 October 2009 – New Zealand Herald

Eighty-one per cent of New Zealanders are happy to use fingerprint scans to prove their identity and 68 per cent are willing to have their eyes scanned. The figures - from the Unisys Security Index survey issued today by information technology company Unisys - show that more than half of participants fear identity theft. Participants also favoured facial scans (48 per cent), vein pattern scans (44 per cent) and voice pattern recordings (34 per cent).

25 October 2009 – DarkReading

A Unisys poll found consumers don't trust government agencies or financial institutions with their personal information. Only 22 percent said they trust the feds to protect their data, while 29 percent trust their financial institutions to do so. And 58 percent of Americans said they would use biometrics to verify their identities, as long as the biometric data was secured. Nearly 90 percent would use passwords; 88 percent, PINs; 82 percent, photographs; 74 percent, face scans; and 69 percent, voice recording.

25 October 2009 – CBS 5

A federal judge in San Francisco today ordered the U.S. Social Security Administration to send benefit notices to blind and partially sighted people in Braille or on CDs that can be converted to speech. The ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup will affect about 3 million blind and partially sighted people nationwide who receive Social Security benefits. Alsup said in a 41-page ruling that the agency's current notification methods - mail with the option of a follow-up phone call - violate federal law because they do not provide "effective communication."

25 October 2009 – Canada Free Press

Bluetooth, as most of you know by now, is a wireless standard designed so that electronic devices can “talk” with each other. It’s only good for short distances, apparently conceived of originally as a way to replace the RS232 cables that link computers and peripherals, but it has become much more than that. The short distances over which it works means it may not be any good as, for example, a cell phone, but it’s ideal for linking devices to cell phones, bringing a new generation of hands free freedom in an age when lawmakers are either contemplating or implementing bans of cell phone use in moving vehicles.

14 October 2009 – Modern Healthcare

There has been a significant shakeout in the once crowded market for speech recognition technology in healthcare. While many companies outside of healthcare remain active in the speech recognition field, including software giant Microsoft Corp., few healthcare industry competitors remain. Privately held M-Modal is one notable exception. The Pittsburgh-based developer supplies speech-recognition technology to the medical transcription industry and for picture archiving and communication/radiology information systems.Publicly traded Nuance Communications, however, has become “sort of the 800-pound gorilla of speech recognition” in healthcare, according to informaticist Robert Budman, the physician-executive liaison to electronic health-record system developer Medsphere Systems Corp., Carlsbad, Calif.

14 October 2009 – e.releases

Novauris Technologies of Cheltenham, England and Sunnyvale, Calif. and Traffic Gate of Tokyo, Japan today announced an iPhone app incorporating speech recognition to provide route guidance on the Tokyo public transportation system. With over 660 stations in its railway and underground network, negotiating the Tokyo public transport system is no easy matter, even for seasoned commuters. Now, speech technology developer Novauris Technologies is bringing route guidance to Japanese travelers equipped with an iPhone.

14 October – TMC.net

Trying to text while behind the wheel of a car can be as dangerous as driving while under the influence of alcohol. Many would argue they have the dexterity and multi-tasking skills to safely drive and text, but there really is no way to keep your eyes on the road while trying to do other things at the same time. Now, Nuance Communications Inc. has announced that it supports the ban on handheld text messaging behind the wheel. The company believes it is an obvious distraction that poses a serious danger to drivers, their passengers and others on the road.

14 October – TMC.net

The speech technologies industry has grown over the years to offer a number of sophisticated, life-like voices for natural, human to computer interaction. For the automotive market, these technologies are not only a luxury but also a must-have for safer driving. Turin, Italy-based Loquendo offers a full range of speech solutions from TTS and speech recognition to voice platforms, embedded solutions and speaker verification solutions. In-car speech solutions are especially important today as the rate of car accidents related to distraction from use of a cell phone and other devices while driving, rises.

14 October 2009 – InformationWeek

Google on Tuesday said it has begun offering its Google Voice testers the opportunity to invite friends to join the service. The company said it will provide three invitations to current users that allow recipients to establish their own Google Voice accounts. The serivce remains in private testing. Google said that additional invitations will be allotted in the future. Invited friends may not receive access immediately because the service expansion will be gradual.

14 October 2009 – Business Week

I first started seriously writing about voice delivered over the Internet almost 10 years ago. I've written about the meteoric rise and ignominious fall of Vonage, the fabulous sale of Skype, and the deaths of countless wannabe VoIP service providers. Despite the story lines, there was one constant in every conversation I had with wildly optimistic VoIP entrepreneurs: Voice will eventually be free.

14 October 2009 – Bloomberg

U.S. regulators requested information from Google Inc. on its voice application after AT&T Inc. and some lawmakers said the service improperly blocks rural calls and sought an investigation. Google was asked to explain how calls are routed, the ways the company charges for features and how the service fits in with communications regulations, in a letter from the Federal Communications Commission today. The agency asked Mountain View, California-based Google to respond by Oct. 28.

26 September 2009 – PC World

Two vendors of mobile voice technology have teamed up to power carrier services that transcribe voicemail messages and conference calls into text. Ditech Networks, which supplies gear that scrubs background noise from cell-phone calls, signed an exclusive deal with SimulScribe to resell that company's voice-to-text technology and integrate it into fledgling mobile Web-based services.

26 September 2009 – SPEECH Community

In an effort to provide mobile device users an easier and more natural way to control their applications, AT&T and Vlingo today announced a licensing agreement and strategic alliance to incorporate AT&T’s Watson technology into Vlingo’s speech-enabled applications. The alliance will drive innovation in user interfaces by allowing people to use the power of their voice to create and send a text message or email, search the Web, access social networking tools and more, making data services more accessible and convenient to use.

26 September 2009 – thinkbroadband

The Digital Britain report threw out a curve ball with the proposal for the 50p a month levy/tax on all metallic telephone lines. There has been some talk that the levy may not make it into law before the next General Election, but Stephen Timms speaking at a debate by the British Computer Society insists the government is committed to the levy and getting it into law before the next general election.

26 September 2009 – CallCentreClinic

Salmat VeCommerce, a leading supplier of voice self-service and speaker verification solutions says that UK public sector organisations could learn some valuable lessons from New Zealand's Ministry of Social Development when it comes to handling calls more efficiently using self-service voice technology. The New Zealand Ministry of Social Development (NZMSD) and Salmat VeCommerce have won a 2009 Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ) Award, following the introduction of speech recognition technology into its Work and Income contact centre. The centre receives approximately 6.5 million incoming calls annually, fielding enquiries that range from simple to complex assessments. The voice-enabled technology provided by Salmat VeCommerce has increased the call capacity and enhanced the service to clients.

26 September 2009 – SPEECH Community

According to a new national survey of consumers the cost of poor customer service in the U.K. is a significant problem: U.K. businesses lose a total of £15.3 billion each year when customers defect and abandon their purchases as a direct result of poor customer experiences. A total of 514 U.K.- based consumers were surveyed for the report titled “The Cost of Poor Customer Service: The Economic Impact of the Customer Experience.” Consumers were asked about the frequency of their interactions with businesses via the web, through contact centres and with their mobile devices. They were also asked to identify the impact of those interactions on their purchasing decisions. The survey group identified their service priorities and indicated the changes most needed for improving the quality of their customer service experiences.

15 September 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

BuzzVoice has announced a new mobile voice service that lets consumers listen to more than 1,400 text-based Internet news sources on the go. When users sign up for the service—a process that takes less than a minute to do—they create a playlist in which they identify the types of news stories they would like to read. BuzzVoice automatically collects breaking stories based on their preferences and, using NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech engine, converts them to audio in real time for listening on the go.

12 September 2009 – PRNewswire

Beginning today, Vlingo is available immediately as a download via the Ovi Store by Nokia for consumers in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain for selected devices. Additional language and devices are expected to be added over the coming months. Go to the Ovi Store by Nokia to download. In a move that will make Vlingo's revolutionary speech recognition solution available out of the box to consumers worldwide, Vlingo will be preloaded on two of Nokia's hero devices -- the Nokia N97 and the Nokia E72. These devices are scheduled to ship with the Vlingo application at the end of Q3. In addition to English, Vlingo will be available in German, Spanish and Italian - with further European languages to follow shortly.

12 September 2009 – SPEECH Community

Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, increased its presence in Canada by adding key resources to support its continued growth in the customer service market and expansion in the region. Canada will become the hub of Genesys North America Technical Support Operations for all Tier One and Tier Two support, and will open its new building in Saint John, N.B., complete with full Lab and testing facilities and Quality Assurance (QA) Operations for North America, later this year.

12 September 2009 – Network World

Voice biometrics work by creating an individual voiceprint that is unique to the user. The technology captures specific physical characteristics of the human voice, something that other security measures can't do. So, why hasn't voice authentication become mainstream yet? Canada and Australia are further along than the U.S. in this regard, mostly because of U.S. critics spreading unnecessary fear and doubt about the technology. They question the ability to handle noisy environments or the ability to authenticate a person's voice if they have a cold or sore throat when, in fact, voice biometrics are effective in both cases.

02 September 2009 – Computer World

The BNZ bank is looking at implementing a speech-driven navigation system and voice-print customer identifier developed by its parent the National Australia Bank, according to NAB developer Sam Jackel. The aim of the voice navigation system is to “improve the experience of our customers calling our contact-centre,” says Jackel, who described the system to the recent Genesys G-Force conference in Melbourne.

02 September 2009 – CCF online

Customers are refusing to use automated speech systems and instead go online to find answers to their questions. A study of consumer attitudes to service automation by IT services supplier Dimension Data shows that 40 per cent of customers actively avoid automated speech, a four per cent increase against the figures polled last year. The internet has instead become the first point of call for many customers, with 50 per cent of those consulted turning to the web for answers rather than contacting a call centre.

28 August 2009 – Australian IT

FINANCIAL services company GE Capital will go live with an open dialogue speech platform next month aimed at improving its interaction with customers. GE Capital started work on the project late last year and has adopted Nuance's open dialogue speech technology, which can recognise what a caller says and route them accordingly. The company expects the system to reduce misdirected calls and increase the availability of phone banking self-service for customers. A GE Capital spokesman said the project would provide greater service to customers and provide the company with much more detailed information about why they were calling.

28 August 2009 – TMC.net

IVR solutions provider Angel.com – which recently won a 2009 Speech Technology Excellence Award from Customer Interaction Solutions, a TMC publication – announced in July that its on-demand interactive voice response system has been selected by the City of New York to automate the registration process for the Notify NYC program, a citizen warning system that was created to enhance New York City's public communication channels by distributing critical text and voice messages directly to residents’ computers, mobile devices and cell phones. Through the Notify NYC system, which is managed by the New York City Office of Emergency Management, residents can get emergency alerts about natural disasters, acts of terrorism, AMBER alerts, public health notifications, public school closings/delays, and updates about parking rules suspensions. The system sends alerts via the Web, e-mail and SMS text messages.

28 August 2009 – All Africa

The government has finalised plans to procure and install electronic voting equipment in Parliament in a move that will break decades of hand-and-voice voting in the House. "The equipment will have the capacity for voice recognition on the e-Hansard," he said, telling MPs that they would be able to make DVD copies of their voting patterns and participation on the floor to take back to their constituents for accountability.

19 August 2009 – SPEECH Community

New customer research from Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories shows that visual Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions, such as those delivered to mobile phone handsets, can reduce the time of an automated transaction by 56 per cent. This significant reduction makes completing an enquiry much easier for the customer and also more cost effective for the organisation. The data was gathered through both live and pilot Visual IVR applications. Visual IVR is now available as part of the Genesys intelligent Customer Front Door (iCFD) solution. It unites a range of different technologies to optimise the path a customer takes through the contact centre.

19 August 2009 – PR Newswire

Dimension Data, a $4.5 billion IT solutions and services provider, today announced that Martin C. Dove, managing director of Global Customer Interactive Solutions, will participate in a panel discussion, "The Alignment Index," at SpeechTEK 2009, which takes place August 24-26, 2009, in New York City. During the panel, Dimension Data's Dove - along with experts from networking leader Cisco and Microsoft subsidiary and voice services pioneer Tellme - will examine the results of the new "2009 Alignment Index for Speech Self-Service Report," a survey on speech self-service systems, which was conducted and published by the three companies. Having held multiple roles with Dimension Data's contact center business across numerous markets, including North America, Africa and Australia, as well as contact center consulting roles with IT integrator and services provider Merchants Consulting, Dove has a global, holistic perspective on the contact center industry.

14 August 2009 – Canwest News Service

Undergoing an unwinding sale process under bankruptcy protection, Nortel Networks Corp. is counting on its voice-applications business to generate significant bidding interest from potential buyers. Compared to bigger and better-known Nortel product lines, the operation has so far been left in the shadows. Samih Elhage, the executive responsible for the operation, said in an interview this week that the division is winning major contracts in Britain, Australia and Austria despite the depressing effect of operating under bankruptcy protection.

14 August 2009 – Search Engine Watch

Mobile products from Vlingo, Tellme, and Google have similarly taken advantage of the phone's internal microphone to build voice search interfaces that find and call local businesses. Voice search could have a bright future in mobile, and even evolve beyond the phone itself. For example, an area known as speech controlled Internet devices (SCIDs) transforms the myriad electronics that surround into their own little search engines. Sensory Inc. is working on this proposition. It's spent the past 15 years embedded speech recognition chips in about 60 million products - everything from in-car voice command systems to Bluetooth headsets, to voice controlled toys.

14 August 2009 – Telecoms.com

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe. Over the years I’ve witnessed more ‘live demos’ than I care to remember (more, probably, than I do remember) and if I had to derive one, abiding rule from them all, it would be this: Most demos don’t work – and the ones that do, more often than not, are rigged.

05 August 2009 – ComputerWorld

National welfare agency Centrelink has launched a new speaking feature on its Web site for the visually impaired. The ReadSpeaker feature, developed by VoiceCorp International, allows users to stream or download a spoken version of the site’s text, regardless of bandwidth and without additional software installation. Chris Bowen, the Federal minister for Human Services who answerable for Centrelink, said that the new service represented the government’s will to increase access to information for all Australians.

05 August 2009 – TimesOnline

Last year Spinvox took on an additional £50m of funding from a clutch of top hedge funds co-ordinated by Goldman Sachs. That was to finance the global rollout of Spinvox, selling the product to national phone carriers so they can bolt it on to their services. In March Domecq, 32, won yet another “entrepreneur of the year” award — from the business broadcaster CNBC — to add to her hatful of gongs. Last month, though, the applause stopped. A BBC news item suggested that Domecq, the chief executive, and her team had exaggerated claims about the voice-recognition software. It alleged that much of the message transcription is in fact done by workers in Third World call centres.

05 August 2009 – Business Line

Voice ID (sometimes called voice authentication, voiceprint) is a type of user authentication that uses voice prints and pattern recognition software to verify a speaker. Voice ID relies on the fact that vocal characteristics are unique for each individual just as fingerprints and retinal pattern. “An individual’s speech pattern has more unique qualities and is often recognised as the most natural form of biometrics. The human voice is also considered the most common form of communication and is an ideal form of personal identification, because your voice can never be lost, stolen or shared without your knowledge,” says Arunan, co-founder and Director of Bay Talkitec.

05 August 2009 – TMC.net

Loquendo, a speech technologies provider and Telecom Italia company located in Turin, Italy, continues to make strides in the speech technologies marketplace. Recently, the company announced a number of new partnerships expanding telecom, government, automotive, security and healthcare industries. In addition, the company has continued to improve its technology offerings – introducing new versions of its software and adding new voices and languages to its line-up. TMC took some time recently to speak with Luciano Piovano, VP, Government Intelligence Solutions as Loquendo to find out more about the company, its achievements and their solution offerings.

05 August 2009 – San Francisco Business Times

Melodis Corp., which seeks to develop sound and speech technology for searches on mobile devices, raised $4 million in venture funding. Walden Venture Capital led the round and put Larry Marcus on the Melodis board of directors. Melodis sits on the board at Oakland-based Pandora, the Internet radio business. He also sits on the board at Berkeley’s the Jazzschool, though that position isn’t linked to his Walden job.

31 July 2009 – BBC

Voice-to-text firm Spinvox has reacted to BBC allegations over its technology, finances and privacy standards. In a blog post on its company website, it described the allegations as "both incorrect and inaccurate". The BBC has been told that most voice mail calls handled by Spinvox are transcribed by call centre staff, rather than converted automatically.

31 July 2009 – Business Wire

The market for voice biometrics has had, to say the least, its ups and its downs throughout the first decade of the millennium. And yet, a recent spike in activity indicates that this technology is approaching a watershed. The barriers to adaption have certainly changed such that voice biometrics has the potential to significantly change the way in which enterprises authenticate their callers.

31 July 2009 – NewsFactor

A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study found the risk of a crash is 20 times worse for a texting driver. VTTI urged a ban on all driver texting to head off a "true crash epidemic" as teens reach driving age. In response to suggestions that headsets could be safer than handheld use, VTTI found they are not. In both cases, it said, answering, dialing and related tasks require drivers to take their eyes off the road. However, it noted that "true hands-free" phone use, which would involve voice-activated systems, could be less risky if they are well designed, because drivers can still keep their eyes on the road.

22 July 2009 – SPEECH Community

SpeechStorm, the specialist provider of phone self-service solutions, has today announced that Comet, one of the UK’s largest electrical retailers has boosted customer choice with the successful introduction of an automated self-service system to handle delivery enquiries. So far, the system has been used by close to 250,000 of its customers, delivering operational improvements, improved customer choice and freeing up agents to handle more time consuming calls.

22 July 2009 – SPEECH Community

In April, Virgin Mobile adopted a $50 unlimited calling plan that Boost Mobile pioneered in January as an approach to attracting budget-conscious but talkative customers. The economic crisis has also boosted the number of consumers making mobile phones their only phone. For consumers with unlimited plans, the cost of one more phone call is perceptually zero, and the length of calls doesn’t matter. That is a paradigm shift from historical perspectives on phone calls as a costly means of communication.

17 July 2009 – SPEECH Community

Nuance can expect to continue to grow by acquisition. With Philips, Dragon, and IBM's speech capabilities, they already control a significant swath of language technology. Plenty of acquisition opportunities remain in the application space, however, and there are no antitrust reasons to stand in their way, especially in light of the fact that Google and Microsoft remain potential competitors in everything they do.

17 July 2009 – Ajax World

Sound Capture and Processing: Practical Approaches covers the digital signal processing algorithms and devices for capturing sounds, mostly human speech. It explores the devices and technologies used to capture, enhance and process sound for the needs of communication and speech recognition in modern computers and communication devices. This book gives a comprehensive introduction to basic acoustics and microphones, with coverage of algorithms for noise reduction, acoustic echo cancellation, dereverberation and microphone arrays; charting the progress of such technologies from their evolution to present day standard.

17 July 2009 – Street Insider

Deutsche analyst says, "NUAN is a leader in speech applications with a dominant market share in the core technology. The company has expanded its portfolio into applications development and hosting, and can now provide customers with flexible business solutions. We believe expansion into new verticals, particularly healthcare, and a rapidly growing subscription business, make the stock an attractive investment at its current valuation...Although valuation is at a premium on an EV/S basis, overall, we believe the valuation represents a good buying opportunity during the company's transition to a cash-flow-driven SaaS model (25% of revenues today)."

17 July 2009 – University of Texas

Imagine a tool that could sense your anger in a customer service call and then speed-dial a manager to help solve your problem. Such software, previously too convoluted to construct, is advancing steadily thanks to a partnership between UT Dallas and a Dallas-based call center support company called Working Solutions. The variability of human speech offers problems aplenty when using software to detect who’s angry and who isn’t, but compound that challenge with spotty cell phone quality, background noise, humming land lines or a crummy telephone receiver and the problems of detecting anger escalate significantly.

17 July 2009 – ZDNet

MacRumors notes that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published “several dozen” patent applications this morning including an interesting one that covers object and facial recognition, messaging, and voice modulation. Unwired View took a closer look at one patent filed on March 8th, 2008 which describes how Apple could incorporate facial detection and recognition technologies into an iPhone, iMac and other devices.

17 July 2009 – BusinessWire

The Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS) and Bill Meisel’s TMA Associates announced the third annual Voice Search Conference, to be held April 22-23, 2010, in San Francisco, California. Advances in the interfaces to computers and other devices have created major opportunities (and huge companies) in the past. Speech recognition and related speech technologies are a natural addition to the visual and text interfaces that predominate today. Speech technology is at a level that supports complex applications such as the popular free directory assistance services, used by over 40% of mobile phone owners.

08 July 2009 – SPEECH Community

UC-Connect, from Alcatel-Lucent’s Genesys Telecommunications Labs, makes significant strides toward collaborative customer care. The mechanism derives “agent state” and leverages “presence” information in tracking the availability of remote and back-office employees. However, its “Interaction Preview and Auction” could be a game changer in promoting more collaborative customer care.

08 July 2009 – The Times of India

With the advent of communication technology, mobile phones and conversations have become key tools in the hands of investigators trying to solve complex and sensitive cases related to terrorism and organized crime. Gujarat Directorate of Forensic Science (DFS) held a workshop to understand new dimensions of voice biometrics on Saturday at Gandhinagar in association with a Madrid-based voice biometrics solutions company.

08 July 2009 – TMC.net

A new reverse-charge SMS text service, 0800TXTMUM, will be launched into the New Zealand market soon. This service helps children to contact their parents by phone even when the battery fails or there is no signal. Leveraging SpinVox’s API (application programming interface), the 0800TXTMUM service works from mobile phones, payphones and landlines and allows children to get in touch with their parents by automatically converting voice messages left by kids into text messages that are sent to their parents as SMS messages.

08 July 2009 – SPEECH Community

Mobile is enjoying what may be called a virtuous spiral, driven by compelling new devices, innovative new applications and faster networks that are making mobile broadband a reality. At the center of this phenomenon are user-friendly interfaces, especially the touch screen, which have fueled adoption and use of mobile apps. While much improved, mobile use still demands considerable attention - for example, viewing displays, entering text, navigating through the UI, etc.

08 July 2009 – CIOL

United Arab Emirates (UAE) based du, the new integrated telecommunications service provider, has deployed Lattice Bridge Infotech's (LBIT) speech technology to collect customers' feedback. With the automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, du has been successful in addressing its customers' needs along with marketing of new services and products in a cost-effective way.

08 July 2009 – Mirror

A surprise inclusion in the iPhone 3GS, voice control works startlingly well, even with complex words and phrases. Apple has also added several ways of issuing commands, making sure the new iPhone works whether you tell it to “call,” “ring” or “dial” one of your contacts. It’s really rather smart, and since the newest iPod nano and iPod touch devices now support microphone input we don’t expect it to stay on the iPhone alone for much longer.

03 July 2009 – local mobile search

Google Voice (formerly GrandCentral) is starting to open up to people who had requested invites to the service. Whether you want to describe this as a next-gen telco service or "unified communications," it's potentially very powerful and appealing given the fact that its free and feature loaded, with the promise of more features to come.

03 July 2009 – TMC.net

Micro-blogging site Twitter has been hogging IP-related headlines for the past several weeks, whether it’s playing a large role in organizing rallies in Iran during hotly contested and divisive elections, or upsetting a major league baseball manager. It’s easy to forget that the technology behind Twitter was created for the same reason that so many other IP communications technologies were, including “interactive voice response,” or IVR: to make communicating easier and more cost-effective.

03 July 2009 – Washington Business Journal

Arabic language translation is a growing business and Sakhr Software is growing with it by acquiring San Francisco’s Dial Directions. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. D.C.-based Sakhr Software, which provides Arabic language translation and processing services to the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, said that Dial Directions expertise in voice-entry technology for mobile devices would allow it to develop technologies for real-time speech to speech translation for Arabic. The companies have already collaborated on an Arabic audio and text translation application on an iPhone or BlackBerry.

03 July 2009 – Call Centre Helper

Most companies start in the wrong place and ask what they can do with speech analytics. What they should be asking, of course, is what do they need to know about the conversations they’re having with their customers, what intelligence is there in those conversations and what’s the best way to get at it.

23 June 2009 – CBR

Google Voice service is expected to give you one number for all your calls and SMS. The service reportedly provides features such as call screening - to announce and screen callers, block calls and call US numbers for free. It also provides voicemail transcripts, listen to voicemail, receive voicemails via email or SMS and forward or download voicemails. Other features include conference calling, switch phones during a call, check directory assistance and set preferences by group. It also enables users to view the inbox from their mobile.

23 June 2009 – Business Wire

Vodafone Turkey, the leading mobile communications provider delivering the most comprehensive and innovative mobile services to residential and business customers in Turkey, recently rolled out its Voice Identification Service powered by PerSay VocalPassword - making a spoken pass phrase a universal identifier for customer support. PerSay VocalPassword is a biometric speaker verification system that verifies a speaker during an interaction with an IVR or a voice application. The system was successfully integrated with Vodafone’s Voice Portal Platform, enabling secure self service applications such as GSM PUK (Personal Unlocking Key) reset.

23 June 2009 – The Economist

THE internet, wonderful though it is, reinforces one of life’s fundamental divisions: that between the literate and the illiterate. Most websites, even those heavy with video content, rely on their users being able to read and—if interactive—write. Building your own site certainly does. Guruduth Banavar, the director of IBM’s India Research Laboratory, wanted to allow people who struggle with literacy to create websites. So he and his colleagues have devised a system based on what is known as “voice extensible markup language”, a cousin of the hypertext markup language used on conventional websites, that allows a website to be built and operated more or less by voice alone.

23 June 2009 – Computer World UK

According to the recent Forrester Enterprise And SMB Networks And Telecommunications Survey, North America And Europe, Q1 2009, 32% of the 279 network and telecommunications managers surveyed indicated they planned to upgrade their IVR in the next 12 months.

19 June 2009 – CXO today

With the lack of clearances from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the voice enabled password for the banking industry, Bay Talkitec, a provider of communication technology platforms is now targeting BPO and manufacturing sectors. Despite having developed the technology primarily for the BFSI vertical, Bay Talkitec decided to focus on other verticals because the government sat on the issue for long time.

19 June 2009 – TMC.net

One of the banes of phone-based commerce is the phrase, “Your call is important to us.” It tends to be the last thing an inbound customer hears from an IVR system before being put on interminable hold. It would be much more reassuring – and accurate – for an IVR to say that “Your identity is very important to us” and then, rather than indiscriminately placing each call on hold, to treat each caller according to his or her expressed preferences, status, or other known attributes.

19 June 2009 – MarketWatch

SpinVox, the global leader in voice to content messaging, announced today that the company's speech-to-text conversion service is being deployed as a network service through an additional 12 countries in Telefonica's mobile operations across Latin America. SpinVox service will be available to all Telefonica's mobile customers in the region.

10 June 2009 – SPEECH Community

Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, has taken a major step in bringing unified communication (UC) to the contact center environment through the launch of UC Connect– a product initiative designed to foster integration and interoperability between the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software platform and UC solutions from many of the major providers in the industry.

10 June 2009 – PR Wire

Salmat VeCommerce today announced the successful deployment of its VeSecure solution at Aviva Australia. In what is a first for the Australian life insurance and wealth management industry, Aviva will utilise the voice biometric capability of VeSecure to transform the way it interacts with its customers and advisors. Simply by using the unique characteristics of the member’s voice, the identity of callers to Aviva can be quickly verified and the call routed to the most appropriate resource. Whilst enhancing the level of customer service and convenience, this process also provides an added layer of security and privacy to telephone enquiries and transactions.

05 June 2009 – SPEECH Community

Recently, Strategy Analytics has directly compared the Human Machine Interface (HMI) technology in a US 2009 BMW 5 Series with that of the 2005 Acura TL. This has included a comparison of both the voice and physical interfaces. By far, the user’s HMI preference is for the Acura TL, and in Strategy Analytics’ view Honda/Acura is one of the few OEMs that understands the value and power of the voice interface. The automotive market opportunities for HMI technologies are clear. According to the May-09 report “Automotive HMI: Voice Technology and Touch Screens Have Significant Lead’, the global OE market demand for automotive voice technology is set to reach $1.2B/35M units, and automotive touch screens hitting $1.7B/17.5M units in 2015.

05 June 2009 – PC Mag

I have to confess: I somewhat disagree with PCMag.com's official review of Microsoft's Bing.com, which was largely positive. In part, that's because of one thing: the search results don't do a great job of differentiating between actual and sponsored search results, and I think that the layout of those results is still a step below Google's results, which have become the benchmark.

27 May 2009 – iTnews

Centrelink customers will be able to authenticate access to welfare services via the unique properties of their voice after a biometric voice system officially went into production today. The system, built by former Telstra subsidiary KAZ and based on technology developed by both the Queensland University of Technology and US voice recognition vendor Nuance, will allow Centrelink users to authenticate without needing to remember PINs and Passwords.

27 May 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

New technologies making their way into the call center analytics space are expected to make a giant splash in the next three years, according to new research by DMG Consulting. Principal among them is customer experience analytics (CEA), a new concept in speech analytics that dissects the entire customer interaction through every touch point—Web and interactive voice response (IVR) self-service, agent interactions, and the fulfillment process - to improve customer service and automation rates.

22 May 2009 – Strategy Analytics

Voice technology has made significant strides in the automotive HMI market over the last 1-2 years, leveraging from adoption in navigation systems and handsfree communications markets. With pressures to safely manage an ever increasing list of in-vehicle features, improved voice technology cost leverage and scale economies can be achieved through partnering and product platforms that can be leveraged into multiple applications. The global automotive OE market for voice recognition will reach $1.2B in 2015 and will be found in 47% of new vehicles produced.

22 May 2009 – TMC.net

According to the survey, communications and collaboration tools are useful for providing cost reduction benefits (83 percent of respondents), especially related to unifying global operations, and followed by faster decision-making (81 percent). The survey also states that awareness and usage is highest among tools such as video conferencing (92 percent of respondents) and audio conferencing (82 percent).

22 May 2009 – advance

In today's health care environment, hospital patient visits have reached almost 300 million and outpatient visits are now nearing 1 billion. While patient visits are growing at a compounding rate of 3 percent per year, requirements for documentation are increasing disproportionately to that growth due to heightened regulations and desire for greater transparency in preparation for pay for performance. Currently, dictation and transcription are the primary means of documenting visits and populating the patient record with the relevant information.

22 May 2009 – SPEECH Community

As individuals around the world become more accustomed to using mobile computing devices in hands-busy, eyes-busy environments, the market for speech recognition technologies within these devices is expected to gain considerable traction within the next five years. In a new report, “The Proliferation of Innovative Speech Applications in Mobile Computing“, independent market analyst Datamonitor predicts the global market for advanced speech recognition (ASR) in mobile handsets will increase from $32.7 million in 2009 to $99.6 million in 2014. That for ASR in in-vehicle telematics is expected to grow at a similar rate, from $64.3 million in 2009 to 208.2 million by 2014.

13 May 2009 – SPEECH Community

Today Voxeo, the world's leading provider of standards-based voice application platforms and hosted services announced the launch of a new data center for its IVR and voice application hosting services in Frankfurt, Germany. The new hosting facility is one of the most secure data centers in the world, designed to meet the on-demand IVR and application hosting needs of Voxeo's banking, telecommunications and Global 1,000 customers. Existing Voxeo customers in the region include o2, Postbank, SAP, Swisscom, T-Mobile, Versatel, and Vodafone.

13 May 2009 – RealWire

Telephonetics VIP, the speech automated specialist, today announces the signing of a multi-year contract with Empire Cinemas Ltd for the supply of its MovieLINE automatic speech recognition (ASR) ticket booking and information technology solution to all of its 17 UK cinema sites. After a 3 year long relationship with Eckoh, Empire Cinemas has decided to switch their supplier to major competitor Telephonetics VIP. Empire will also utilise Telephonetics VIP's state-of-the-art Agent Interface software, seamlessly linking MovieLINE ASR booking service with the new call-centre operation also provided by Telephonetics VIP.

13 may 2009 – InfoWorld

The National Australia Bank is seeking to streamline is customer experience by using speech recognition and voice biometrics at its main telephony customer service point. NAB recently completed a deployment of Salmat VeCommerce's speech recognition application after a pre- and post-testing by the company to ensure it could work for customers. Salmat VeCommerce managing director Paul Magee said the bank is experiencing a slight improvement in customer experience and no reduction in service levels by using the technology.

07 May 2009 – SPEECH Community

Loquendo, leading speech technology provider worldwide, will be participating at TechFOr 2009 – the International Exhibition for Security Technologies, 11-14th May 2009 at the new Fiera Roma Centre in Rome, Italy. TechFOr 2009, in its second year, is the foremost international event organised in Italy exclusively dedicated to Defence, Civil Protection and Homeland Security technologies. During the conference, organised with the sponsorship of the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Loquendo will be presenting VARS, “Voice Analysis Run-Time Server” - the solution developed by Loquendo able to automatically identify, in real-time or off-line, telephone conversations of investigative interest, according to the search criteria selected by the operator.

07 May 2009 – SPEECH Community

Twitter has gone from the “margins to the mainstream” in less than 12 months. In so doing it has become an almost essential marketing and customer service tool for brands, as well as a news and information distribution platform for publishers and even government. While companies and larger marketers are flocking to Twitter, there’s also enormous, untapped potential for small businesses to use Twitter as a free marketing and CRM vehicle in the same way.

07 May 2009 – TMC.net

The current global market is presenting significant challenges for companies in nearly every industry. At the same time, in order to effectively compete, companies must invest in new technologies. But how do companies make these technology investments in light of lower revenues and tighter budgets? The answer could be in software solutions that require lower up-front cost and better flexibility.

07 May 2009 – iTWire

According to analysts, Frost & Sullivan, although IT expenditure in 2009-2010 will be significantly impacted by the global financial crisis, the firm says UC sales will benefit as organisations seek to achieve cost savings, and as mergers and acquisitions continue to drive the need for integration and homogenous solutions. “The economic impact will undeniably affect IT expenditure in Australia this year,” says Audrey William, ANZ research director for Frost & Sullivan, adding, however, that “this doesn't have to be negative for the Australian UC industry.”

07 May 2009 – SPEECH Community

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about issues of security and the methods organisations use to verify their identity, according to a new study by Sydney-based research company, callcentres.net. The 2009 Salmat VeCommerce Identity Verification Study highlights consumers' fears that traditional PINs and passwords do not provide adequate protection of their personal information, with 67 per cent of consumers reporting that they believe their security details are at risk.

28 April 2009 – Information Week

To many consumers, automatic voice prompts may rank among the great scourges of customer service, right up there with endless loops of telephonic waiting room music and people who repeatedly drop calls upon trying to transfer them.

28 April 2009 – Trading Markets

SuccessFactors, Inc., a provider of performance and talent management solutions, announced that Telephonetics VIP, a speech automation solutions developer, has implemented SuccessFactors' Professional Edition performance and talent management solution to all staff across the UK.

28 April 2009 – Trading Markets

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company, saw a dramatic increase in customer take-up of its next generation Voice Self-Service solution in EMEA. The region accounted for the largest year-on-year increases in Genesys Voice Portal (GVP) shipments - a 51 per cent growth between 2007 and 2008 and a 42 per cent increase in the previous year. Leading household names in the utilities, government, banking and telecommunications industries now benefit from tighter integration to customer data in CRM software packages, as well as real-time contact queuing and routing engines.

28 April 2009 – SPEECH Community

Phone-based self-service has taken on new meaning as phones morph into multi-functional wireless devices and contact center functions are distributed throughout the globe. Conversational Access Technologies now involve asynchronous interaction among individuals using Web services over the phone lines. Adding the human touch to traditionally automated self-service activities gives companies the option to leverage existing staff and IT infrastructure or outsource operations to managed or hosted service providers.

28 April 2009 – Reuters

Shares in hosted speech recognition services company Eckoh gains 9.3 percent after an upbeat update highlighting a three-year contract with Capita and Intelecom UK, alongside two contract renewals in the utility sector.

24 April 2009 – SPEECH Community

Loquendo, provider of speech technologies worldwide, and Cordic, the leading fleet management solutions experts, announced that Cordic’s market leading cPAQ taxi despatch system now features Interactive Voice Response (IVR) enabled by Loquendo speech technology. Cordic’s advanced taxi despatch system features an innovative IVR platform, which is powered by Loquendo ASR automatic speech recognition and Loquendo TTS synthetic speech technologies, and includes the industry’s first voice recognition feature for automated taxi bookings.

24 April 2009 – Boonville Daily News

Originally made for special education students, “Text to Speech and Speech to Text” is a program that brings technology to the students. It was purchased through a grant. “This program works by letting a student type in their essay and the computer will say it back to them with a synthesized voice,” Jeanie Gordon, New Franklin schools superintendent said.

24 April 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

Common Voices, a provider of IP voicemail systems, yesterday officially launched an enhanced voicemail service for Android G1 phones on the T-Mobile network. The free service, called NowMessage.com, allows users to receive voicemail messages as email sent to their Google Gmail accounts. The email displays the name and phone number of the caller in the subject line and attaches the voicemail message as either a .WAV or MP3 file to which the subscriber can listen directly on his G1 handset. Subscribers can also be notified of all calls missed when the phone is powered off or out of service range.

24 April 2009 – PR inside

Because of the high inquiry the standard work for the national and international speech technology market, the voice compass, is now also available in America. The major professional magazines worldwide for information technology, Unified Communications and voice solutions Information Today and Speech Technology market voice compass as media partners.

24 April 2009 – NYSE Euronext

Zetes, a leading European supplier of solutions for the automatic identification of goods and people, announces that Hitachi Transport System, part of Hitachi Ltd., has selected Zetes’ multimodal voice solution 3iV Crystal to optimise the picking and receiving operations in its brand new warehouse in Waardenburg, the Netherlands. Combining scanning and voice for both activities, Hitachi aims at achieving optimal customer service by assuring 100% accuracy.

15 April 2009 – SPEECH Community

Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced findings that show consumers are more demanding than ever, and require access to customer care directly from their mobile devices. The results of the study revealed that 62 percent of users said they want to bypass automated systems and be given an opportunity to use their mobile phone screen to complete simple inquiries that should not require agent intervention.

15 April 2009 – IT-Director

A survey by Infosecurity Europe has found that spending on Information security is likely to increase according to 55% of the 1010 respondents they asked and 34% expected their spending to remain the same as last year. Only 8% expect minor reductions of less than 5% of last years spending and 2% expect significant reductions of more than 5%. This contrasts significantly with overall spending on IT as 36% of respondents expect minor reductions from last years IT Spending and a third expect to see major reductions compared to last years IT Spending. A fifth expect overall IT spending to be higher than last year and 10% expect their overall IT spend to be the same as last year.

15 April 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

Nexidia and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are teaming up to protect the public from fraud and fight illegal trading practices. Nexidia and the CFTC entered into an agreement to deploy Nexidia’s Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) software to review audio content produced in investigations of trading activities.

15 April 2009 – 1to1media

Speech analytics solutions are redefining quality in a way that promotes greater customer satisfaction, loyalty, and value-while delivering vital information to the contact center and broader enterprise about the issues and trends driving customer calls in the first place. In day-to-day operations, organizations tend to leverage speech analytics in an iterative process that typically involves these steps.

15 April 2009 – London Free Press

London-area realtors can talk their way into a new security system - but nobody else can. The London St. Thomas Association of Realtors (LSTAR) has become the first real-estate board in North America to use a biometric voice-recognition system to access home listings under the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). LSTAR president Joe Hough said an individual's voice is as distinct as a fingerprint and voice recognition is both simple and secure.

09 April 2009 – Market Research

Datamonitor's IVR Decision Matrix report explores the competitive dynamics within the IVR market and helps businesses select a vendor based on its technology strength, reputation among customers, and impact in the market. Datamonitor provides a complete view of vendor capabilities and advises on those you should explore, consider and, most importantly, shortlist.

09 April 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

Users of the popular microblogging site Twitter.com can now dial a toll-free number, speak their tweets, and have them transcribed and uploaded to Twitter—all thanks to TweetCall, a new service launched last week by voice-to-text provider Quicktate. To sign up for TweetCall—which is currently a free service—a user simply registers at www.tweetcall.com via entering her preexisting Twitter username, password, and phone number(s). After that, the user is assigned a four digit pin number. Then it’s simply a matter of calling 1-877-Tweet-Call, which identifies the user via caller ID. Her spoken tweets are immediately converted to text and appear in her Twitter feed.

09 April 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

AT&T, the company that invented the collect call, this week took the concept a step further by expanding it to mobile phones. Customers can now make collect calls to mobile phones by dialing 1-800-CALL-ATT to access a new interactive voice response (IVR)-driven service called AT&T Collect to Wireless. The service is available through a strategic relationship with 3CInteractive, a creative mobile marketing firm with a service portfolio including text and multimedia messaging, application development, campaign and compliance management, content delivery, and IVR integration, as well as turnkey media solutions, including the representation and sale of mobile marketing sponsorships.

09 April 2009 – xchange

SpinVox will deploy its speech-to-text services as a subscription-based managed service from the cloud, available to partners, carriers and enterprise customers. SpinVox has joined the IBM software as a service (SaaS) initiative to deliver global cloud services delivered from the company’s data centers, built on IBM servers, storage and middleware products.

09 April 2009 – the Washington Post

The controversy around Skype rolls on. German carrier T-Mobile, and exclusive carrier of the iPhone in Germany, will not allow customers to use the application, and is blocking it both physically and contractually. T-Mobile spokesperson Alexander von Schmettow told the German online site, the Local that not only does it go against the terms of its contract with consumers, but that the "high level of traffic would hinder our network performance," and "if the Skype program didn't work properly, customers would make us responsible for it." He also dismissed the notion that Skype posed a threat to T-Mobile voice revenues, as had been written in The Financial Times Deutschland, and said that T-Mobile had been blocking VoiP software for two years.

01 April 2009 – TMC.net

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are being used in an increasing number of industries to improve customer service and automate processes. This week in IVR-related news, the technology was highlighted in the automotive, healthcare and contact center industries. Plum Voice, a provider of automated telephony solutions announced that its IVR system has helped CMS, a provider of managed care services to insurance companies and state Medicare and Medicaid programs, handle case management for their millions of monthly claims.

01 April 2009 – macnn

Apple may be considering integrating some form of biometric security for iPhones, as well as Macs, a newly-published patent application hints. While iPhones and Macs can currently be locked with passcodes and passwords in turn, the patent filing suggests that a more secure option is desirable. Biometrics are the leading candidate, and could potentially come in the form of a fingerprint or finger vein scanner slipped underneath a touchscreen, capable of unlocking a phone in a single step. Apple has also mentioned the possibility of voice or even DNA recognition, though the latter is likely unfeasible for a phone or notebook.

23 March 2009 – SPEECH Community

Nuance Communications, Inc., a leading provider of speech solutions, today announced findings that show consumers will take advantage of automobile voice recognition capabilities if they’re built in. In fact, eight out of nine respondents who own speech-enabled in-car systems and navigation devices regularly use the voice recognition capabilities. The Automotive Voice Interface User Survey conducted by Maix Research and Consulting also revealed a high degree of satisfaction among 73 percent of users that will lead them to recommend the technology to friends and family, as well as plan to repurchase automobiles with speech-enabled functions in the future.

23 March 2009 – Opus Research

Today a couple of leaders in the telecom infrastructure market past and future announced new products designed to encourage development of new telecom applications in business enterprises. Skype, prodded by the introduction of Google Voice, has accelerated the “beta” test of “Skype for SIP” (referring to the “session initiation protocol” that underlies virtually all Voice over IP-based services). The idea is for companies that have invested in VoIP phones and IP-telephony switches to use Skype as their VoIP carrier without having to involve software running on a PC in the mix.

23 March 2009 – TradingMarkets.com

Security concerns in the present world continue to grow in intensity and complexity. This opens the door to many opportunities within the European biometrics market, which is expected to experience substantial growth in the coming years despite the current economic downturn. Many of the common identity management measures currently in place such as access cards, employee IDs, password protection, personal identification numbers (PINs), passports, and the like, can be forgotten, lost, disclosed, or changed. Biometrics offers a more secure solution because it identifies an individual through the unique physiological or behavioural patterns.

23 March 2009 – Business Wire

Research and Markets has announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd's new report "Automatic Speech and Speaker Recognition: Large Margin and Kernel Methods" to their offering. Speech and Speaker Recognition: Large Margin and Kernel Methods is a collation of research in the recent advances in large margin and kernel methods, as applied to the field of speech and speaker recognition. It presents theoretical and practical foundations of these methods, from support vector machines to large margin methods for structured learning. It also provides examples of large margin based acoustic modelling for continuous speech recognizers, where the grounds for practical large margin sequence learning are set. Large margin methods for discriminative language modelling and text independent speaker verification are also addressed in this book.

23 March 2009 – The Journal of New England Technology

BBN Technologies Inc. of Cambridge has been awarded $2.8 million in additional funding under the federal Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC) program. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) TRANSTAC program is aimed at developing two-way translation systems that enable speakers of different languages to communicate with one another spontaneously in real-world, tactical situations.

23 March 2009 – Google

We've just started to release a preview of Google Voice, an application that helps you better manage your voice communications. Google Voice will be available initially to existing users of GrandCentral, a service we acquired in July of 2007. The new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail (see the video below) and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access Goog-411 directory assistance.

26 March 2009 – PRLog

As trading conditions become tougher in the current market, two UK companies have outlined how Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional speech recognition software is helping them reduce costs and improve efficiency. Rapidly expanding management consultancy, Evoco, and leading inventory clerk organisation, Inventory Clerk, have both deployed Nuance’s leading speech recognition software to fuel staff productivity and improve speed of service to their customers.

18 March 2009 – PRWeb

800 PBX, provider of Virtual PBX and smart IVR, has launched its 'Dial-a-Pizza' phone order automation at Pizza Expo '09. Dial-a-Pizza is the first advanced IVR application that allows seamless end-to-end pizza ordering. With Smart IVR, callers now can simply say one or more appetizers, pick from specialties, say the toppings they wish, order soda and even apply coupons. The service captures names and addresses from white pages and can also securely authorize customer credit cards. The order then automatically transits to the POS system. The entire process is seamless.

13 March 2009 – Reuters

Google Inc is seeking to blur the line between the telephone and the computer even further with the introduction of Google Voice on Thursday. The new service weaves traditional phone features with Google's Gmail email product, allowing a person to store transcripts of voicemail phone messages in their email inbox and to find a specific nugget of information within a phone message as if trawling through a sea of emails.

13 March 2009 – SPEECH Community

Loquendo, provider of speech technologies worldwide, announces that the proposed financial statements for 2008 were approved by the Loquendo Board of Directors on 26th February, and that despite the difficult economic climate Loquendo S.p.A. continues to grow and be profitable. In the 2008 financial year, overall revenue growth exceeded 20% compared to 2007. The main drivers of this increase have been Loquendo internationalization - which reported a strong expansion, especially in North America and Europe - and the exceptional success of Loquendo Embedded Technologies in the telematics and navigation device sectors - which more than doubled in value from 2007 to 2008.

13 March 2009 – live-pr

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Frost & Sullivan's new report "North American IVR and Voice Portal Systems Markets" to their offering. Rising Concerns over Identity Theft Increase Biometrics Adoption The proliferation of electronic applications has had many ramifications, a significant one being a spurt in faceless electronic transactions and therefore, fraudulent activities such as identity thefts. Illustrating the extent of damage caused by e-crimes, Frost & Sullivan estimates that U.S. businesses and consumers ran up losses of approximately $80.0 billion in 2007.

13 March 2009 – TechRepublic

As a society we have come to expect medical miracles as a matter of course in the progression of health sciences. Today healthcare practitioners are depending on their own small technology miracles to enable a better quality of care. Speech recognition technology is viewed as one of those miracles. It is enabling doctors and nurses to offer more efficient care and create an improved medical information environment at Point of Care (PoC).

04 March 2009 – Speech Technology Magazine

With a new and extended deal with Telstra, made public on Monday, SpinVox is increasing its reach into Australia. Telstra, which was once a state-owned monopoly, is now the largest private carrier in Australia. In November of 2007, SpinVox struck a deal to provide the telecommunications firm’s business customers with voicemail-to-text services. Contingent on the success and popularity of the launch, the partnership was expected to extend to the consumer market. Satisfied with the results, Telstra is delivering and making SpinVox available to all its customers.

04 March 2009 - marketwire

Secured Digital Applications, Inc., a provider of mobile communication, outsourced business and information technology consulting services, announced today that it had entered into a Supplemental Agreement with its Channel Partner, Southpark Worldwide Limited, to roll out SDGL's mobile advertising and mobile Voice Over Internet Protocol ("VoIP") services utilizing SDGL's mobile VoIP Gateway in Guangdong Province, China.

04 March 2009 – electronista

Amazon this evening said in a statement that the Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature for reading audiobooks will be strictly voluntary. The move will let individual book publishers decide whether or not individual titles can be read aloud by the e-book device and will change the book formatting to selectively disable the feature for those that object to it. The change follows objections from the Author's Guild which argued that the feature effectively violated the commercial rights of authors to charge separately for voiced editions of their books.

04 March 2009 – SPEECH Community

Digital dictation and its seamless follow on partner, speech recognition, transforms patient treatment times and saves a Trust millions, says Henry Gallagher, Managing Director of G2 Speech UK. Idle boast? ‘Not at all, see the evidence for yourself’ says Gallagher ‘G2 have been doing just this for over a decade in the Netherlands and more recently in a fast growing number of Trusts in the UK and Ireland. It’s tried, tested and proven’. To examine Gallagher’s claim we need to look at the context of medical dictation, the different methods available and how systems are fast changing in the digital age.

04 March 2009 – ThirdFactor

Due to rising fears of identity theft stemming from credit card misuse coupled with a recent study by technology company Unisys that resulted with over 70% of respondents saying they would be willing to give financial and government institutions biometric information for better identity protection, many credit card companies seem to be looking more intently at biometrics as a viable solution, according to a Creditcards.com article.

04 March 2009 – the Voice of Network Convergence

Ubiquitously supported across wireless networks and handsets, texting has become a way of life for millions of young people, and relatively mainstream for everyone else — and unsurprisingly, it’s the most profitable data service for mobile operators. But as carriers have seen their revenue per subscriber decrease, and are looking for new value-added services, they’re looking for new things to do with SMS. The latest concept is the speech-to-text functionality known as voice SMS — and vendors at the upcoming Mobile World Congress will be showcasing such applications in Barcelona next week.

26 February 2009 – SPEECH Community

PerSay, the leading provider of advanced voice biometrics solutions today announced a distribution partnership with INS Indriya, a leading technology consulting firm based in Singapore, providing Voice Applications and Customer Interaction strategy, solutions and services. Voice biometrics technology takes advantage of the fact that each person’s voice is a unique and unobtrusive identifier, like a fingerprint. In contact centers, voice biometrics significantly reduces operational costs associated with customer authentication, enhances security and improves customer experience for contact centers that support banking, telecommunications, government agencies and other industries.

26 February 2009 – Newswire

The automation of simple customer interactions has remained the major driver for the hosted IVR services market in general. The business benefits afforded by hosted solutions have proven immensely useful to enterprises of all sizes in this tough economy. Reduction in upfront capital expenditure and the associated lower total cost of ownership is driving increased adoption of hosted IVR, particularly in small- to mid-sized markets. "The hosted model makes it easier for enterprises to deploy speech applications, bringing together the best of both worlds – the business benefits of the software as a service (SaaS) model, and improving the customer experience by making IVR's more user-friendly," explains Frost & Sullivan Research Director Ashwin Iyer.

26 February 2009 – Call Centre Clinic

IKEA's primary goal in deploying a new phone portal was to assure a high level of customer satisfaction. IKEA focused on automating common yet simple customer requests. More complex or unique customer requests are transferred quickly to IKEA service agents after the phone portal collects basic account information. This information is passed automatically to the customer service agent. In combination, IKEA's focus on automating basic calls and quickly transferring other calls significantly reduces customer hold time and improves customer satisfaction. Finally, the new voice portal needed to provide a flexible and future-proof platform, allowing IKEA to quickly respond to ever-changing market needs while maintaining high call quality.

26 February 2009 – European Commission

Say Accounts if you want to speak to someone about your account'; 'Say Credit if you want to speak to someone about your credit card'. Do these statements sound familiar? If you conduct your personal business via telephones, they should. Although it saves you time and effort, automated speech recognition has its limitations. Wouldn't it be great if you could tell the service exactly what you want quickly and succinctly? The EU-funded LUNA project, funded under the Sixth Framework Programme with EUR 2.61 million, is raising the level of intelligence of automatic systems up to 'Spoken Language Understanding' (SLU). The three-year project is tackling real-time understanding of spontaneous speech in the context of advanced telecom services.

26 February 2009 – bjhc&im

HCA International, a central London healthcare facility has rolled-out speech recognition-based radiology reporting on 12 sites. The technology has reduced average report creation times to 2:40 minutes from 24 hours previously. Adoption levels among radiologists surpassed the initial goal of 60% by the end of the project: with two-thirds of the roll-out complete, more than 96% of the dictations are already processed through speech recognition.

18 February 2009 – Fierce Health IT

The US Army Medical Department is rolling out speech recognition technology in a big way as part of an effort to boost its clinicians' satisfaction with the military's electronic medical record system. The new system will allow physicians to speak their notes into the EMR at the patient's bedside, rather than enter them later when their memories aren't as fresh.

18 February 2009 – Enterprise Management Quarterly

Companies who have the need to distribute dynamic up to date information using audio to their staff, users, or customers have really only one cost effective option to do this in the Web 2.0 environment - speech synthesis. Speech synthesis, taking text held or input to a computer system and producing human speech from it, is without a doubt one of the key enabling technologies required for Web 2.0 and the underlying pervasive computing that drives it.

12 February 2009 – cheapflights.com

Maybe it's an ode to the digital generation, or maybe it's customer service trying to be more accommodating to travelers. Either way, it's about to get personal for American Airlines passengers. Customers calling American Airlines for up-to-date flight information will soon be privy to a new technology that knows exactly why they are calling. The airline claims the 'Remember Me' speech recognition technology cuts waiting times by as much as 25 percent, as it instantly recognizes the number the traveller is calling from and finds the reservation.

12 February 2009 – BBC

Two of the UK's big High Street Banks say they are following developments in voice biometric technology closely. The technology uses voice analysis to identify customers phoning in as an addition or alternative to conventional pins or passwords.

12 February 2009 – TMC.net

Superpartners and call centre provider Global Speech Networks (GSN) have decided to work on a voice portal solution for its contact centre. The new Superpartners Voice Portal solution is expected to support additional scale for the continuous increase in memberships across industry superannuation. Superpartners, a large superannuation administrator in Australia, administers over six million member accounts and has on board 250 on-phone contact centre agents who field around 2.5 million member calls enquiries per year on behalf of their fund clients.

12 February 2009 – PR-Canada.net

Verizon voice-over-IP (VoIP) solutions are helping to put AAA Mid-Atlantic, and the auto club’s nearly 4 million members, in the driver’s seat. Under a new agreement, Verizon Business will provide voice, data and IP services and VoIP solutions that will enable AAA Mid-Atlantic to more effectively and efficiently serve customers across five states and the District of Columbia, who rely on the auto club to assist them in their travels. Verizon VoIP will help improve and streamline the company’s voice communications.

04 February 2009 – New Scientist

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 text on 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.

30 January 2009 - PRWeb

SkyCreek Corporation, a hosted IVR solutions provider to some of the largest corporations in North America, announced today the debut of their geographically-dispersed deployment at CRG West's Chicago data center. Located in the heart of Chicago's financial district, the voice/data center will feature: DS3 and PRI circuits, allowing best-of-breed telephony features and quality; direct termination overflow for failover; and physical, logical and network security.

30 January 2009 - MarketWatch

SpeechCycle today announced the general market availability of RPA OnDemand, the company's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for powering the next generation of Rich Phone Applications (RPAs) in the contact center and beyond. RPA OnDemand is a unified platform providing all necessary services for the composition, enterprise integration, on-demand ("in the cloud") delivery, and performance measurement of Rich Phone Applications.

30 January 2009 – ThirdFactor

Australian Welfare Agency, Centrelink has implemented a voice biometrics system for their over the phone service for clients, according to an Australian IT article. The agency had been thinking about implementing a system for two years until both the maturation of their own systems and voice biometric products had gotten to a point where they were comfortable with the switch.

30 January 2009 – CBR enterprise applications

Morrisons will replace a paper-based picking system with a voice-based one at its distribution centres, as part of an enterprise-wide IT restructuring. Morrisons voice picking system will be developed on Zetes’ 3iV voice software and over 2000 Vocollect Talkman voice computers. Zetes will implement the project under a GBP6m contract.

21 January 2009 – Call Centre Clinic

Telephonetics VIP, the speech automation specialist, is pleased to announce the general availability of a range of Automation Agents to help organisations maximise efficiency for routine transactions over the telephone.

21 January 2009 – Dubai City Guide

In line with its promise of maximizing consumer convenience, Etisalat today announced the launch of its Voice Activated Directory services today. Customers calling on 181 through their land line will now receive a faster response time through the automated service, at no additional cost. Currently activated for only land line users in phase 1, the service will soon be made available for customers calling from the mobiles as well.

15 January 2009 – TMCnet.com

Speech self-service is definitely a high growth area of the market. Not only in the traditional inbound activities but also for outbound activities. When looking to provide the best possible customer experience, automation quickly becomes increasingly important in providing rapid service for the more routine inquiries. Automation, via speech self-service, can cover nearly 70% of the inquiries that come into the classic call center. In addition, automation can provide an option for companies wishing to provide 24/7 access to information without providing staffing 24/7.

15 January 2009 – prnews wire

Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally, along with Derrick Kuzak, group vice president of Global Product Development, and top members of Ford's Connected Services team, announced a new set of SYNC services that leverage industry-leading voice-recognition software, integrated GPS technology and a customer's Bluetooth-capable mobile phone to deliver personalized traffic reports, precise turn-by-turn driving directions and up-to-date information including business listings, news, sports and weather - without the need for a built-in navigation system.

08 January 2008 – Search Financial Security

Gartner recently warned that banks should tighten up their online security in light of a new password-stealing Trojan targeting online bank sites. In addition to implementing a layered security approach, Gartner recommends that bank CIOs and security officers notify consumers about any new threats via email and text alerts instead of simply putting notices on their websites. Security and risk executives at banks should also familiarize themselves with the potential benefits and limitations of voice biometrics for user authentication and transaction verification, according to Gartner.

08 January 2008 – Gulf News

In the next few years, the Middle East and Asia will account for the largest share in the biometrics market, which is expected to reach more than Dh27 billion globally by 2012.

08 January 2008 – TMCnet.com

Contact centers are being buffeted by several trends: a challenging economy that has renewed pressure to cut costs yet at the same time retain customers and revenues and growth in use of new channels by customers from anywhere.

08 January 2009 – SPEECH Community

It's faster, more accurate and highly maneuverable. What may sound like the latest weapons system is actually a new way of doing business for doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. With the introduction of Dragon Medical speech recognition software, the process of documenting patient medical records can be accomplished in minutes rather than days. Not only is the process faster, but it allows for a more detailed, accurate and cost-effective way of doing business, said Army Maj. (Dr.) Hamilton Le, a surgeon who has mastered the program in less than a month.

08 January 2008 – SPEECH Community

The 2008 Speech Analytics Market Report is the most comprehensive and definitive guide to this dynamic and fast-growing market. This year’s Report, the third annual edition, features detailed information about the market, vendors, technology, products, capabilities, current and future uses, trends, competitive landscape, benefits and ROI, market share and pricing. It also presents customer satisfaction scores and feedback about the vendors and their products, and provides implementation best practices to makes your project a success. This Report gives end users everything they need to understand this important technology segment so that they can select the right product and rapidly realize significant and quantifiable benefits.

08 January 2008 – SPEECH Community

IVR systems have been around since the 1980s, but the market has exploded in the last few years as companies large and small all over the world build or enhance self-service solutions. DMG estimates that worldwide IVR revenue reached $1.867 billion in 2007 and will exceed $2.4 billion by 2010, despite the current economic challenges. The 2008 Worldwide Interactive Voice Response Trends and Market Share Report clearly explains for vendors and investors the trends and activities that are driving market growth, highlighting opportunities and identifying acquisition targets.