Nuance and Lawsuits - again

In addition the the IBM engine which has strong patent behind it, Vlingo is leveraging new relations with AT&T as an investor and as a speech engine (Watson) provider in prep for the Nuance lawsuit. So now the IBM engine is licensed to Vlingo via Nuance (and this is why theuy are suing them). Moreover, Vlingo is not using this engine anymore. It seems like lawyers tricks rather than technology.

AT&T Backs Vlingo as Nuance Lawsuit Looms

AT&T has taken a minority stake in Vlingo in a move that could have major repercussions for Nuance’s patent infringement suit against the voice navigation startup. As part of the deal, Vlingo will integrate its offerings with AT&T’s Watson, a core speech recognition technology that serves as a foundation for voice-activated products. Vlingo will all but abandon the IBM-developed technology that it had been using — and which is at the heart of Nuance’s lawsuit.

“Our goal is to move everything to AT&T,” Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan told me this morning. “If Nuance decides to proceed, they’ll essentially be suing us for violating patents — and this is the crazy thing — and the alleged violation occurs in the IBM engine Nuance licensed to us and, by the way, we don’t use anymore.”

Nuance executives were not immediately available for comment.

Grannan said the Watson engine is “superior” to the IBM-developed technology and will help Vlingo build better voice navigation offerings. AT&T and Vlingo will begin rolling out new products later this year for AT&T customers and plan to market the joint solution to other industry players, including device manufacturers and other carriers.

The cutthroat nature of the speech recognition space underscores the increasing attention it’s attracting from investors, as voice is positioned as a superior navigation tool to device keypads and touchscreens -– especially for users behind the wheel. A Boston-area outfit, Vlingo began to gain traction in early 2008 when Yahoo tapped it to add a speech recognition component to its oneSearch offering. The agreement –- which followed Vlingo’s $6.5 million Series A round in 2007 -– saw Yahoo lead a second round of funding that brought in $20 million.

But Vlingo isn’t the only startup getting funded; the space has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars, and competition is fierce. Microsoft Corp. joined the field two years ago with its $800 million acquisition of Tellme, whose technology it’s using to incorporate speech into its upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5. Google has invested heavily as well, and is deploying voice navigation with its Android platform. As for the voice recognition companies themselves, outside of Vlingo, smaller players such as V-Enable and Promptu are also vying for attention. Meanwhile Nuance, the dominant pure play on the field, has spent $1 billion or so in acquisitions.

- By Colin Gibbs | Gigaom

Nuance acquires Jott (without suing them first :-)

Aiming to improve at the human based transcription, Nuance just acquired Jott. It is not the technology, so why? Probably minimal price for Jott assets (not disclosed) and some methodology and interfaces for some external applications such as salesforce.com.
If you know more, share with us this info.

Nuance Acquires Jott, Expands Mobile Portfolio

Innovative Jott Service to Deliver Powerful New Voice-to-Text Capabilities to Mobile Operators and En

BURLINGTON, Mass. & SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN - News) today announced it has expanded its Mobile Division voice services portfolio with the acquisition of Jott. Jott is the innovator behind the popular Jott Assistant, the simple and easy-to-use service that enables users to create notes, set reminders and appointments, send email and text messages, and post to their favorite web services – all by voice, from any device.

“Jott’s voice-to-text offerings have experienced a groundswell of adoption and positive industry recognition since the company’s inception, and we’re thrilled about the opportunity to expand our market reach and our voice services portfolio,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “Together we will deliver a range of new services to our mobile operator and enterprise customers.”

The combined Nuance and Jott teams will focus on several key voice-to-text initiatives:

• The innovative Jott Assistant service has been adopted by hundreds of thousands of users, providing vast insight into the demands of today’s mobile users. To further extend the power of Jott across the mobile mass market, Nuance plans to package and offer Jott Assistant to mobile operators as part of its voice services portfolio, including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text.
• By combining its easy-to-use voice services with email, text messaging and a variety of web services, Jott’s service has advanced mobile productivity in the enterprise market. Nuance, together with its Enterprise Unified Communications partners, will offer a secure, highly scalable and differentiated Enterprise package including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text, Messaging, and Collaboration.
• As used in Jott for Salesforce, Jott provides open APIs that allow for voice integration with third party CRM providers and other critical enterprise applications that require mobile access. Nuance will continue to mainstream and expand the CRM partner program through its existing CRM partnerships, enabling enterprise application providers to better meet the needs of the evolving professional mobile market.

“We’ve seen dramatically increased demand for our mobile voice solutions, because they offer real business value, are easy to deploy, and are a delight to use,” said John Pollard, co-founder, Jott. “Nuance has consistently delivered groundbreaking mobile applications to billions of people worldwide. Our combined expertise will bring innovative and differentiated voice services to a variety of markets with tremendous scale.”

All of Jott’s services, including Jott Assistant, Jott Voicemail and Jott for Salesforce, will remain available, and existing customers will experience no interruptions in service. For more information and to access Jott services, visit www.jott.com.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: Nuance.com.

About Jott

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Jott Networks is the world leader in mobile voice-to-text applications. Jott allows individuals and businesses to easily capture thoughts, send emails and text messages, set reminders, organize lists, and post to web services and business applications – all with their voice, using any phone. Jott also converts voicemail into email and text messages, making voicemail a more productive tool. Since being founded in 2006 by John Pollard and Shree Madhavapeddi, Jott has made world-class voice transcription accessible to anyone with a cell phone. For more information on the Jott service, visit www.Jott.com.

Google voice mail transcription quality - can you trust it?

Recently David F. Gallagher wrote in the NY times about Google voice. David asked people to leave him messages and he posted the automatic transcriptions. While performing good in many cases, the results are far from accurate and in many cases one cannot understand the gist of the message.
See information at pushing the limits of googles speech recognition and messing with googles speech recognition part 2.

To some extent everybody knows it is experimental and do not really trust it. Is it useful? Probably just for fun and for people who do not want any human to be involved in their private message transcription like SpinVox, Nuance or other such vendors.

“Mainstream” Speech Analytics

Recently Verint announced a new offering for the "mainstream" market. Many people do not understand the importance of this announcement.

For years we are pushing speech anlaytics to the market and the adoption cycle is pretty long and thus maybe expensive. It requires experts to learn the system and get th best out of it. Eventually there are many success stories for speech analytics. However for a technology to become widely use there is a need for additional simplicity - make sure it can be operated by laymen, work out of the box and provide benefits without much learning. This is exactly the step that Verint is taking with the new system and I bet it will overachieve any other offering in the market.

If you consider deploying a speech analytics solution, even for a small contact center - this should be your first alternative.

May 13, 2009 08:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Verint Witness Actionable Solutions Takes Speech Analytics “Mainstream” with New Impact 360 Speech Analytics Solution

Breakthrough Technology Enables Cost-Effective Deployment of Speech Analytics, Helping Companies React Rapidly to Changes in Customer Behavior, Reduce Expenses and Enhance the Customer Experience

New Speech Analytics “Essentials” Solution Enables Small and Medium-Sized Contact Centers to Attain Speech Analytics Benefits Previously Out of Reach

Driving Innovation 2009

Verint Witness Actionable Solutions’ 13th Annual Global User Conference

Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort, Nevada

LAS VEGAS & MELVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Verint^® Systems Inc. today announced the availability of its new Impact 360^® Speech Analytics solutions. Simple and cost effective to deploy, the software from Verint^® Witness Actionable Solutions^® is bringing speech analytics technology into mainstream contact center operations without costly setup overhead, lengthy consulting engagements and the need for interpretation by separate analyst staff.

The new Impact 360 Speech Analytics enables businesses to mine recorded customer interactions to surface the intelligence essential for building effective cost containment and customer service strategies. Designed to provide rapid insight into changes in customer behaviors and patterns, the solution can deliver value right out-of-the-box by helping remove guesswork from the customer service equation. Impact 360 Speech Analytics proactively identifies call drivers — along with the related product, process and service issues that often originate in areas outside the contact center, such as back-office functions — emerging trends, opportunities and competitive influences, and can then make that business intelligence available enterprise-wide.

The newly introduced Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essentials solution enables businesses with small to medium-sized contact centers to cost-effectively achieve these speech analytics benefits that were previously out of reach.

“We believe this is a technological breakthrough that has the potential to create a new wave of adoption for speech analytics, breaking down previous barriers to entry, such as set-up and configuration,” explains Nancy Treaster, senior vice president and general manager, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions. “We know that the contact center holds a wealth of valuable business intelligence, and speech analytics is an automated, powerful solution that can help companies not only get to that information, but then determine what actions to take. Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essentials allows organizations with small and medium-sized centers to analyze captured conversations and rapidly benefit from valuable insight.”

Robust, New Functionality Extends Verint Leadership in Analytics

The patent-protected Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essentials, and the Impact 360 Advanced Speech Analytics solution, leverage both phonetics and LVCSR recognition — the best combination of both speed and accuracy — adding meaning and context to every word and phrase identified in every call processed without predefinition of terms.

Key, patent-pending functionality featured in Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essentials, as well as Verint’s Impact 360 Advanced Speech Analytics solution, is driven by the company’s proprietary Complete Semantic Index™ technology that features such functionality as:

• Automated Trend Analysis, Surfacing Changes in Customer Behaviors

Using hundreds of thousands of term and phrase combinations, the new Complete Semantic Index automatically identifies significant changes in customer behavior as expressed within recorded customer interactions. Such changes are proactively surfaced by the software’s Automated Trend Analysis, which identifies increases or decreases in terms and phrases used during customer/agent conversations. Delivered daily, trend reports can be tracked for up to 18 months.

• Guided Search and Context Visualization

With the Complete Semantic Index, users do not need to know in advance what terms to search. Intuitive search engine-like, guided search capabilities — including contextual suggestions and search visualization functionality — help business users find relevant calls quickly to determine the underlying causes of rising call volumes, costs and customer dissatisfaction.

• Analytics-Driven Unification with Workforce Optimization Suite Via Native Integrations

The Impact 360 Speech Analytics solutions, part of Verint’s patent-protected, unified Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite, can use the content of captured customer interactions to route contacts of interest to users throughout the enterprise, such as quality supervisors, marketing managers and customer retention teams.

“We’re excited to introduce this solution, as Verint is fulfilling a critical market need in enabling businesses with small and medium-sized centers to reap the same type of intelligence that their larger counterparts have used for years — all at an attractive price point, and at a time in our economy in which cost containment, retention and the customer experience are paramount,” adds Treaster.

Specifications and Availability

Optimally sized for centers with 50 to 300 agent seats, Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essentials can operate on a single box. As businesses’ needs change and grow, the solution can be easily upgraded to Verint’s advanced speech offering designed for larger centers, scaling up to 50,000 seats.

In addition to the new Complete Semantic Index, Automated Trend Analysis and Guided Search functionality, the Impact 360 Advanced Speech Analytics solution for larger center operations includes Automated Root Cause Analysis with patent-pending TellMeWhy™ functionality. With this capability, the solution can identify potential underlying drivers of specific call types, such as customer complaints or long calls, prioritize the top five root cause groups and automatically suggest the top instigators for each call set.

The Impact 360 Advanced Speech Analytics solution also features Speech Analytics-driven Scorecards designed to help centers better manage performance by balancing cost drivers with customer satisfaction drivers. Peer-based agent comparisons factor in key performance indicators (KPIs), such as customer complaints and repeat call drivers, that are identified from speech analytics results, along with proactive alerts on defined thresholds. Other functionality includes native business integrations with Impact 360 Quality Monitoring’s Smart Inbox^™— which delivers recorded interactions directly to the desktop based on defined criteria that can include speech analytics categories — and Impact 360 Data Analytics, which analyzes call attributes to help uncover contact scenarios that can positively or negatively impact organization and/or individual KPI achievements.

About Verint Witness Actionable Solutions

Verint^® Witness Actionable Solutions^® is the leader in analytics-driven workforce optimization software and services. Its solutions are designed to help organizations capture customer intelligence, uncover business trends, discover the root cause of employee and customer behavior, and optimize the customer experience. From contact centers to remote office, branch and back-office operations, its award-winning, next-generation Impact 360^® Workforce Optimization suite is the industry’s most unified solution set — featuring quality monitoring and recording, workforce management, speech analytics, data analytics, customer feedback surveys, performance management, eLearning and coaching. Impact 360 helps improve the entire customer service delivery network, powering the right decisions to help ensure service excellence and transform organizations into customer-centric enterprises.

About Verint Systems Inc.

Verint Systems Inc. (VRNT.PK), headquartered in Melville, New York, is a leading provider of Actionable Intelligence^® solutions for an optimized enterprise and a safer world. Today, more than 10,000 organizations in over 150 countries rely on Verint solutions to perform more effectively, build competitive advantage and enhance the security of people, facilities and infrastructure. Visit us at our website www.verint.com.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding expectations, predictions, views, opportunities, plans, strategies, beliefs, and statements of similar effect relating to Verint Systems Inc. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and they are based on management's expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, see the Company's Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 10, 2007, as supplemented by our Current Reports on Form 8-K filed on November 5, 2007, January 16, 2008, and April 9, 2008 and the Form NT-10Q filed on April 16, 2009. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and, except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them or to provide reasons why actual results may differ.

VERINT, the VERINT logo, ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE, POWERING ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE, WITNESS ACTIONABLE SOLUTIONS, STAR-GATE, RELIANT, VANTAGE, X-TRACT, NEXTIVA, ULTRA, AUDIOLOG, WITNESS, the WITNESS logo, IMPACT 360, the IMPACT 360 logo, IMPROVE EVERYTHING, EQUALITY, CONTACTSTORE, EYRETEL, BLUE PUMPKIN SOFTWARE, BLUE PUMPKIN, the BLUE PUMPKIN logo, EXAMETRIC and the EXAMETRIC logo, CLICK2STAFF, STAFFSMART, AMAE SOFTWARE and the AMAE logo are trademarks and registered trademarks of Verint Systems Inc. Other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Google's 'Voice Search' comes to India

Nice post on siliconindia: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Googles_Voice_Search_comes_to_India-nid-55075.html
I specifically liked the example to search for whether :) - must be phonetic.. Anyway given the heavy accents of the south and north and various sub languages, there is a lot of work for google india for just collecting all this data.


Google's 'Voice Search' comes to India

By siliconindia news bureau

Friday,10 April 2009, 15:09 hrs

Bangalore: Now search is just a call. Google has set path for a new era in the speech analytics with 'voice search', which it recently introduced in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. One just needs to speak a single word into the phone, such as 'whether' or 'hotel' and one can get the top results.

The 'voice search' uses a combination of automated voice recognition engine and operators to provide this facility. To make the service faster and better, Google is also experimenting with voice recognition technology, which will ensure 24-hour support. Currently, the automated system offers results in English, but the operator-driven system offers results in only Hindi and Telegu.

"This is in line with our mission of making information universally useful and accessible, be it at home or on the go," explains Hugo Barra, Group Product Manager, Google Mobile. Not all those who make queries, though, will get accurate results, since the project is still in its pilot stage, reported Business Standard.

Google's logic is a simple one. Mobiles outnumber personal computers (PCs) in India. Besides, just about 5-7 percent of the population has an internet connection, including those who use surf the net via their mobiles. "Voice enables India to reach non-web users in local languages even as our core strength is search," Barra adds.

In the U.S., Western Europe and Japan, the 'voice search' feature is available under the Google Mobile App for the iPhone. It is also available on the Android-based T-Mobile G1, and was introduced on the BlackBerry as a free download last month.

In India, though, Google plans to extend the technology to other cities once it is confident in the quality of its speech recognition technology "in any region of the country", since the number of languages and accents in India are very diverse and distinct from each other.

The company is currently not making any revenue on this service in India though it monetises this in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan through ads which appear when the results show up. It does not charge the user for information received or for connecting them to businesses. The local business information used by Google is the same as that on local search. Data is continuously being added, and Google is collecting feedback from the users, Barra explained.

Talking about the company's mobile strategy, Vinay Goel, Country Head of Products, Google India, said, "There has been a significant increase of mobile search users in 2009. We believe that users graduate from plain voice search to an SMS-based one and finally to internet-based search, which is our goal."

The search giant has also made Orkut (its social networking site) and Google Maps available on mobiles. Besides, it also has the Google Latitude (to help locate one's friends) feature as an opt-in download.

Google Voice should hire Spinvox for message transcription

I just saw this post at: http://abrilliantblog.com/2009/03/google-voice-should-hire-spinvox-for-message-transcription/

I guess it is the laymen feedback on the google voice service and exactly what I anticipated at:
Google Voice - the new threat to the reputation of speech recognition system.

Google Voice should hire Spinvox for message transcription

March 30th, 2009

I have been using GrandCentral for years and when they announced Google Voice I was elated. I could not wait for the new features including my absolute favorites being SMS and voice mail being transcribed to text and emailed and texted to you.

Well the SMS is great but the voice transcription is dreadful. I didn't call someone back last week mistakenly thinking it was a telemarketer. It was Bena Roberts of GoMoNews fame and a very important mover and shaker in the business. This kind of transcription mistake is not acceptable. I have a suggestion for Google Voice that I really hope they listen to, OUTSOURCE TO SPINVOX. Now I don't work for SpinVox, but I've used it and on dozens of friends very high regard and reference for the SpinVox service I'm willing to give this advice.

Google don't allow Google Voice to tarnish a perfectly fantastic service because you're not willing to spend a few dollars. Go test out SpinVox and if it beats your transcription (I guarantee it will) then please switch over.

TelStrat - TelStrat’s Engage™ Suite Now Understands Speech Analytics

Engage Analyze expands TelStrat's contact center product portfolio with true phonetic speech analytics intelligence

Orlando, Florida – March 30, 2009 – TelStrat, a global supplier of comprehensive contact center solutions, business call recording products, and leading-edge access network systems, today chose VoiceCon Orlando 2009 as the venue to announce Engage Analyze, the latest addition to its industry-leading contact center solution suite. Engage Analyze provides advanced speech analytics that equip organizations to transform voice calls into knowledge that can help them improve efficiency, increase compliance, and gain the competitive advantage.

Engage Analyze indexes and audio mines words and phrases buried in calls using a patented Phonetic Audio Search and Recognition Engine. Unlike older, less efficient speech-to-text approaches, phonetic speech search is not dependent on finite dictionary and grammar models which require constant maintenance. This makes it easy to accurately search for new competitors, product names, slang, and other dynamically changing terms.

Phonetic search technology also makes Engage Analyze fast – much faster than speech-to-text systems. Pre-processing or indexing of content is typically 60-80 times faster than real time, more than an order of magnitude faster than Large Vocabulary Conversational Speech Recognition (LVCSR) speech-to-text systems. Subsequent searches for words or phrases are incredibly quick, averaging over 30,000 times faster than real time and reaching rates up to 80,000 times faster.

Speech-to-text systems rely on limited, statistical sampling of calls, typically 3-5% of call volume, due to cost and complexity. The technology in Engage Analyze makes it possible to audio mine up to 100% of calls, in real time if desired. The product does all this without the massive computing power necessary for comparable LVCSR systems. With Engage Analyze, contact centers can now accurately analyze and recognize trends over thousands of hours of customer calls.

"With Engage Analyze we're bringing our customers advanced technology that provides them with a powerful tool to enhance business and customer intelligence, "said TelStrat President Kevin Smith. "The search speed and recognition capabilities make this product a market leader, and we've made it affordable for organizations of virtually any size."

Engage Analyze is the newest component of TelStrat's Engage Contact Center Suite. Engage Suite blends full-featured voice and screen recording; intuitive agent performance evaluation, tracking and coaching; powerful agent scripting and call automation; sophisticated workforce forecasting and scheduling; and now, advanced speech analytics. It addresses each major aspect of contact center operations. Designed to benefit any 'center of contact', Engage Suite is ideal whether used by a large telemarketing firm or a small company's support staff.

http://www.telstrat.com/content/view/399/350/