Tweet by phone.. TwitterFone!

 

 Yes, it's true.. Now you can Tweet by phone.

 

 We didn't get an invite yet, but we'll be sure to post more when we do..

 

DoCoMo's new handset; built-in speech recognition

 

 Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc (NYSE: DCM) is releasing the FOMA "Raku-Raku Phone Premium" F884i mobile phone today, with built-in speech recognition for remote transcription of email text.

 

 The handset, made by Fujitsu Ltd, contains new & proprietary technology to enter e-mail text using remote speech recognition. If the "voice input" button in the e-mail editing display is pressed, software that extracts the characteristics of the user's speech (and performs Analog-to-Digital conversion) will start, and access the DoCoMo's i-mode site.

 When users say what they want transcribed into an email, the in-box software sends the dictation to the i-mode server. There, speech recognition software manufactured by Advanced Media Inc outputs transcribed text. The F884i receives the transcribed text, displays it in the email's text display interface.

 As best we can tell, without a direct response from DoCoMo or Advanced Media - This appears to be DSR (Distributed Speech Recognition) which we've blogged about in the past; and we are tremendous fans of DSR as a global answer to near-perfect mobile speech recognition.

 We've also emailed David Pearce, founder and Chief Developer of this emerging technology to see if he has any information on whether this may, in fact be DSR..
  Check back later for details!

 

Catalog ordering, with mobile speech recognition!

 

 France Loisirs, the French version of a mini-Amazon.com, has now selected Atos Worldline to host and operate a new automated telephone order service, based on speech recognition. The service is named “Commande Flash” & both smooths out / combines the different purchasing channels already available and reduces human-handled calls.

 

 Thanks to speech recognition technology powered by Nuance, the caller speaks key words, a membership number and the products they wish to order.

 Marc Duteil, customer relations General Manager at France Loisirs noted “The members quickly adopted the ‘Commande Flash’ tool which provides real comfort, especially for mobile phone users."

 Founded in the early 1970s, France Loisirs, a 100%-owned subsidiary of the Bertelsmann group (50% owner of Sony BMG Music Entertainment), now has 3.5 million members in France, one household out of five. With 24 million books sold per year, France Loisirs accounts for 8% of the French publishing market. The brand uses a multi-channel distribution network and has 208 shops in France.

 Now, imagine a speech-powered ordering system for, say Amazon.com...

 

OnMobile / Nuance Solutions; The largest yet

 

 Nuance Communications, Inc, (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that OnMobile, a leading Indian telecom services provider, has now incorporated world's largest global deployment of Nuance Speech Solutions. OnMobile provides services to leading Indian telecom operators such as Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone, Idea, BSNL and Tata Indicom.

 India is noted as possibly the fastest growing telecom marketplace in the world with about 300 million people now owning mobile & wire line phones, and is growing by about eight million new users per month.(In the last financial year, India added more mobile-phone users per month than China).

 Mobile phone users in India, for example, can even search for "cars" and "bikes" using their mobile by simply sending either word as SMS to 6677,and will get the latest listings of cars and bike in their cell phones. Users can also further refine search results, on make and city location.

 OnMobile is continuing to expand in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE and other countries in the Asia Pacific region by leveraging Nuance speech recognition solutions to support multiple regional languages, including Regional Accent English, Malay, Thai, Bhasa, Urdu, Malay. OnMobile's services now support 15 major Indian languages.

 Nuance's Speech Solutions are well known in the auto industry. Nuance’s automotive speech solutions have been successfully implemented in more than 100 models from more than 25 automobile brands including DaimlerChrysler, Fiat, Ford, Nissan and Renault - totaling over 5 million vehicles worldwide.

 Michael Thompson, VP and General Manager for Nuance's Mobile Search and Communication division says:
“Telecommunications carriers are increasingly looking to advanced speech solutions as a means of differentiating their services, driving new revenue, and improving customer loyalty.. OnMobile was one of the first companies to create voice portals with speech recognition.”

 

Speech Recognition for iPhones?

 

 Mike McCue, of Microsoft's recently acquired TellMe voice recognition unit has noted to Fortune's Big Tech blog that his team is also excited about iPhone development "to tap into voice recording and location-based features".


 Could it be that coolest phone around is about to get "wired for speech" by the maker of the best speech recognition in the world .. ?

   I guess we'll just wait and see!

 

Samsung and Nuance renew and expand the deal

 

 Via The Journal of New England Technology:
Samsing and Nuance have renewed, and expanded their "local" speech recognition-via-cell phone deal; it's official. The deal is a renewal and expansion of a previous agreement between the two companies.

 The new global licensing agreement includes Nuance’s full range of mobile applications, including VSuite, Vocalizer, and VoiceMode speech-based services and interfaces, which have been shipping in 160+ Samsung handsets for several years.

 Nuance, owner of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, was founded in 1992 as Visioneer Inc. and has grown significantly in recent years.

 In 2007, the company acquired seven companies, including VoiceSignal Technologies Inc. Nuance was named a finalist in the MHT/ACG 2007 Tech Dealmaker Awards. In its fiscal year ending in September of 2007, the company reported $602 million in revenue with a net loss of $14 million.

 

CNN endorses mobile speech recognition.. Finally!

 

 In a nifty article today on the international CNN website, titled "Tips and Tricks for your mobile device", CNN officially endorses speech recognition, and several cool applications (some we've blogged about) and states, for example:

 "Give your thumbs a break

 Need to send an e-mail or text message but your hands are tied? Voice recognition technology has made advancements that can take the burden off your text-weary thumbs."


 Even better, via the article:
"Similarly, voice recognition software on your smart phone lets you speak into the phone and have that message show up on a computer it's synced with, says Sean Ryan, analyst for market research firm IDC".

 For a news giant like CNN to publicly endorse speech recognition, (even though they use the infamous misnomer 'voice recognition') we're cheering..
And this to us is a very important milestone in the path to ubiquitous speech recognition .. !