Time for British company Spinvox to go
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: When Spinvox, British voicemail-to-text Company was launched in 2003, it won acclaim for its innovative use of speech recognition technology and its future looked bright. Nothing was known at that time that the company once known as the rising star in the British technology companies will lose both its name and recognition within a few years.
US based Nuance Communications, a speech-recognition company is about to take over Spinvox, for US$150 million. The reason behind the turmoil in the company is accredited to the failure of some of the promising contracts with major operators.
Last year, the company was allegedly accused of using human intervention†rather than automatic translation of the voicemails. However, Christine Domecq, the founder of the company declined the allegations saying that human intervention is used only when the technology can’t get a fix on the spoken word.
Even after the controversy, Spinvox succeeded in signing deals with big telcos and mobile service providers like Telefonica in South America and Telstra of Australia. However, Spinvox munched its way through more than $150 million of backer’s cash and was close to collapse. Invesco’s, smaller Spinvox backer, market statement indicating that Spinvox was up for sale made the things worse.
Though Spinvox’s account for 2008 is still to be filed at Companies House in London, there is rumour that in the year the company lost some $80 million on sales of $15 million.
Speech Conversion Claims Fastest Texter
Nuance Mobile Dictation beat the world champion texter in a challenge to determine the fastest and most accurate way to send text messages and email using mobile devices.
The contest took place at Conversations Mobile, a speech event for the mobile communications industry being held in Orlando this week.
Ben Cook, who was crowned the world champion of text messaging in July 2006, raced against Nuance Mobile Dictation, the speech recognition technology that allows mobile phone users to create text messages using speech.
Cook, a teen from Utah, holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest entry of a 160-character standardised message on a mobile device: “The razor toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.” Cook’s previous triple tap record for the standard message stood at 42.22 seconds. Nuance Mobile Dictation crushed the world record time, completing the message in 16.32 seconds.
“Mobile phone subscribers sent over a trillion SMS messages last year – despite the data entry constraints of cumbersome phone keypads – so one can imagine the potential of this market given a simple and intuitive speech-driven SMS interface,” said Michael Thompson, vice president and general manager, telco, search and communications, Nuance. “This technology, currently in trials with carriers, will increase the accessibility of mobile dictation for end users” said Thompson.
T9 and Blackberry Beaten Too
The complete Amazing Race competition featured four participants:
- Ben Cook using triple tap input;
- a former Tegic employee using T9 input;
- a proficient typist using a Blackberry device with a full QWERTY keyboard;
- and Nuance’s own staff member demonstrating Nuance Mobile Dictation.Contestants were scored based on the time required to complete the entry of the exact text messages, including appropriate spelling, punctuation and capitalization. In addition to the world record message, the contestants raced using messages average texters would send today, such as: “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in 30 minutes.” Nuance easily claimed victory completing the message in 7.86 seconds, followed by a strong effort from Cook at 16.25 seconds. The contestants using the Blackberry and T9 devices came in a distant third and fourth at 30 seconds and 58 seconds.
Nuance Mobile Dictation is an application built upon the Nuance Mobile Speech Platform announced earlier this week. It features “dictate anywhere” functionality on Windows Mobile and Symbian OSs, allowing users to dictate wherever they see a blinking cursor on their device screen. Nuance Mobile Dictation can also be ported to other OSs and applications.
You can watch a YouTube video of the contest here: YouTube Nuance Contest
(Via 160characters.org)
