Jawbone Selects Yap Speech Cloud For Voice Messaging App

Jawbone has selected Yap to provide speech-to-text capabilities in its THOUGHTS iPhone application. THOUGHTS allows users to send quick voice messages to individuals and groups, without typing or calling. Additionally, for situations when a user might prefer to read a message, audio messages can be transcribed instantly into text. Jawbone THOUGHTS, with Yap’s speech recognition, is available now for download at the Apple iPhone App store.

Composing text messages can be awkward and tedious, particularly while multitasking or distracted. A simple message like "Let’s get together for dinner tonight" can require more than 40 keystrokes, taps and swipes. With THOUGHTS, users can speak their messages, requiring drastically fewer keystrokes and less time than typing a text message.

“Converting spoken messages into text makes THOUGHTS a particularly convenient collaboration tool, providing our users with the option to read or listen to their messages,” says Travis Bogard, vice president of Product Management and Strategy at Jawbone. “Yap’s flexible platform made this convenience a reality by allowing us to easily integrate this feature into our THOUGHTS application.”

Yap’s Speech Cloud provides fully automated, high-accuracy speech recognition via a simple Web services interface. Using this interface, Jawbone quickly integrated Yap’s speech recognition into its THOUGHTS application with just a few lines of code.

“Yap’s speech cloud empowers partners like Jawbone to access very high-accuracy speech recognition with little effort,” says Marcello Typrin, vice president of product management at Yap. “Using a lightweight Web services interface, our speech cloud eliminates complex integration efforts and tedious tuning processes common to traditional speech recognition solutions.”