Biographical Information

Articles by Ryan Joe

Trendspotting

Can the market identify with voice biometrics?

Trendspotting

Google has another voice.

The 2008 Implementation Awards

Recognizing four user companies that garnered impressive returns as a direct result of the speech deployments.

The 2008 Market Leaders

Recognizing the leading speech engine, speech self-service suite, speech security, speech analytics, professional services, and mobile application vendors.

This Time, It's Personal

What you can do to make your system more customer-friendly.

Outfitted for Change

Call recording helps an apparel retailer see call drivers across multiple brands and locations.

Automated Customer Surveys

Enterprises need to get customer input to optimize their interactive voice response (IVR) systems and contact centers. But what services are out there to go about collecting that data?

Finally, I Speak to iPhone

New applications bring speech to Apple's iPhone, but mobile search captures the most attention.

Overheard-Underheard

Under-the-radar speech news.

Nuance Listens, Smartly

Nuance announced the release of SmartListener software, which allows enterprise speech solutions to handle unexpected caller inputs.

SpeechCycle Delivers for Tellme Customers

SpeechCycle and Microsoft subsidiary Tellme announced a partnership in which SpeechCycle will deliver its Rich Phone Applications (RPAs) on Tellme's hosted IVR platform.

GALE Winds Blow at BBN

Speech technology vendor wins additional funding for military translation technologies; the focus continues on Arabic and Chinese languages.

Microsoft Further Expands Car Systems

SVOX is latest firm to partner with the software giant on in-car infotainment system development.

Interactive Intelligence Dials an Upgrade

Interactive Intelligence, a provider of unified IP business communications solutions, released today the latest upgrade of its Interaction Dialer software.

BlueAnt Takes TTS to Bluetooth

Bluetooth supplier BlueAnt Wireless announced today the general availability of Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Handsfree, a portable speakerphone device incorporating text-to-speech technology.

SpinVox Talks Birds and Bees with Teens

Speech-to-text provider SpinVox, MTV's Staying Alive Foundation, and Facebook today launched the "Stand by What You Say" campaign, an initiative seeking to open a dialogue among young people about sexual health and HIV.

Maxing Voice with WiMAX

In an effort to accelerate the widespread rollout of the WiMAX 4G network, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung Electronics, and Sprint announced the formation of the Open Patent Alliance (OPA).

Syntellect Acquires Fluency Voice

Acquisition is the latest in a string of consolidation efforts industrywide.

Nortel Adds Outbound, Security Technologies

Reseller agreements with SER and SecureLogix add to the Nortel Contact Center suite.

Market Spotlight: Contact Centers

Centers of Connectivity

Overheard/Underheard

Under-the-radar speech technology news.

Hosted Speech Solutions

Multiple-Modality Disorder

Tips to combine voice and visual to piece together a complete user interface.

Nuance Showcases New Version of Mobile Speech Platform

Nuance Communications is set to showcase the newest version of its Nuance Mobile Speech Platform, incorporating a variety of applications and features, including speech recognition, open-ended dictation, and text-to-speech, to improve the usability of BREW applications on mobile devices.

Nuance to Develop a Rival to Sync

Partnership with Intel and Wind River Systems hopes to yield a more open platform for car voice systems.

A New Set of Call Center Metrics

SpeechCycle's Caller Experience Index creates a numerical score that assesses the efficacy of call center solutions.

Voice Biometrics a Fan Favorite Among Consumers

Vendors at this year's Voice Biometrics Conference in New York can expect elevated threat levels to be a catalyst for their burgeoning market.

New Headsets Provide Voice Output

Sensory, a provider of embedded speech technologies for consumer products, announced the availability of BlueGenie Lite, a solution for Bluetooth headsets that focuses exclusively on voice output.

SpinVox Makes New Friends

Speech-to-text provider SpinVox announced the appointment of two executives who will spearhead its unified communications business, emphasizing the company's growing interest in the burgeoning market.

Upwardly Mobile: Speech Answers the Wireless Call

Following a bevy of vendor announcements in April, speech is poised to better integrate into mobile devices.

On the Scene: Voice Search and VoiceCon

(Voice) Searching for Answers, Divided We Fall

Overheard/Underheard

Under-the-radar speech technology news

Automated Testing Solutions

There are a wide variety of testing solutions available to examine speech IVRs and provide precise, actionable data with which enterprise customers can enact improvements.

Cómo

Why word-for-word translations just don't work.

Collecting Calls

A rent-to-own chain saves time with voice-based outgoing calls to delinquent customers.

Nuance Speechifies Avaya's Unified Messaging

Nuance Communications announced today that its speech technology has been selected by Avaya to supplement the latter's unified messaging offering.

Tellme Expands Blackberry Portal

Microsoft subsidiary Tellme Networks announced today the initial availability of a free local on-the-go information application to its voice portal on BlackBerry phones

Partners Line Up for Microsoft Response Point

Microsoft has forged partnerships with Cbeyond and New Global Telecom (NGT) to provide fully-integrated voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services in anticipation of the summer release of Microsoft Response Point Service Pack 1.

Voxify Supplies Genesys with Personalization

Conversation Engine is the basis for new Intelligent Customer Front Door solution.

EveryZing RAMPs Up

Video search engine EveryZing announced today the launch of RAMP, a management console for the company's ezSEARCH and ezSEO hosted solutions,

TTS, STT Go Virtual in New Prototype

SR Virtual, a Los Angeles-based provider of voice recognition-based technologies for mobile handsets and the Internet, announced today the prototype for SendChat, a downloadable text messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) call application that uses proprietary speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology.

Nuance Enters Voicemail Market

Nuance Communications yesterday released Voicemail to Text, its own version of a speech-to-text service that transcribes voicemail into readable messages.

Getting the Devil out of the Details

Tuning cycles smooth out the final kinks in an IVR.

Automotive Auto Attendants

A Michigan car dealer sees sales grow with bridgeSpeak.

Unified Communications Divided

An uptake is predicted in the adoption of unified communications applications, but the term itself remains undefined.

Overheard/Underheard

under-the-radar speech news

IVRs Seek Tighter Security

Voxeo and VoiceVerified partnership is the latest in a string of deals designed to protect IVR users from fraud.

Nuance Lands Another Suite Deal

AT&T is latest provider to commit to using Nuance's embedded VSuite mobile applications.

Nuance Hits the Right Note for Samsung

Vendor inks huge multiyear deal to provide mobile voice suite to electronics manufacturer.

Just Utter Something to Connect Online

Utterz, which provides a service that allows users to connect with their online social circle via mobile phone, announced today new connections to YouTube, LiveSpaces, Drupal, Yahoo!Groups, and Twixter.

Tighter Security for the Call Center

Verint has added another layer of security over audio files collected during contact center interactions.

Voice Searching for an Interface

The opening panel at Voice Search 2008, moderated by TMA Associates president Bill Meisel, gave occasionally conflicting views on the current business and technological landscape for voice search in directory assistance and mobile applications.

Voice Still Searching for Its Place

Panelists at the Voice Search Conference, sponsored by the Applied Voice Input-Output Society (AVIOS) and TMA Associates, note that voice technologies still need to find their niche in the search space.

An Open Look at OpenScape

Siemens is set to release its unified communications software package.

What's the Use?

Testing early and often can find the hidden cracks in an IVR structure

Replacing Text with Context

For media companies to ensure users are getting the right content, they must leverage image and voice recognition technologies

Overheard/Underheard

Under-the-radar speech news

Market Spotlight: Gaming--Playing with Speech

Voice interfaces in video games are rare as developers try to figure out how and when to incorporate speech.

Picking Speech

Voice-based picking system brings order accuracy to a distributor's operations.

VoIP Phone Services

A Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service consolidates all telephony and computer information over an Internet line. Not only does this save the geographical space consumed by old equipment, it also cuts costs significantly.

A Voice for the Voiceless

Ambient gave its first live demonstration of the Audeo, which enables voiceless communication either over the phone or face-to-face.

Bill Opens the Gates for Speech

Microsoft's chairman predicts a greater uptake of speech interfaces, something many feel is plausible as handheld device keyboards get smaller and smaller.

Speech Offers a New Pathway to Directory Assistance

Dial Directions and Jingle Networks forged a strategic partnership that will allow callers to Jingle's 1-800-FREE411 to receive SMS directions to their spoken destination.

Analytics to Become a Broader Business Tool

Because of the increasing multimodality of customer interactions that include not only phones but chat, email, and Web data, enterprises need to think beyond the call center to maximize the benefits of a speech analytics solution, analyst firm Frost & Sullivan concluded in a recent report.

Spinning Out a UC Service

Known mostly for its speech-to-text services, SpinVox announced today its entrance into the unified communications sector with the release of Spinvox CallMail for Call Centers and Spinvox Enterprise Voicemail for medium and large businesses.

Microsoft Ads Context to Video

At DemoFest yesterday, Microsoft showcased new targeted advertising options for online multimedia. One of the options, Contextual Ads for Video, uses speech recognition technology to mine video content and scroll ads based on the subject of the conversation.

Speech for Super Tuesday

SpinVox gives voters a voice after they leave the polls in primary states.

Narrowing the Field in Voice Search

SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute, today announced that it's been issued a U.S. patent for voice-to-database (V2DB) technology that allows users to vocally access in a single step information in multimillion-item databases.

New Phone Reads to the Blind

K-NFB Reading Technology, a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind, unveiled today reading software designed for the Nokia N82 smartphone.

3G Mobile Devices

While most phones in America are made for a 2.5G network, there are still some enticing options available.

The Xs and Os of the Speech Game

Sticking to the game plan is the winning formula for a champion speech app.

Out of Harm's Way

In-car speech system adds a layer of safety for police on the beat.

Calling on MySpace: Is Anyone Listening?

In November, eBay-owned Skype initiated a strategic partnership with the social networking site MySpace, wherein MySpace would feature and brand Skype services across its instant messenger client.

VoIP Goes Financial

ING and Merrill Lynch recently upgraded trading floor operations with Voice over Internet Protocol.

French TV Says 'Oui' to blinkx

Multimedia search engine blinkx announced today its partnership with French international news channel FRANCE 24, in which blinkx users will be able to access the broadcaster's library of programming at blinkx.com.

A Magic Implementation of Speech in Healthcare

In another expansive implementation of speech technology in healthcare, iSOFT, a division of the British-based IBA Health Group, today announced that it's integrating Royal Philips Electronic's SpeechMagic technology into its RadCentre radiology information system.

A Quick Take on Speech in the iPhone

Quicktate.com, a web-based service that uses speech-to-text technology to transcribe voicemails on PDAs or smart phones, announced today at Macworld in San Francisco the beta release of a speech-to-text service that lets users read voicemail messages on their iPhones.

Warehouse Workers Speak to Oracle

Wavelink, a provider of mobile applications and network management software, is partnering with Oracle to deliver a supply chain execution suite of products that include voice technologies.

blinkx Partners with ITN Source

Video search engine blinkx announced today its partnership with ITN Source, a professional video content provider based out of the United Kingdom.

Speech Technologies Get Air Traffic Controllers Chattering

The U.S. Air Force last week signed an agreement with transportation communications firm ARINC Engineering Services to deploy an automated broadcasting system featuring advanced text-to-speech technologies at three of its installations.

Genesys and IBM Expand Call Center Solutions to China

Genesys and IBM last week introduced IBM Contact Center in a Box in China, expanding their Strategic Alliance for Contact Center Solutions.

Call Genie Releases French-Language Voice Directory Software

Call Genie, provider of speech search solutions for directory assistance providers and wireless carriers, announced last week the availability of its Enhanced Voice Directory (EVD) software in French.

Voxeo Releases Designer 8

Voxeo announced Friday the release of a new Web-native voice application development tool.

Urban Outfitters Outfits Its Call Centers

The clothing retailer announced today its selection of Callfinity to provide solutions for call recording, reporting, and quality management within its contact centers.

Text-to-Speech, Personalized for the Holidays

Internet startup MakeBeliever.com incorporates text-to-speech technology on its V-Greetings, electronic video greeting cards that speak directly to recipients.

Speech Used to Pimp News

Tech startup PimpMyNews.com announced its wide launch today. Dubbed the world's first "talking social news site," PimpMyNews speechifies newsfeeds and blog entries from around the Internet using text-to-speech technology from a variety of vendors, including NeoSpeech.

Is Jennifer the Best Voice Ever?

Elocution is crisp, but more performance-oriented readings could require work.

Adding a Voice to Bluetooth

Sensory and Foxlink partner to offer a voice user interfaces on standard headsets.

Apptera Selects Envox OnDemand to Host Contact Center Solution

Apptera, a provider of technology for mobile advertising, search and commerce, has selected the Envox OnDemand hosted contact center voice solution to power its "In-Call" solutions.

MIT Speech Product Helps Students Find Lectures

Application transcribes lectures and makes them searchable by topic.

CSR Makes It Cheaper to Get an MP3

CSR, a provider of personal wireless technologies, announced today the launch of BlueCore Player, a low-cost Bluetooth-enabled MP3 player with voice controls.

Merrill Lynch Trades Up to VoIP

Financial services giant Merrill Lynch will roll out roughly 4,000 IQ/MAX trading desktops—running a VoIP-powered system from IPC Systems—at its trading centers in London and New York.

When Superpowers Team Up, Banks Are the Beneficiaries

Cisco and IBM announced today a joint front-office solution for retail banks designed to enhance customer service by unifying customer touch points across delivery channels, including branches, contact centers, and self-service kiosks.

Speech Analytics Partnerships Herald Technology's Growth

Interest in speech analytics solutions as it applies to contact centers increased yesterday when CallMiner announced a stretegic partnership with CallCopy, the same day that Nexidia announced a partnership with Noble Systems.

Coalition Announces Open Platform for Mobile Devices

The Open Handset Alliance, an international coalition of 34 mobile operators, handset manufacturers, and semiconductor companies, announced today the development of Android, an open platform for mobile devices

Mission: Video

The merger of voice and video goes from spy-tech to high tech.

Targeted Advertising or Eavesdropping?

Listening for Lies

Voice risk analysis helps the British government deter benefits fraud.

Voice Biometrics

Voice biometric solutions qualify the speaker's identity, essentially adding another countermeasure to combat identity thieves. In so doing, voice biometrics improve contact center efficiency by reducing call time.

New Car Kits To Use Voice

To ease a driver's responsibilities in the hands-busy, eyes-busy environment behind the wheel, Parrot introduced today two voice-powered products for cars and motorcycles, to be released during the second quarter of 2008.

Nuance Stakes Its Place in Mobility

Nuance unfolded its mobile roadmap during the company's Conversations users' conference yesterday in Boca Raton, Fla.

Voice Connects Consumers to Networks

Boca Raton, Fla. — In the opening keynote of Nuance's Conversations convention here, James Canton, noted futurist and head of The Institute for Global Futures, emphasized that the convergence of various networks and technologies will power and ultimately determine the future of business enterprise. And tools, such as voice, that enable platform interactivity will be crucial.

Opus Report Notes Upswing In Voice Biometrics

A recent report from Opus Research released Monday indicates strong growth in the voice biometrics field, while acknowledging the impact the advent of unified communications (UC) might have on the security infrastructure.

Using Speech to Save Lives and Money

Locution today released a new version of its CADVoice 911 Automated Dispatching Software, a software solution that uses speech technology to enable a swifter response time from fire fighters and paramedics.

Speech Technology Without Speech Recognition

When faculty and graduate students at the University of Washington developed the Vocal Joystick, they envisioned a simple device to help individuals without the use of hands or arms to browse the Web, control a screen, or play a video game. Earlier today, the university announced that it has adopted the system to interface with a robotic arm—an aspect of Vocal Joystick it started working on this year.

Dialogic Adds to IVR Platform with EAS Acquisition

Dialogic announced today its acquisition of all outstanding shares of EAS Group. In so doing, the company acquired EAS subsidiaries Cantata Technoogy, Excel Switching, Brooktrout Technology, and SnowShore Networks.

Nuance Acquires Speech-Enabled Medical Imaging Company

Nuance Communications announced earlier today its acquisition of Commissure, a medical imaging software company that uses speech technology to optimize and streamline radiology workflow, for an undisclosed amount. This transaction extends Nuance's capabilities in its Dictaphone solutions for medical imaging as well as its expertise in the radiology market.

Audio Search and Mining

The integration of improved speech-to-text in audio mining now allows users to easily access a wealth of information they might have missed otherwise.

The Elements of Style

How grammars, prompts, and dialogue flow come together to form a good VUI

Is Speech Still in the Cards for iPhone?

Speech tech industry insiders greeted the release of Apple's iPhone with a cry of anguish because the much-hyped device lacked a voice interface. The dream might not be not over, though.

At Bell, Your Voice Is Your Password

Canada's leading phone company rolls out largest voice biometrics solution in the world

Nuance Powers Turkish Airline Applications

As further indication of how speech technologies in general, and interactive voice response (IVR) systems in particular, are becoming ubiquitous, Pegasus this week became the first Turkish airline to adopt a speech application for handling flight information calls.

speech@microsoft Activates Blog

To better consolidate information related to speech capabilities within the Microsoft Vista operating system, the developers responsible for incorporating speech into Windows Vista have launched a blog.

Nuance Installs NLP System for Nordic Telco

Nordic telecommunications company Telenor replaced its directed dialogue IVR with the Call Steering application from Nuance Communications. The application runs on the Dolphin HotVoice platform, integrated with the Nuance speech engine.

IBM's New Avatar Talks to the Deaf

An estimated 55,000 people in the United Kingdom use British Sign Language (BSL) to communicate, yet there are relatively few services and needs designed to accommodate them. With that in mind, IBM announced Friday the development of a new system, called SiSi (Say It Sign It), which automatically converts spoken text into BSL.

EveryZing Makes Everything Searchable

EveryZing—a speech-to-text-based multimedia search and merchandising platform—announced earlier today a multitude of partnerships with Boston media firms Boston.com, 890 ESPN, boston.tv, and a variety of radio stations.

Voice Apps Gaining Voice in Mobile Devices

If any concerns remain about the lack of speech solutions in mobile devices, perhaps they were quelled somewhat by the release today of the initial usage statistics of the Nuance Voice Control application preloaded on the Palm Treo 775p smartphone.

Speech Recognition Puts Content into Context

Digitalsmiths Corp. iannounced yesterday that it had successfully demoed VideoSense, the first fully automated contextual video ad targeting solution that uses speech recognition and works on traditional broadcast, broadband, and mobile applications.

CIOs Clamoring to Adopt VoIP, But Not Without Hesitation

A recent survey of chief information officers by IDG Research Services shows increasing adoption of IP telephony. The survey, sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, found that 63 percent of respondents intend to deploy an IP PBX within the next 12 months, an increase from the 50 percent who currently use such a system.

Machine Translation

Whether embedded in a piece of hardware or as software that can be installed on a laptop computer or PDA,applications that rely on speech recognition and speech synthesis technologies and language databases canprovide instantaneous translation of key words and phrases.

SpinVox Voicemail-to-Text Solution Spreads to Canada

Rogers Wireless, Canada's largest wireless voice and data communications service provider, announced today that it will offer SpinVox's voicemail-to-text service to its estimated 7 million customers this fall.

Voice Search Still Looking for Its Tipping Point

SpeechTEK 2007 (NEW YORK) -- During a SpeechTEK keynote on Tuesday morning, Malcolm Gladwell posited that for speech technology to reach its tipping point it might have to re-frame itself to fully reach its potential by finding exciting new applications. As several sessions at the show brought out, that potential is certainly inherent for speech technology, particularly in the area of voice as an interface to search for data.

Microsoft Includes VoIP in Office Communications Server

Microsoft revealed today that its upcoming Office Communications Server 2007 will house a IP telephony solution that it hopes will accelerate adoption and eliminate the expenses incurred through massive network overhauls that would ordinarily be necessary.

Real-Time Radio Allows Real-Time Radio Search

Critical Mention announced today the addition of its Real-Time Radio offering that transcribes radio audio streams into text, thereby allowing for real-time search of radio broadcasts.

New Predictive Speech-to-Text Firm Launches

A new company has anted up to play in the market of embedded speech technologies. TravellingWave, an early-stage mobile speech technology firm developing technology for speech-to-text mobile units, announced today its official launch.

NEC Unified's UC Solution Targets SMBs

NEC Unified Solutions launched today its unified communications solution for small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

Autonomy Integrates Multichannel Interaction Analysis into etalk

The integration enables organizations to gain a more granular understanding of their customers and to quickly understand the trends and issues that could have a profound effect on the business.

West Launches Automated Notification Solution

OMAHA, Neb. -- West Corp. subsidiary West Notifications Group announced today the availability of IntelliCast, a multichannel, automated notification solution that allows companies to communicate meaningful information, such as flight delays, prescription pick-ups, and appointment reminders, to their customers, employees, and partners through automated voice, email, fax, and text messaging.

Defense Agency Concludes Field Tests for Auto-Translators

GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Friday wrapped up field-testing of prototype, real-time, two-way translation systems for the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Dial Directions' Voice-Activated Service Turns a Cell Phone to a GPS Device

San Francisco - Dial Directions today launched the beta version of a voice-activated phone service that enables cell phone users in parts of New York and California to call and ask for driving directions to any address or store destination. The directions are then sent via text message back to the user's cell phone.

Scottish Governing Body Rolls Out an IVR

ARGYLL AND BUTE, Scotland -- The local governing body here implemented a virtual customer contact center to help area residents with tax questions.

NICE Acquisition Adds Real-Time Transaction and Interaction Analytics Solutions

RA'ANANA, Israel -- Speech analytics solutions provider NICE Systems will acquire Actimize, a provider of software solutions for anti-money laundering, brokerage compliance, customer due diligence, and fraud prevention for the financial services industry, for $280 million.