Nuance acquires Jott, the simple voice-to-text mobile phone service
Speech recognition company Nuance has acquired Jott, a company that lets you use your voice to create notes, set reminders, send email and text messages.
We wrote about Jott when it first launched two years ago and praised it for its simplicity and ease of use. Jott continued to evolve, allowing you to do things like post things to web sites, and use any mobile device to do so — again, all by voice. It transcribes… Continue Reading
Vlingo’s speech recognition for Blackberry officially outcools the iPhone — for now
Vlingo, a Cambridge, Mass, speech recognition company, has just launched an awesome voice-powered interface for Blackberry smartphones.
In a recent post about speech-to-SMS provider Yap, we posited that the ultimate mobile interface would let us navigate a phone using a combination of voice and manual input. Yap’s goal was to get there eventually. But Vlingo, which launches such an application today, has left Yap — and even Microsoft’s heavyweight TellMe — choking on dust.
While voice-activated search… Continue Reading
Tellme, Google 411 searches — all about the data
Tellme, the voice recognition company, has released more mobile search features, giving it a leg up on Google’s recently announced 411 service.
In addition to offering voice mobile search, which Tellme announced last month, it gives you a way of search for business listings using SMS texting or mobile Web. Tellme gives business listings, maps, phone numbers and driving directions. See images below.
If you use the voice service, which you do by calling 1-800-555-TELL and just… Continue Reading
Nuance shores up voice-recognition lead, buys BeVocal for $140M
Nuance Communications, the speech-recognition technology company, said it has agreed to acquire BeVocal, of Mountain View, Calif., for $140 million.
The deal allows the Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance, which dominates the speech-recognition market, to extend its reach into mobile calls, where BeVocal’s customers include carriers like Cingular, Liberty Wireless, Metro PCS and Virgin Mobile. It comes at a time when Tellme is making headway in mobile voice search (though Tellme relies on Nuance’s underlying speech-recognition technology).
Mobile phone… Continue Reading