But what if you don’t know what channel the Jetsons are on (or what submenu of your VOD service)? It will take a lot more than three keystrokes to get to them. On the other hand, voice interface coupled with background intelligence would be faster and easier than just a keypad. That’s the thing about voice command; it is not enough for the system to match your speech to the correct phrase, it also has to be able to execute a meaningful series of commands based on that phrase. In the end, VUI is just like GUI, it is the last two letters that are most important.

The general observations that I have made on the speech industry are…

• Initially the speech technology vendors over sold the capability. There were very few good apps, mostly because the UI paradigm was new, and businesses made an incorrect selection of applications with regards to the readiness of the technology.

• Soon the technology got better predominantly because a) of faster processors and b)Speech vendors had real user data for training, and providers had design and deployment experience. As a result real performance results started to manifest in the contact center for customer care applications – There was focus.

Today I believe that we are back to where we were, we have new speech technology and solutions that are emerging on mobile phones and edge devices. The prospects of this technology are very exciting. But we must learn from the past, and focus on the applications that have a high success rate given the readiness of the technology. Users don’t give new technology many chances, hence solution provides must get it right out of the gate in both accuracy and adoption rate. As an example both Yap and Vlingo have a very appealing enabling technology, but it’s the success of the initial apps that will realize the ultimate potential of these companies ( I am sure that what I am saying is not new to them).

Lastly, some folks will like using speech user interfaces and others wont, the speech industry is betting that it will find its niche in the competing UI paradigms. Personally I believe that speech interfaces are not suited for every thing or every one but given the right solution the value delivered could be great.

Every question should get some sort of response. (For us it was called the beep problem when there was no entry in the database).

If the playing field is pretty limited like the traffic reports that isn’t a problem, but when you’re trying to roll out numerous services the numbers of response start to add up.

I’m currently not in that field anymore but what I remember where the amount of people training the software, so it would be usable.

Even though I have small fingers, It has seemed apparent to me that using the keypad on a mobile phone, for instance, is just clunky. There’s only so much variety in input you actually need from a mobile appliance, yet this variety is greater than a 12-key keypad.

The only other input that I think is worthy of a mobile device’s form factor is some kind of eyeball tracking, but we’re not there yet.

I’m on the fence about the iphone/ipod touch model, but I can’t get over the idea that a mobile appliance’s access should optimally be limited in scope.

As for competition from the portals, if their strategic strength were as you portrayed it, the white label search providers (such as JumpTap and Medio) would not exist. You should hang out on the East coast more to reset your perceptions there. ;-) Our aspirations are well aligned with the carriers strategies, and we expect long and fruitful partnerships with them. Warm regards and thank you for your insightful questions at the event! i.

While voice recognition has come far, It is still a very clunky way to deal with the system and the novelty wears off after a while. Mistakes by the system are really irritating to deal with when you are trying to get something done .. quick.

On a lighter note, Jeremy Clarksons infamous tryst with the Mercedes S’s voice recognition should bring a chuckle.. It points out why speech recognition still has its limitations as an input method.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE_O_HKpMU8

Pravin, the scenario here is for the mobile phones, not for home. I guess, at home the remote control always wins.

The mouse/remote/keypad wins handsdown (pun intended)

sometimes we do not like to talk. HAL was irritating for the reason.

Leigh