iSpeech gives publishers three options for creating content. They can convert PDFs to audio files; they can add a widget to a website that essentially adds a “play” button to an article; or they can use more sophisticated developer tools built on iSpeech’s API and add them directly to their web pages. Pearson is using the PDF option for its textbooks. Evernote is using the developer tools to integrate speech technology into its web reading platform Evernote Clearly. “The natural evolution of this is to potentially bring this functionality into all of Evernote’s products,” iSpeech COO Yaron Oren told me. “One of the things we hear directly from Evernote customers is they want to be able to listen to their Evernote notes in the car, so it would be great to have this kind of of functionality.”

The publishing platform’s business model is basically pay-per-use, Oren said, and the cost usually ends up totaling “less than a tenth of of the cost of professional narration.” For websites, iSpeech charges by the word, which varies depending on volume but ranges from $0.01 to a fraction of a cent per word. For books, the company charges by the page; there are volume discounts, but Oren said that in general, the maximum cost to convert a 250-page book to audio with iSpeech would cost around $1,000. “We’ve heard from publishers that a book with voice talent tends to cost in the order of $15,000 per book,” he said.

Amazon ran into legal trouble when, in 2009, it automatically added text-to-speech technology to ebooks. The company insisted that text-to-speech features don’t violate copyright, but said at the time, “We strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat,” and decided to let rights-holders “decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title.” Oren says iSpeech will avoid those issues by leaving the decision to publishers — though it seems as if Evernote Clearly could potentially run into trouble, since it doesn’t hold the copyright to the articles that users save to its platform. (Evernote says it’s “comfortable” with the feature and is only running it on the article pages, not on articles saved into Evernote.)

For now, iSpeech’s publisher tools are primarily going to be of interest to nonfiction publishers — not publishers of, say, novels. “It’s a viable alternative to nonfiction, textbooks, or more straightforward news content,” Oren said. “For fiction, or other content where there’s more emotion and differences in reading style, this is not an alternative [yet].” But, he said, “this is about making more content available [as audio]. Professional voice talent is very expensive, and as a result, most books never get made into an audio format. Now there’s an option.”

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AT&T promised in April to open Watson up to general development, but on Monday AT&T SVP for technology and network operations John Donovan made the launch official in a blog post, revealing seven different “contexts,” or language libraries, that app builders can access to speechify their products.

Like Nuance, AT&T has developed specific taxonomies for specific use cases, allowing its servers to anticipate the words and phrasing consumers are likely to speak in a particular context. Those tailored lexicons allow Watson (not to be confused with IBM’s artificial intelligence project Watson) to better capture meaning as well as intent from any given phrase. For instance, the question “where is Trenton?” would be interpreted completely differently if spoken to a Q&A app versus a mapping app.

The contexts are Web Search, Business Search, Voicemail-to-Text transcription, SMS speech transcription, Question and Answer, TV and a category called Generic used for general dictation purposes. The TV context is of particular note because it ties into AT&T’s U-Verse program guide, recognizing queries about particular actors, movies and TV shows.

In general, though, it appears AT&T is only licensing out fairly basic speech recognition and natural language understanding to general developers – features that could be used to build voice search into an app, but nothing that could be used to develop an expansive virtual assistant like Siri.

Watson, however, is likely much more powerful than these contexts let on. Vlingo licenses Watson’s core speech technology for its language servers (though that relationship will likely end after the Nuance acquisition closes), and Research in Motion’s QNX is working with Watson’s API to develop a conceptual connected car assistant. AT&T also has big plans to leverage Watson’s capabilities for its own products. In a recent interview, AT&T emerging devices president Glenn Lurie hinted that Watson could soon make it into its Digital Life connected home technology, becoming the voice-controlled virtual butler we see in science fiction.

Watson does have one big advantage to the average dev: it’s cheap – at least until the end of the year. For the remainder of 2012, AT&T will give free and unlimited access to the Watson APIs to any developer paying AT&T’s $99 annual registration dues. In 2013 a point-based fee structure will kick in. Registered developers will get 5000 points a month and any speech transaction of a minute or less will cost one point. Developers that exceed that amount will be charged $20 for each 2000-point increment, which works out to about 1 cent per transaction.

Image courtesy Flickr user Lazurite.

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For starters, Nuance is fully implementing into Swype the XT9 predictive text technologies originally developed by Tegic. Nuance has built on Tegic’s algorithms, though, expanding its prognostication abilities beyond just words to the formation of sentences and phrases.

For instance, the words “pit,” “pot” and “put” follow the same trace path on the Swype keyboard, forcing you to select from the right word from a menu. But by analyzing the words that come before or after the entry, Swype now can place the right word by context. It knows to use the word “pit” after avocado and “put” before the phrase “that away.”

The platform’s intelligence goes beyond just common language structure. Nuance says Swype will adapt and customize itself to its user. It learns to predict phrases and word groupings frequently typed by users. For instance, if I enter the words “Grandpa Fitchard” enough times into text messages, Swype will begin automatically filling in the last name every time I type “Grandpa.”

The new version will also learn from all of your missives, not just the ones composed through Swype. If you give it permission, the software will cull through your emails, SMS messages, Twitter feed and Facebook posts, searching for new words to add to your phone’s personal dictionary.

Nuance has already integrated its Dragon Dictation speech technology – and in some cases Dragon Go semantic search — into Swype, but with this latest release of its software it’s fully bridging the gap between spoken and tactile input methods. Dragon’s speech capabilities use the phone’s data connection to connect to Nuance’s language servers, while text recognition remains local to the device. But Nuance is now linking the two, allowing you to generate a new vocabulary of spoken words synced to your personal dictionary.

For instance, if you spoke an uncommon last name, say “Fitchard,” into the phone, Nuance’s servers simply wouldn’t recognize the word. The Swype interface would then prompt you to type the letters of my last name into the keyboard. It then forevermore associates that spoken word with the written text, creating a unique lexicon of recognizable spoken words for each user.

In addition, Swype now has support for 55 languages — both written and spoken — and offers a third input method (fourth if you count simple key tapping): writing out words by finger, which it then turns into text.

Nuance is selling the new Swype release to Android handset and tablet makers as well as making the technology available to other OSes via a software developer’s kit. If you don’t want to wait for an update from your manufacturer, you can try downloading a beta version for Android from the Nuance site.

A warning though: The beta installer doesn’t recognize all phones, and it won’t load on devices in which a manufacturer has preinstalled Swype in the factory. That involves a lot of Samsung and HTC phones. As with many things Android-related these days, you may be at the whim of your carrier or device maker when it comes to getting the latest version of Swype’s software.

Update: Nuance has told me that the company updated its device policies Wednesday when it released the beta to the general public this morning, making it now possible to download the software on devices that already have Swype factory pre-installed. I tried to download the software on my HTC MyTouch again this afternoon, and, true to Nuance’s word, it worked.

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AT&T announced that in June it would be opening up its Watson speech recognition APIs, which will enable developers to build their own speech-enabled apps and services. AT&T has licensed that technology in the past to companies such as Vlingo but this represents an opportunity for all kinds of developers to speechify their apps. It also brings a challenge to Nuance, which has been lining up developers.

The APIs will focus initially on web search, local business search, Q&A, voice mail to text, SMS, U-Verse’s electronic programming guide, and a dictation API for THE general use of speech recognition. Other APIs for gaming and social networking will be available in the future.

At the event, AT&T demonstrated how its translation technology allows for simultaneous translated conversations between two people speaking Spanish and English on different devices. Users can speak into a VoIP app using one language and the AT&T technology is able to simultaneously transcribe and then translate the content into another language. AT&T already has a Translator mobile app that works with six languages but that requires both users to speak into one device. This holds the promise of people carrying on translated conversations anywhere in the world, similar to how TDD works for the speech or hearing impaired. The translation API is not yet available but will be released at a later date for developers.

One of the other cool demonstrations at the AT&T Labs event involved bio-acoustic data transfer. The technology uses sensors in a phone to recognize and transmit signals through a body using bone conduction. When touching a door handle, a user could put their finger on a transducer on their phone and push out a digital key that gets transmitted through their body and is received by a sensor in the door, which unlocks when it recognizes the key. The door would only unlock when it receives the unique signal that’s created by that person’s skeletal structure transmitting the original key. That could be an interesting alternative to other access methods that rely on biometrics or NFC.

But another intriguing scenario is being able to transfer data back and forth between two users with a handshake. If both people have their hand on their phone’s sensor and an app running, they can transfer a small amount of data back and forth through their touch. The two devices would recognize each other when the two people come in contact and would negotiate the transfer. Only a small amount of data — enough for a business card or small image — could be transferred in the time it takes to shake a hand. But it could an alternative to a Bump or NFC data transfer. Some companies are working on transferring data through galvanic skin response but AT&T said that requires daily calibration and can be more inconsistent.

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I sat down with Ilya Bukshteyn, senior director of speech marketing, sales and solutions for Microsoft and he said that while Apple helped define the modern user interface of smartphones with the iPhone, expectations are shifting to an interface that moves beyond touch to deeply integrated speech. And that, he said, favors Microsoft, which had integrated speech into WP7 at its launch and is upping the ante with Mango improvements including voice-to-text messaging, which allows people to hear text messages read aloud to them and respond back with a dictated text message, all without pressing a button. Microsoft will also enable map navigations, application launches or turning on the speakerphone with voice commands and is adding support for more languages.

“If you look at the success of the iPhone, it was about the usability it brought to the screen and touch experience and that resonated,” said Bukshteyn. “We’re now hitting another inflection point where speech is going to matter just as much. Moving forward, having some sort of speech natural user interface does become something users expect. And how well you do it will determine what sells and what doesn’t.”

Now Apple appears poised to announce new speech technology integration in iOS 5. 9to5Mac reported recently that iOS 5 contains a text-to-speech system powered by Nuance, which will allow users to switch from keyboard to speech input in any text field. That, along with other learnings Apple picked up from its purchase of personal assistant app Siri, could help Apple catch up quickly on the speech front compared to Windows Phone 7 and Android, which also has some impressive speech capabilities embedded.

But Bukshteyn said it’s not just about building speech into iOS, it’s about the intelligence behind it. He said Microsoft’s cloud-based approach to speech is able to learn from all billions of utterances Microsoft gathers from Xbox Kinect, its Bing Mobile apps, Windows Phone 7 and its other productivity software, to constantly improve the performance of the overall speech product, so the system as a whole is continually learning. The volume and diversity of utterances helps train Tellme and creates a product that learns over time. He said Apple will also be behind in perfecting and implementing speech, something that takes years to tune.

“Apple doesn’t have the IP, the patents; they can gain that over time but they’re starting at a different point,” Bukshteyn said. “Speech is something we’ve been investing in for 10 years and the stuff we’re seeing now was planted a decade ago.”

Bukshteyn is quick to point out that smartphone success involves a lot of factors, not just speech. But he believes that as smartphones start to move down into the masses, the need for elegant interfaces with speech will only grow. He said designs that are intuitive and not intimidating will be what wins over new smartphone users.

We still have to see what Apple does with its Nuance integration, which it has to yet to announce. And as my colleague Darrell wrote, it could be a moment for Apple to leap frog its competitors. We know that Google is only going to continue to push speech into its Android platform.

But Microsoft’s heavy emphasis on speech shows that the technology will be, if not a decider in the smartphone race, a key component that all modern smartphone platforms will need to compete. As Vlad Sejnoha, CTO of Nuance told me yesterday, speech technology is really becoming mobile technology and will grow more powerful as it gets further embedded into smartphones.

It’s not surprising that Microsoft would tout its speech technology. It’s one area in which it’s trying to leverage its assets to help WP7 catch up. I’m skeptical that speech will be a major catalyst for WP7 all by itself but it is a differentiator for now and another way to show how polished the platform is becoming.

And I do think that speech will become more of a popular tool over time. Currently, Google and Microsoft say about 25 percent of their mobile searches are conducted by voice. Bukshteyn said it’s actually higher than that for Microsoft when you look at just Windows Phone 7 devices. With the way people are learning to talk to their devices, including powerful examples like Xbox Kinect, it’s seems like a good bet for Microsoft to push speech. But if all the platforms start to emphasize the technology, as we’re seeing more and more, WP7 may enjoy a temporary boost but it will need more than that to really close the gap on iOS and Android.

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But Sejnoha sat down with me today at the SpeechTek conference in New York City and painted a broader picture of how speech technology is poised to be a game-changer for smartphones, especially as they get embedded deeper into the operating systems and hardware. He said speech is transforming from an alternative to text input into a much more powerful tool that can understand user intent and connect them more quickly to information, using natural language processing, semantic analysis and cloud computing. In essence, speech is becoming the smart short cut for mobile.

“Speech can be built to complement and enhance other interfaces helping you find existing applications or information you’re familiar with but it’s hard to launch or find. Speech can get you there. It’s really powerful direct access; we’re just entering an amazing era of speech,” said Sejnoha.

We’re seeing some of that with Nuance’s latest Dragon Go app, which answers voice activated searches by pulling up a host of websites and apps that complete a user’s query. Instead of search result links, Go allows people to complete actions faster. Vlingo and Siri, the Nuance-powered app bought by Apple, are also pursuing this concept of a smart voice-activated assistant.

But the real power will be in allowing users to make queries of unstructured data and get back answers immediately. He said Nuance’s new partnership with IBM’s Watson program, which uses IBM’s deep question answering, natural language processing, and machine learning capabilities, will be useful for mobile users, helping them seek answers that are currently hard to come by.

For instance, a user could ask what friends thought of a particular movie or restaurant, and Nuance and IBM could digest their social media information and come up with an answer. Or a vacationer driving around in a new city could ask what time local restaurants or businesses close. While this will type of technology will be useful in enterprise settings, Sejnoha said it will be very valuable to mobile users, who are more intent-driven and want a focused distillation of answers.

He said it makes more sense to move speech technology deeper into smartphones, integrating it from the ground up, which will open even more opportunities for speech to aid in the user experience. Sejnoha said handset manufacturers are very interested in integrating speech as a differentiator, to make their hardware stand out. Ultimately, he believes all smartphones will include some form of this deep speech integration working in concert with the visual interface. We’re already seeing that with Microsoft’s use of speech in Windows Phone 7 and Google’s use of voice in Android.

“It’s a new kind of control, like a natural language overlay over the visual framework,” Sejnoha said. “We will have this ability to jump and short-cut through the mini desktop to grab and control things and the best way to do that is getting that capacity up front and having the visual stuff play with that.”

The combination of speech and mobile isn’t just going to change the user experience. It’s already transforming Nuance, which is increasingly finding most of its work deals with mobile.

“We used to have a mobile unit, but that’s losing meaning now because all of our business is turning mobile,” Sejnoha.

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