Nuance is working on a pretty successful year from a launch and press perspective.  They came into the year strong after riding 2007 with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9, the best voice recognition software for personal computers to ever hit the market. 

It enabled me to type at 150 words per minute!

Then in January, Apple dropped their own voice recognition software and picked up the Dragon Naturally Speaking Engine to run in iDictate.

Now, they are bringing to market a Voicemail to Text Service.  This is actually a slightly common business model in voice recognition today, but it does enable Nuance to leverage their own technology directly as opposed to sub licensing their technology through other Vendors.

How does the Nuance Voicemail to Text Speech recognition Process Work?

1. Someone calls your Voice mail and leaves a message
1. “Jim, this is your Doctor, we have the results of your drug treatment and we need to make an adjustment in your prescription.  Please call us at your earliest convenience to schedule an appointment.”
2. Your voice mail is then run through the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition engine
1. Now that has about a 99% accuracy rate, but that rate applies to recognized voices.
2. So Nuance combines their automated technology with human processes
3. The transcription then goes to a human for quality control and checking.
1. This is very similar to a process that the Postal Service in the United States employed for about 15 years to transition away from human data entry people to software that was capable of 100% accurate handwriting recognition.  I worked with that project during the middle 5 years of the project and we saw a 50% reduction in mistakes by the software every year.
4. You then receive an email, SMS or other notification that you have a voice mail and you can read the text version or access the audio version in the format and medium of your choice.
1. This also enables you to keep excellent copies of your voice mail in a transcribe manner that is excellent for companies that are required to document all customer contacts and requests.

Converting voicemail to text is a powerful and simple concept. But implementing a highly scalable semi-automated service is far more complex and requires highly accurate speech recognition - technology that takes decades to develop,” said Steve Chambers, president, mobile and consumer services division, Nuance. “The Nuance Voicemail to Text Service integrates speech technology with over 3,000 Nuance transcriptionists, hosted in a Nuance-owned facility, with proven security, scalability, and reliability.”

Nuance Mobile Launches Voicemail to Text; New Service Converts Voicemail to Readable Messages

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For everyone that has sent me emails offering tips on buying phones, PDA’s, smart phones and great coupon offers as a result of my article on how to MacGiver a Treo 600 with a Q-tip, I just wanted to say thank you.

Please do not fear.  My old finned Cadillac of a Treo will be replaced sometime soon.  I have been stalling for a couple reasons.(ok the list grew, there are seven, but the last couple are the most important)

First, I am moving from the Atlanta area to the Charlotte, NC area.  And I wanted to get moved before I made the switch.  I’ve been caught up in lots of move details, real estate contemplations, and other mundane tasks.

Second, I am probably going to switch from T-Mobile to Verizon Wireless, and that’s causing some angst.

• T-Mobile only offers roaming networks in the Charlotte area and that makes checking voice mail a real pain.
• T-Mobile has been a great service and I hate to give up a great service.
• I wouldn’t touch At&t nor Sprint with a ten foot stylus as At&t robbed me blind several years ago, and Sprint fires their customers when Sprints customer service lines get worked to hard.
• Verizon Wireless is the only major network left and we have family already on the network so it makes sense from that perspective.
• I’m not crazy about the way Verizon layers service packages into their plans, so it feels like its going to cost a lot more.

Third, I?m going to import my existing telephone number to the new phone service and I suspect I will run into Murphy?s Law a few times when that takes place.

Fourth, Verizon has not released the new Palm Treo 755P nor the 800P and it?s unknown when they will release either of those. There are rumors that the 755P will come out any day now possibly tie the end of the month, but similar rumors were around two months ago. I?d hate to buy a 700 P. today and had to be outdated tomorrow literally.

Fifth, even if I can get a 755P, that doesn?t include a GPS chip and I would very much like to have the Verizon navigator service running on my next phone when I switched to Verizon. It is rumored that the 800P in the Treo lineup will include a built-in GPS service. So a combination of Verizon?s and Treo?s poor marketing and communications are preventing me from buying anything.

Sixth, Verizon wireless sells the 700P for $359 and the store and $259 online. The 755P sells for $200 at Sprint, and there are rumors of the price point will be the same at Verizon. I would definitely not like to spend more for an outdated model that Verizon.

Seventh, there are $200 blackberries that have all of the capabilities of what the 800 P. is rumored to have, however I don?t want to learn a new operating system with the Blackberry. I?ve been using Palm Treos since the year 2000 and I don?t really feel like learning a new operating system today. I have learned a lot of operating systems over the years, and learning an extra one just for the hell of it doesn?t really get me excited anymore.

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I have an old Treo 600 and I’m just about ready to upgrade, but I haven’t figured out which carrier I’m going with and so I can’t make a final decision on the new Treo I’ll pack next.

About a month ago, I lost the stylus for the phone when I was chasing my lost dog through the woods.  Its hard enough to find a stylus for a new treo let alone find one for one of the oldest treo’s made by Palm.  I haven’t really tried too hard either.

Well, its been getting harder and harder to work the phone without a stylus, especially my alarm clock (using the Butler program).  So the other night when I was cleaning my ears out, enabling me to hear my phone a little better, I thought about hacking the Q-Tip.

So I used a plastic Q-Tip, removed the cotton from one end, and it works great as a stand in stylus.

Here’s some quick shots of the Q-Stylus in action:

It may not be super classy and it definitely won’t turn your treo into an accessory for your diamond rings or bling collection in general.  You might not impress a client for having a lot of style, but you might get the job done more effectively.  So if function over form is your requirement of the day, then hack at it!

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You probably remember seeing some of the media hype running up to and through the iPhone launch on June 29. You probably heard some of the estimates that the iPhone could, would and had sold 500,000 iPhones the first couple days it was on the market. Well, if those numbers seemed suspicious to you, then give yourself a pat on the back for being able to cut through the spin.

AT&T said it signed up 146,000 iPhone customers, well below analyst estimates, which ran as high as 500,000 units. Shares of Apple were down as much as 5 percent in early trading and about 2.5 percent at midday, trading around $140. AT&T?s shares were down less than 1 percent, at slightly under $40.

AT&T has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide wireless service for the iPhone, the combination digital music player, cellular phone and Internet device. The phone went on sale on June 29, two days before the quarter ended, amid fanfare surpassed only by the release of the final ?Harry Potter? book last week.

AT&T Earnings Up, but iPhone Sales Disappoint - New York Times

Selling a cellphone is for good or bad currently about signing up a subscriber. No subscriber is pretty much no sale. Carriers own the market for good or bad and possibly until Google attempts to ‘open’ the market with their own variety of Information Monopoly. At&t released their 2nd quarter numbers and it shows that the iPhone did not due even half as well as the news media claimed. The iPhone didn’t sell 500k nor 400k nor even 250k. It sold 146k.

So there was a lot of hype in those numbers. Now sure, you could argue that some people bought the iPhone from an Apple store. You could say there were difficulties with people getting signed up with At&t resulting from buying from an Apple store even. But let’s think about that for a second.

1. If you make the argument that the sales came from Apple Stores (say 364,000 units sold), then that would indicate that only Apple can sell the iPhone most of the time and that At&t doesn’t know what they are doing. Now I wouldn’t rule that out, but it doesn’t help Apple be successful setting up partnerships with the cell phone industry let alone At&t who has a 5 year lock on the iPhone

2. It could be argued that the phone subscriber number was low due to the difficulty signing up with At&t. There did seem to be a few anecdotes on the internet, but nothing indicated that 364,000 people were having trouble. That would be proof of a very serious problem for At&t and Apple (ergo don’t buy it at the Apple Store if you want an easy transition onto your At&t plan.)

3. Let’s look at the dark side for a second. In the book publishing world, publishers hire people to go out and buy up their books to create the illusion of a best seller. If 500,000 units were the number of total iPhones sold, and lets say that only 50,000 people experienced a slow sign up(that’s still a huge number of customers treated poorly), then we have to account for the other 294,000 unit sales. Could it be that Apple or At&t or someone else with an iPhone agenda went out and purchased up the other 294,000 units to pump up the numbers? Obviously, Apple would have the most to gain from hype, but it could be that a number of people wanted to see if the iPhone would sell on eBay or ask the question Will it Blend? for their YouTube show.

Now don’t get me wrong, neither Apple nor At&t have the best track records at book keeping. I have no idea what type of financial reporting software either company is using nor how their accountants and auditors de’ jour are applying GAAP principles to their numbers. It could also be possible that neither company knows how to count. Regardless of the scenario and possibilities, stock holders didn’t like the news and peppered their At&t stock on Apple before taking a bite out of Apple’s value.

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Last week we wrote about the rookie mistakes that Apple made on the new iPhone.  We covered 19 mistakes that we noted within the first 48 hours of the release of the iPhone.  Many more mistakes have been identified since then, some of which might be able to be fixed with iPhone 2.0.

However, those were mobile phone mistakes for the most part.  Those were rookie mistakes made by a rookie mobile phone designer.

We would not have expected them to make rookie mistakes when it came to the design of the MP3 player in the iPhone, the thing that put the ‘i” in the iPhone.  Apple apparently forgot to include some of the core functionality that imprinted the Apple signature on the iPod and made it a great device in the first place.  (not the only thing but a key thing)

They purposefully removed the ability to drag and drop music onto the iPhone.  They went for a glitzy looking interface on the phone itself and dumbed down the interface between the phone to the computer to iTunes.  So its now just as tedious to synch up the iPhone with your computer as any other MP3 player with the exception of an iPod.  The iPhone might have been a great gadget if it had been as good as an iPod plus had the abilities of a good phone.

In fact it doesn’t have the capabilities of a good phone and isn’t as good as an iPhone. 

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