Voice recognition giant Nuance Communications has just picked up a pretty big company in the transcription sector: Spinvox. Among other things, Spinvox runs a voicemail service that translates voicemail into text and sends it to you as an e-mail. Nuance’s involvement in mobile is wide-spanning, but the latest from them has been a pair of iPhone apps. Overall, this sounds like a mutually beneficial partnership in that Nuance’s seniority can bring a lot of expertise to existing Spinvox customers, and Spinvox’s existing carrier relationships could be useful to Nuance, who has spent most of their time with handset manufacturers. Spinvox got in some hot water with privacy advocates over the summer for rumours that they actually outsource the transcription process to South Africa, but maybe that situation will change now that they’re under new management. The acquistion cost Nuance $102.5 million, broken up into $66 million cash and $36.5 million in shares.

[via Nuance]

Good news, everyone! Visual voicemail on BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), a feature heretofore unseen north of the border, is now available to Bell Mobility customers. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it allows you to cruise through your voicemail messages in a list, complete with dates and caller IDs, and listen to them on-demand, rather than having to chew through a call-in service with dialtone commands. AT&T (NYSE: T) has been offering VVM on the Bold 9000 since the summer, but Bell’s rollout will span a considerably wider range of devices: the Bold 9700, Tour 9630, Curve 8330, Pearl 8130, World Edition 8830, and whatever else they release in the future.

The catch? Bell is dinging you $8/month for the privilege. Man, for that much, you might as well get SpinVox or PhoneTag and get the added bonus of transcription, especially considering AT&T is giving it out for free. Still, if you’re interested, go to bell.ca/visualvoicemail for more info.

[via CNW]

OS 4.6.0.297 for the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold on AT&T (NYSE: T) is once again available after an initial release followed quickly by some technical difficulties and a retraction of the firmware earlier this month. The big deal with this particular patch is the addition of a free visual voicemail application, allowing subscribers to cruise through their voicemail without having to dial in. To get started on your Bold, go to RIM’s software download site for AT&T, and pick out the BlackBerry 9000 from the drop-down menu.

Visual voicemail on the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold has been a feature looming since January, but rumour has it that AT&T (NYSE: T) subscribers will be able to activate it for free starting tomorrow. Some particulars of the service have also bubbled up, if you’re you’re interested:

• Store up to 40 voicemails for up to 14 days
• Archive voicemails to device memory or on a microSD card
• Forward voicemails as an MMS to other users or an email address
• Save phone numbers in your Visual Voicemail inbox to your address book
• Setup your voicemail including greeting right from the application itself

Hopefully we’ll see the native visual voicemail app spread to other carriers shortly after making it to AT&T – it would even be nice if Google (NSDQ: GOOG) got around to integrating their Voice service here in the long run, although the existing Google Voice app for BlackBerry should do the trick for awhile still.

[via BGR]

SpinVox, one of the big names in white label voicemail transcription services for carriers, could be in trouble as it has come to light that at least some voicemails are transcribed thanks to human ears in the Phillipines and South Africa. The company claims that some non-live listening is required to build the automated algorithms that handle other transcriptions, but they refuse to state exactly how many operations are handled by human versus machines. One call centre employee claims that the entire service is run by people listening in on live calls. The legal implications for such an operation are sizeable, as SpinVox is based in the UK and must abide by European Union data protection laws. Privacy issues, however, will do more harm to SpinVox’s image that call down the legal thunder.

In a statement, the ICO [Information Commissioner's Office] explained there was nothing to prevent Spinvox from using people rather than machines to translate messages. However, it said that “it may be helpful if the company is clearer about the likelihood that people will be used to translate messages”. “This is particularly important if customers are using the service for transmitting sensitive or secure information,” it added.

Listening to how an employee described the calls made it sound like an interesting day at the office, privacy qualms aside…

“We heard the message from the very beginning to the very end. Love messages, secret messages, messages with sexual content, even people threatening to kill each other.”

[via BBC]

I knew there was a reason I got that invite to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Voice a few weeks ago… Dedicated Google Voice applications for Android and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) have been announced, and are ripe for the downloading. If you haven’t checked out Google Voice, it used to be GrandCentral, an online hub to manage voice services, like saved SMS messages, transcribing voicemail, and a bunch of other handy functions I haven’t had a chance to try yet since it isn’t available in Canada. An iPhone version of Google Voice is on the way, too, if that’s your kind of thing, and number portability is also in the works. Check out Google Voice for more info, just remember that it’s still by invite only. If you’re already a member, go to m.google.com/voice on your mobile browser to pick up the app.

[via TechCrunch]

Palm (NSDQ: PALM) recently received a question on Twitter about visual voicemail on the Pre, to which they evasively replied: “Palm Synergy presents integrated messaging in lots of useful ways, but not that particular way”. While unfortunate, there’s no need to really worry about the lack of native support, that just means we’ll have to rely on third parties like PhoneTag, Spinvox, and maybe even a mobile client for Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Voice to fill the gap. If you want to chalk one up for iPhone, go for it, but it’s unclear if the lack of a feature is a permanent shortcoming of Web OS, or if it’s something that will come in a later version down the line, perhaps on the Eos. It’s a bit of a downer, and on top of no memory card slot,  few details on battery life, and not video recording at launch, I think we’re all starting to get a more realistic picture of the Pre after the swooning factor has died down.

[via PreCentral]

PhoneFusion announced today an upcoming Fusion Voicemail Plus app that will bring visual voicemail to the T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1 handset. The app will let G1 users centralize their voicemail boxes in one place, and allow them to visualize voicemail messages right on their screen.

Louis Libin, CEO of PhoneFusion commented:

“Our Fusion Voicemail Plus application is tremendously popular with our existing customers who wanted iPhone-type functionality on their favorite devices… With the launch of T-Mobile’s G1, the first Android-powered smartphone, people have been looking for an innovative visual voicemail app that runs on this breakthrough device. We believe Fusion Voicemail Plus fills this gap, giving the Android community a better way to stay connected when it matters most. We expect this application will quickly become one of the favorites on Android Market.”

The app is expected to be previewed today at the Under the Radar: Mobility Conference, taking place in Mounain View, California. Look for Fusion Voicemail plus for the G1 to appear in the Android Market by the end of this year.

[Via: NewsBlaze]

As those of you that read regularly will know, I’m quite a fan of V-T-T (voice-to-text) services – I have one running at the moment, and love getting my voicemails as text messages – to the point the point where I think it’s a real killer app!

Well, in that vein, YouMail, as US-only VTT provider, have contacted me with details of their services, and some stats from research they recently did. It’s really quite interesting, especially since their basic voicemail to text service is free - yes, you read that right! If you just want the link so you can give it a try, you can find that here.

Read the full article »

No doubt you read my previous post on the future of voice, and had your thoughts provoked – however, since then, SpinVox have hosted a session on the future of voice. Their chief of “Interweb bloggery”, James Whatley, was present, along with their VP of consumer business, James Scroggs.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, due to being “logistically challenged” – however, by all accounts it was a great session, with some excellent points raised. I draw your attention to the lead-in statement made by James Scroggs:

“I’ve long held that people have lost their voice – call it the stuttering of the democratic process, not in having a right to vote or the mechanic to do so, but the real sense that a person’s voice can count for something, be purposeful, weighty, and heard amongst the din of Rice Crispy culture and politics.

I spent five years at MTV striving to have a 25 year old brand continue to earn its place as a platform for young people to have a voice in a formalised broadcast environment, while YouTube and the new social nooks and crannies became the new playground.

Now I find myself in the realms of a brilliant system, SpinVox, that can make the human voice matter again. How? Because SpinVox takes a voice – literally the energy in motion of particles in the air – and converts it into text data. That data can then be posted as content into the digital world.

It’s a revolution: for me, voice is the last human faculty that has not been obfuscated or complicated by the advances of science. It remains entirely naked, and therefore a pure expression of your ID, your self.

If only 30% of the language processed by our system is Dictionary-documented, then the complexities and personalities contained in the spoken language and vernacular suggest that the voice continues to be an immensely powerful tool for us all to emotional connect with each other, create and find social order.

So what is the future of voice?
What’s is its summit of its mountainous journey?”

It raises some questions, I’m sure you’ll agree. For more detail on the session, hop on over to the SpinVox site, and check out the blog write-up. Whilst you are there, check out the SpinVox service too – if your country is covered, I recommend signing up – voice-to-text (in my opinion) is a killer app for the mass-market!

Ben